O O Ø O O O O
A Witch! Burn her!
They dressed Martha Stewart up like this.
Ms. Martha Stewart
c/o Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia
11
West 42nd
Street, 25th Floor
New York, NY
10036
Howdy, Ms. Stewart.
I’m Evan Spence, a contributing editor at the weekly serial web site, pintday.org. Although We’re pretty proud of what we’ve created at pintday.org, it pales in comparison to your accomplishments at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. I mean jeepers, even your name is impressive and mighty-sounding. Omnimedia. Heh.
At the pd.o (our little nickname for our little site), we publish one article a week on any topic of our choosing, usually something relating to current affairs, but sometimes just a rant about a topic that’s bothering us.
Ms. Stewart, you’re it this week.
More specifically, my rant is directed at the witch-hunting New York bastards that continue to persecute you.
Smells like Salem
I remember in the mid-nineties when I first saw one of your shows, Ms. Stewart. I was amazed at your slavish attention to detail. I can’t say I cared for the subject matter, but I’ve always been a sucker for anyone that puts in that extra 10% to really deliver an idea. Sort of like the paint guy who adds the pinstripes near the end of the show on American Chopper. You do watch American Chopper, don’t you Ms. Stewart? I watch it just for that pinstripe at the end. I think you would like it.
Like many people though, I eventually grew fatigued with your omnipresent (heh) lifestyle advice, coming at me seemingly 24x7, on the television, on the magazine racks, on retailers’ shelves, and even seemingly from my mother’s house.
Bad entrepreneur! No donut!
Now if there’s one thing Americans love to do, it’s put people on pedestals, then kick hell out of them until they fall back off. And your pedestal was so-very-high, wasn’t it, Ms. Stewart? (By contrast, Canadians don’t really put people on pedestals. We have a whole self-doubt thing going on, which keeps us out of trouble. Did I mention pintday.org is Canadian? We make self-derogation a sub-theme of the site.)
But pedestal or not, there’s no excuse for the vindictiveness with which you’ve been pursued by the authorities. So this is my point. No one has ever proven who was harmed through your actions. From my safe soapbox in Canada, I have only this to say to your prosecutors: Monkey-up and show us a victim.
Purportedly, the victim is your federal government: you obstructed justice and “conspired” through your statements regarding the sale of your ImClone shares. So the poor little Fed had their investigation of some meaningless, victimless insider trading somehow damaged. For this Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia should be destroyed?
This is the problem with victimless crimes. There’s never anyone around to testify against the accused, so the state acts as the injured party. In order to collect evidence—since no one is complaining that they’ve been harmed—the government has to use its apparatus to investigate the affairs of its citizens. These stings are the government’s way of ensuring that it is not being harmed.
Ms. Stewart, how can a $2,000,000,000 federal government be a victim?
You have no doubt been wondering this yourself, judging by your refusal to admit any sort of wrongdoing in the entire affair. I commend you for your stance, which went against the collective advice of the legal community, who wanted you to admit you made a mistake and lied to investigators. But no agency of force should expect docile compliance from its subjects, Ms. Stewart. You made no mistake, you did no wrong, and no person was harmed. In the face of state coercion, you took a stand for liberty, even though it may now cost you yours.
“ Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?”
Pillaging an entire industry for the sake of a harmless non-crime—like drug dealing and satellite signal decoding—makes me shake my head. What has followed has been an across-the-board withdrawal of media support for Omnimedia’s products: airtime for the television shows has disappeared, and print space for the syndicated columns have both evaporated. But Ms. Stewart I guess you know that, being a stickler for details.
Now I’m writing this letter as a show of support. I don’t run any television networks, but I do have this tidy little web site. I’m pleased to offer you a slot in our weekly rotation at the pd.o., where your columns can continue to be published. You can continue to get the word out, and prove to the small-minded bureaucrats that the media part of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia can still resist their ham-handed machinations.
We are even willing to change our tagline from “Beer, rants and boot sectors,” to “Beer, rants and lifestyle.” Give us some thought, we not as tasteless as we sound.
Yours truly,
Evan Spence
Tuesday, Mar 16, 2004
PD DCXLIII
P.S. We don’t pay anything, but if you’re still in this for the money, then you’re really not pd.o material.