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
Keep in mind, if you review my posts, I posted that Martha should not have had to serve prison time. I did not say she was innocent.
THen you pointed out- correctly- (and I readily admitted this) that all felons should serve their prison time, no matter if they are a homekeeping guru or not.
Then I jokingly posted that I am entitled to my unfair beliefs, with a laugh.
AND...it spiraled downhill from there.
And in a number of other posts I tried to get you to laugh, to no avail.
I really wish you had not wasted the time to respond to my posts. It seems that your talents are best served elsewhere. I truly do not wish to argue with someone of the same political persuasion, and I hope you won't waste any time on a reply. Let's leave this as friends.
We ALL argue all the time here,though most of us agree with each other on at least 2 topics at any given point in time. If you don't want debate/arguments,go someplace other than FR,or grow a thicker skin.
Don't you just love posters who can devine all sorts of personal information about people they have never met, yet are unable respond to what your posts actually say?
Absolutely 100% bullseye correct. Anything less is not only counter productive, hell it's just plain stupid. If you give $10.00 to a cafe for a good ol chicken fried steak dinner, then go back the next day for breakfast buffet, $4.99, I would be more that a bit p.o'ed if someone told me I still owed $2.00 from yesterday, just because.... Not only that, I have to pay cash, my credit card is no good.
Basically, I would be in their face telling them all about their ancestors.
Also, that while running a catering business, her help received no tips as she 'paid them well'.
Add to this the fact that you can't even see one of her eyes (the left one, I think) and I conclude you have one seriously bent (twisted) lady here.
I'd not want to be alongside this woman in a rescue attempt where the ladder being sent into the well we unfortunately found ourselves' trapped, was the only way out. My opinion of Martha is that she'd try to off my ass in any way possible to assure her ascent to freedom, all the while failing to appreciate my earlier offer to let her go first.
The saying, 'good guys finish last' might be an understatement in Martha's case.
That company ran into trouble with the law and the SEC,but Martha was gone ( yes,she knew it was coming!) before the partners and the few remaining brokers went under indictment.
She road off her partners,in both of her catering business and they were the ones who had originally begun them;one in N.Y.C. and the other in Westport.
From the beginning,Martha took over someone else's stuff...never doing it on her own,nor without help. This goes as far back as her win for GLAMOUR Magazines contest for the best dressed college girls,when she won,by wearing OTHER GIRL'S CLOTHES,THAT SHE BEGGED AND WHEEDLED OUT OF THEM !
After that post it would be impossible to claim no jealousy on your part. It is a total jealous rage.
My mistake -- somehow got "Ira Flatow" confused with "Sam Waksal"
BTW: Don't you know that obeying laws about inside stock trading information is just for the little people?
I know. It's ridiculous- the day I spend my time trying to do that is the day I am seriously bored! :)
Methinks it is YOU who wishes you were Martha/had her life.
Me? I'd rather eat broken glass and be broken on the wheel and then be stuffed into an Iron Maiden,than bed Martha/have her life.
Naturally...you don't know anything at all about this case or the market. ROTFLOL
Dude I'm trying to joke about this, you're the one with the searing jealousy of Martha. Either that or it's a sanctimonious attitude about people who have committed crimes.
I happen to believe in giving people 2nd chances when they have not committed a violent crime.
Oh, and I'm still waiting for that personality profile you promised, based on my posts. Or are you working for the FBI now? LOL
You don't really want a personality profile from her, do you?
What does "undistilled she" mean?
And on your other question- I'll give you three guesses. The first two don't count.
"The Prison B**ch"?
A form of yoga. No.
Use that cracked crystal ball of yours and tell me WHY I am "jealous" of Martha. Since I'm not,whatever you say is going to be dead wrong,but do give it a try...I could use the giggle and your brain could use the exercise.
Since Martha has had many "second chances",when do they run out?
Now.
I now hate Martha.
You've turned me against her and I'm going to actively campaign that they throw her sorry ass back into jail.
Thanks for helping me see the light with your eloquent responses.
That wasn't even clever,nor funny. I demand you give me a *giggle*!
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