Posted on 03/03/2005 4:04:47 PM PST by Former Military Chick
WASHINGTON : US lifestyle guru Martha Stewart was set to leave jail Friday after a five-month sentence for a stock scandal that boosted her career rather than dooming it.
Stewart's time in jail officially ends Sunday, but the federal prisons bureau can release prisoners on a Friday if their sentences end over the weekend, said US prisons spokeswoman Carla Wilson.
Supporters eagerly awaited her release from the Alderson minimum security prison in West Virginia, which inmates call "Camp Cupcake."
The news media were also outside the prison in force.
Stewart's reputation has made a massive public rebound during her time in Alderson, despite the conviction for lying about a dodgy stock sale.
She will serve five more months under house arrest at her 62-hectare (163-acre) country estate in Bedford, New York.
She will have to wear an electronic ankle bracelet tracking her movements.
Stewart may leave the property for 48 hours a week for work, which she already has lined up.
Indeed, Stewart, 63, has won a contract to host a knock-off of tycoon Donald Trump's successful NBC television reality show "The Apprentice."
She will also star in a show focusing on the same subjects that she built into a multi-million dollar lifestyle empire -- cooking, entertaining, decorating and home renovating.
"People love redemption stories," said "Apprentice" producer Mark Burnett. "You pay your price and Americans allow you to move on."
The businesswoman was convicted in March last year of lying to federal agents investigating her sale of nearly 4,000 shares in biotechnology company ImClone Systems.
She began serving her sentence in October.
Newsweek noted her post-conviction fame in its cover this week headlined: "Martha's Last Laugh: After Prison, She's Thinner, Wealthier and Ready for Prime Time."
However, the newsweekly is also in trouble for using the head of Stewart on the body of a model for the cover picture.
Shares of the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (MSO) empire, which she founded, have quadrupled in value since her sentencing in July.
Company shares were up 3.81 percent Thursday, reaching 33.26 dollars in afternoon trading.
In March 2004, she resigned as the company's a director and "chief creative officer" while accepting a new position of "founding editorial director."
According to Stewart's aides, the empire's founder is very optimistic about her future.
"This year, we usher in spring with an extra measure of gratitude, because the month of March not only marks the vernal equinox on the twentieth and the real start of our Northeast growing season, but also Martha's homecoming," Margaret Roach, editor in chief of Martha Stewart Living, wrote in the magazine's March edition.
Roach said Stewart will plant a garden in an old estate she has been renovating in Bedford.
"I can tell you she is, indeed, ready to get planting, having ordered her seeds and made extensive to-do lists, just as she would have done in any winter," the editor wrote.
Roach also recounted some of Stewart's prison activities.
"The tales were always surprising," she said.
Stewart foraged for wild greens such as dandelion on prison property "to augment the limited fresh vegetable offerings in the diet there," helped decorate the chapel for a memorial service and made microwave meals "with whatever very basic ingredients the commissary had for sale."
She also launched a yoga class that she taught for 10 inmates, spent time crocheting and used old ceramic molds to create a nativity scene for her mother.
Roach even told how Stewart had carried out a yoga pose called "downward-facing dog" in the visitors' room at the prison "from which she seamlessly moved into a headstand." - AFP
I can't believe we are sitting here at midnight watching this .. LOL!!
Martha on LIVE leaving prison; Rather on Letterman live, leaving his career in the dust!
What to do, what to do!
Dan is talking about the memos!!!!
LOLOL .. Susan McDougal is on LKL
Oh my....
This is breaking news on CNN.....with Susan MacDougal!
LOL
I have no affection for Martha, although I do despise the gov't generally. I just deny that 'insider trading' ought to be illegal.
WE had other things besides the memos, but the memos became the central point.........we weren't able to properly vet the docuemtns as much as I'd have liked to before we went on the air.
We felt it was important to get the story on the air.
Letterman keeps saying "How big a story would that have been?"
Does anyone really care about Martha?
I can't believe I'm watching. This is like the train wreck I was in, just staring a darwin award winner's foot.
Amazing....totally amazing! Fans are lining the route to the airport! I want to see that....no way!
CNN is really reaching with this wall-to-wall coverage. LOL
What ... on Letterman?
I'm watcing Rather lyin on Letterman!
She has street cred now. :)
Who's watching ? I just got pinged to the thread and don't even have the T.V. set on. LOL
Good Lord, they even have a reporterette at the airport. LMFAO!!!! I'm dying of laughter here!!!
"...just like Casablanca, through the darkness..."
BARF!
Now I understand why I had to punch in 3-2 to watch CNN...I removed it from the up-down channel list.
CNN is an absolute joke. MSNBC too.
The CNNette just said "Why is everyone so crazy about Martha Stewart leaving jail?"
Why indeed, CNN?
Whither news?
Yes.
Dear lady, I can't do it. I just can't.
Letterman starts in a half hour here, so I'll stick with CNN's insipid coverage until then. LOL
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