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
Hey.........she'd long ago gotten away with stock fraud,what was one more time to her;just as long as she was the one making money?
Really? Now that I didn't know at all.
Was she already on the stock exchange when she did that or was the appointment to the exchange AFTER the crime as well?
Isn't that the truth!!! If those stupid "reporters" were to tell the truth everyone one of them got PRESS RELEASES on where to be and at what time Martha Stewart was going to be released. Then she made a FOOL of them by having PRISON guards hand out a PRESS RELEASE while she scooted her fat fanny right by them while they weren't looking. ROFLOL!!!
I can't believe the witch GAINED WEIGHT while she was in PRISON. Most people lose weight. lol! I guess she is going to claim to have crocheted that big poncho she was wearing to hide all that fat. I bet she has someone do those roots the first thing tomorrow too. lol!
Colonel Mustard with a pipe in the library? ;-)
Hey, lighten up, please.
You really seem incapable of saying anything decent about Martha Stewart. That's real odd.
Do you even think she wore her hair sensibly in the past decades? Just wondering if you can say one thing decent about her.
Does any of her physical presentation impress you? Or are you just blindly bitter about her?
By the way, I read about 15 reviews on Amazon.com on Martha, Inc. (that you mentioned). Anyone who doesn't know the darker side of her is just naive. But you take it way too far, imo.
Think she got a tatoo while "behind bars"?
;-)
Yes, "Ellen Fan".
So,though Martha has NEVER owned a seat on,nor was a broker or a trader on the NYSE,she WAS asked to be one of the members of the board,many.many.many decades AFRER her first criminal activities as a stock broker for a boiler room. She was never charged,the first time,so her record was sort of "clean".
I read and saw that she LOST weight............and got a tatoo. (kidding about the tatoo)
Yes, when I saw her those roots needed a little work.... ;-)
And IF she had really lost 20 pounds,that means that before she went to jail,she wore at least a 16 in DESIGNER clothes,which is much larger than a 16 is in cheapy clothes. :-)
That is more p.r. by Martha for Martha. It was also a lie and a phony photo of her body. She gained weight.
Why do papers print what Martha's p.r. machine releases instead of the FACTS?! They had to know that Martha gained weight just by looking at her. I'm sure some snitch would have been more than happy to rat Martha out if they had even tried to get the FACTS. Just look at the photos of her at "camp cupcake" walking around outside. She was huge.
ROFLOL!
Now really, I'm not trying to be disagreeable, but how do you know, that? I saw her and she looked thinner..... not that it matters........ after all she was foraging for dandelions.
;-)
It was reported on Fox News that those photos on the front of the magazine were of someone else's body with her head stuck on them.
Martha's face, model's body on Newsweek
Attempt to portray newly released domestic diva raises questions of journalistic integrity -- NYT.
March 3, 2005: 4:48 PM EST
NEW YORK (CNN Money) - In a move that has raised questions of professional integrity, Newsweek magazine has combined an image of Martha Stewart's head and a model's body on its latest cover, according to a report Thursday.
The New York Times says the Newsweek cover depicts what looks to be a real full-body photo of Stewart, albeit a few pounds lighter, parting a curtain. The text reads "Martha's Last Laugh: After Prison She's Thinner, Wealthier & Ready for Prime Time."
According to the Times, Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Lynne Staley said the photo was not meant to be deceptive but rather to illustrate what she might look like when she's released from prison, which could come as early as Friday. Staley said a credit on the table of contents noted the image was a fake.
But Janice E. Castro, a director at Northwestern's school of journalism, said the fact that the image did not look completely artificial and could be mistaken for the real thing was a problem, according to the article.
"If a reader thinks its a news photo, an actual photograph, as opposed to a piece of art, then you should never change the truth of the photo," Castro told the Times.
Staley agreed and said the magazine should have been more careful, perhaps using an image that clearly couldn't have been mistaken for a real picture.
"They fumbled, they blundered, but this is not like misrepresenting the news," Castro told the paper. "They just did a dumb thing."
Meanwhile, Stewart is due to leave a federal prison in West Virginia, probably Friday, after serving five months for lying to federal investigators about a personal stock sale in late 2001. Her official release date is Sunday, but because that falls on a weekend, prison officials could release her as early as Friday.
Five months ago Martha Stewart one-upped the media by checking into prison before the television cameras had arrived.
While she ducked media coverage when she reported to prison last October, on her way out this week, she's apparently planning to let the world watch.
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia (Research), the lifestyle company that Stewart founded and led until her conviction a year ago, is planning to provide a flat-bed truck for the media to use to get a good shot of Stewart as she enters the chartered plane in West Virginia that will take her home, CNN has learned.
You're reading a whole lot into my posts,that just aren't there.
Can I say anything at all "nice" about her? Yes, I think she loves her mother.
I've read both bios,I live in Conn. and know people who know her. I've read stuff in the local papers that you don't know about. She is just NOT a nice woman at all and what you imagine you know about her,is all smoke,mirrors,and lies. She's a complete fraud,a liar,a phony, a criminal, and the hard work she did,to get where she did,was NOT by dint of her knowledge, her abilities,and her expertise. It was through a lot of work,work at treating everyone badly,stabbing people in the back,riding roughshod over people,lying,stealing,and bullying everyone. Yes, she's really excellent at that!
Oh,and I'm NOT "bitter" about her at all...whatever it is you meant by that.
I don't want her fame,I don't want her problems,unlike her,I'm still married,my husband loves me,and so does my daughter.I'm a better cook that she is,I was making artsy-fartsy creative things long before she ever thought about doing any of that,I've known things that it took her decades to find out and/or have others write for her/make for her that she puts her name to,and I wouldn't in the least begrudge her the fame and money...if she wasn't a liar, a fraud,a phony, and a crook. Heck,I don't even begrudge her that anyway. It just makes my skin crawl when here drooling sycophants,who haven't bothered to learn any real facts about her,post fairy-tales and lies about her.
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