Sunday, March 6, 2005

Martha's Lesson

There's been a lot of verbiage this week about Martha Stewart. As everybody knows, she just got out of the can after five months, a billion dollars richer and probably infinitely wiser. Good for her, I say. Before all this happened, I couldn't have gave a shit less about her one way or the other. I still don't, other than I think she got royally screwed by the government. Think on this:

Ms. Stewart got five months in a federal joint and five months house arrest for lying to the government about a crime that she was never charged with, a crime that arguably never occurred, over an insignificant amount of money from the sale of her own stock, that ain't a drop in the bucket compared to what Enron and others blatantly stole from everybody with administration help. What I take from that is this:

It's OK for the president and the government, cops, politicians, preachers and corporations to lie to, or steal from, you and nothing happens to them. Nothing, except maybe praise for doing their job well and being on the bandwagon of power.

However, if you lie to them without being on their IOKIYAR list, or for being an uppity broad, or for not paying enough protection money in the form of campaign contributions, you're in big trouble. It's the Amerikan way: pay up or pipe down. Or we'll knock you down.

I'm not going to even say that this is unfair, because that would just be whining. Of course it's unfair. It was engineered that way and it works well. Someday the tables will turn and I hope I'm there to grind my heel in their face. Now that's fair.

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