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Author Topic: Bitch Hunt
fern hill
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posted 17 March 2004 02:50 PM      Profile for fern hill        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
In the thread about the Governor General, audra opined that criticisms of the GG constituted a "Bitch Hunt, like Martha Stewart". I don't have enough brain cells left to waste on Martha Stewart, but I really don't think gender is the issue, perceived arrogance is. A sense of entitlement -- that they are above the law, or even common decency. Sports "heroes", Conrad Black.

Feminism has accomplished two dubious feats of equality: women can be as despicable as men; and men can be as commodified as women.


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audra trower williams
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posted 17 March 2004 03:20 PM      Profile for audra trower williams   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Ms. Magazine, on the Martha Stewart Bitch Hunt.
From: And I'm a look you in the eye for every bar of the chorus | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
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posted 17 March 2004 03:31 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Once everyone knew that Martha had been inside-trading, would it even have been possible to say "Oh, well, since we haven't yet nailed the big boys from Enron, we feel ethically bound to look the other way, and hope all Americans who believe in fairness will do the same"?

In other words, once the word was out, prosecutors are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Either they're on a 'bitch hunt', or they're guilty of supporting one set of laws for rich women and another for the rest of us.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
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posted 17 March 2004 03:57 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
fern hill, surely you didn't mean to imply that Adrienne Clarkson is "despicable"? I mean, I know she isn't everyone's cup of tea, but despicable?

Martha is a quandary because those who argue on feminist grounds as Lafferty does -- tellingly, I think -- are immediately charged with defending class privilege, and that charge has some merit.

Adrienne, by contrast, has not been breaking laws and has done many Good Things -- whatever I think of her personally, I don't have any trouble at all applauding the way she's done her job.

What to do about the Martha quandary? Re-focus. Our new slogan for the day: Indict Dick Cheney!

[ 17 March 2004: Message edited by: skdadl ]


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
fern hill
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posted 17 March 2004 04:15 PM      Profile for fern hill        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
No, I did not mean Ms Clarkson. I was thinking more of the Leona ("only little people pay taxes") Helmsley type.

What I was getting at -- not well, obviously -- is that in achieving gender equality, both (or all to be inclusive) win a little, lose a little. Women lost their fairly automatic "good, caring, nuturing" traits; men lost their "above the consumer fray" stance.

And while I'm grateful for the link to the M.Stewart article, I do not have time for it.

As far as gender parity in media coverage goes, how about Belinda Stronach and Bush Jr? Both are light-weights, both have daddies that bought their positions. Are they treated much differently by the media? Well, considering that Belinda hasn't started any wars yet.

The media seems quite entranced with Belinda. I wonder if they would be if she were he.


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Puetski Murder
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posted 17 March 2004 04:23 PM      Profile for Puetski Murder     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think what hits a sore point with people re: Adrienne is that she is spending taxpayer money. Martha was in on a stock trick, and everyone knows the market is a stacked deck anyway. Martha was caught doing what everyone in her position does. Adrienne was exposed as being frivolous with public funds: everyone who is has faced public scrutiny.

Somehow, I feel much sorrier for Martha. She stands to lose quite a bit and see jailtime to boot. Nothing will happen to our GG: a bit of public outcry and then some belt tightening next year. Not a big deal considering she got the benefit of millions more dollars than Martha.

I respect both women since they overcame institutional barriers to attain status and power, but I think one is being bitch hunted and the other is not.


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Lard Tunderin' Jeezus
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posted 17 March 2004 04:40 PM      Profile for Lard Tunderin' Jeezus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Wouldn't a fine of several hundred thousand dollars be a more appropriate and proportionate punishment for Martha?
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Bacchus
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posted 17 March 2004 04:46 PM      Profile for Bacchus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
*shrugs* It might be but some of her convictions call for a minimum sentence of a year (or 10months, something like that) so the judge can only be so lenient
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Doug
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posted 17 March 2004 05:14 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Lard tunderin' jeesus:
Wouldn't a fine of several hundred thousand dollars be a more appropriate and proportionate punishment for Martha?

Not really. She committed perjury, which is pretty serious and you shouldn't be able to just buy your way out of it. Nothing is more valuable to the rich than their time.


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Michelle
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posted 17 March 2004 05:18 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I disagree. I don't think time in jail would be appropriate at all. She is not a violent or dangerous criminal. They could bar her for a certain period of time from positions of trust or whatever, but jail is ridiculous. You shouldn't go to jail for lying. Or even for stealing. Especially not on a first offense.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
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posted 17 March 2004 05:18 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Fining a multimillionaire a few hundred thousand dollars would be like fining your or me a twenty. If I could go to court and perjure myself for $20, I'd do it just for kicks.
From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 17 March 2004 05:28 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
So fine her more. Adjust it for income; in the case I mentioned in the other thread (the punishment for which you seemed to think was too lenient since the money would never be paid back), they scaled it to the woman's income. They can do the same for Martha.

Also, if you're going to say that money is all relative when it comes to sentencing her, then you should take it into consideration that as she's a multi-millionaire, fifty grand is a piddling amount, and she can rectify the situation easily by giving it back plus paying a fine. If you don't feel comfortable saying, "Well, the seriousness of her crime is all relative based on her income," then you really can't say that the seriousness of her punishment is all relative based on her income.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
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posted 17 March 2004 05:44 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The reason I thought that a "fine" of $30 per month was silly was indeed because it wasn't a fine; it was literally (intended to be) giving back what she'd stolen. And by doing the math I realized that not only did she escape any serious legal repercussions, she was basically being allowed to keep the vast majority of what she'd stolen.

Ironically, you said something along the lines of "people shouldn't have to pay for the rest of their lives for one mistake", and while I don't disagree, I don't think the victim of a theft should be the one left losing either. If that woman had been required to return the money she stole, and then pay a fine based on her income I'd have found that fair. But if you were to steal $30,000 from me, and try to pay it back $30 at a time, I think I might be less than happy to be left about $20,000 short by the time you retire. That's no different from me just giving you $20,000, right?

As for Martha, while it's true that $50K might be nothing to her (which does of course leave many wondering just how ridiculously greedy she must be), I can't see indexing it to her income. Obviously the effects of theft are relative to the income or means of the victim, and so the punishment should be relative to the income or means of the criminal. After all, we are trying to negatively reinforce their criminal behaviour, right?


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 17 March 2004 06:01 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Actually, she didn't escape any serious legal percussions. She has a criminal record and can never work as an accountant or bookkeeper again, which was her area of expertise, because she is not bondable. Also, $30 a month doesn't sound like much to you or me, but when you're living on less than $900 a month, it's a fair chunk. Also, she felt shamed in her community, and with her suspended sentence, she had to go to her parole officer as long as it lasted.

It's true that it wasn't jail, but that doesn't mean the repercussions for her weren't "serious".

It's also true that if she stole $30,000 from you, that $30 a month wouldn't help you out much. But the money was spent and there was no other way of getting it back. The church agreed through a cooperative process with the defence and the prosecution that this would be okay.

The fact is, victims can't always get back what they've had stolen from them. In this case, it seemed like the fairest way to go about it, without giving her some kind of crazy over-punishment that is completely unnecessary. Sending her to jail wouldn't have produced the thirty grand for the church either.

[ 17 March 2004: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 17 March 2004 06:04 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
BTW, in my original suggestion that you were responding to in this thread, Magoo, I didn't just suggest a fine which, as you say, would be pennies to someone like Martha. I also suggested some kind of restriction on her corporate activities, which would have hurt her much more.
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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posted 17 March 2004 06:16 PM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Nah, she should go to jail. I can't see any other punitive action that would make much difference to her. Besides, we iconoclasts have been waiting for over a year for the boundless hilarity that will result from her actually proposing "cell chic" as a fashion paradigm. You can't deny us that.

[ 17 March 2004: Message edited by: Hinterland ]


From: Québec/Ontario | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
beverly
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posted 17 March 2004 06:17 PM      Profile for beverly     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Back to the article for a moment... While I agree with most of it.....I have two questions:

It suggested comparing Donald Trump would....

quote:
Better still, would Martha Stewart be considered decisive and even charming when she says "You're fired!" to a reality show contestant vying for her favor? Hardly.

Wasn't there a rather snarly woman on a show that everyone loved to hate precisely because she was a bitch?

And I think the spreading of fear by the Bushites crosses gender and class lines. Everyone is suppose to sit down and shut up and don't you dare ask where those WMD are one more time. The Bush administration couldn't have done McCarthyism any better than the master. But, I don't think it has anything to do with Martha Stewart.


From: In my Apartment!!!! | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Sharon
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posted 17 March 2004 06:27 PM      Profile for Sharon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Bush had friends and Martha had none

I posted this on rabble.ca a few days ago. I thought it made some interesting comparisons.


From: Halifax, Nova Scotia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
beverly
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posted 17 March 2004 06:35 PM      Profile for beverly     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
OK I see that. Especially

quote:
As a Clinton friend who donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party, Ms. Stewart has few friends in power these days.

But I don't think the prosecution or persectuion, however, you want to read it, of Martha, can be tied to the Patriot Act.


From: In my Apartment!!!! | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged

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