There’s no witch in this witch hunt

Slammed with a 9-count federal indictment, Martha Stewart is battling for her personal and professional life. Whipping up a souffle or stitching some curtains isn’t going to hack it. This is big-time, real trouble.

The charges are significant: obstruction of justice, conspiracy, securities fraud and lying to investigators.

If she’s convicted, the Stewart bank account could face a $2 million hit for fines. As far as her personal schedule is concerned, well – at worst, she’d have to block out the next 30 years and have her mail forwarded to federal prison.

It’s enough to spoil anyone’s day.

I know, you’re thinking I’m making light of her situation. I’m not but a lot of other people are. And that’s what bothers me more than what she did – or didn’t do. In fact, in court last week, Stewart pleaded “not guilty” to all counts and vowed to fight the charges.

The accusations stem from a trade of personally held stock in 2001. She owned nearly 4,000 shares of ImClone stock and sold them all when she learned that her friend (and ImClone founder) Sam Waksal and his daughter planned to sell all their shares because the Food and Drug Administration was about to deny a review of the company’s anti-cancer drug.

It should be noted that Waksal pleaded guilty to the dumping and is scheduled to be sentenced June 10.

For Stewart, the sale of her stock meant reported proceeds of $238,000. For most people, that’s a lot of money. Perhaps for Stewart, it’s not – or at least wasn’t, then.

She had been considered one of the world’s wealthiest women, worth upward of $300 million, although after this financial scandal hit the headlines, her own losses were major, as was the hit to the value of her own company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

In fact, just after her arraignment in federal court, Stewart stepped down as chair and CEO of her company. She’ll continue as a company director.

Regardless of the value of the ImClone stock she owned at the time, the dollars were sufficient for her to sell the shares and then, according to the indictments, lie and cover up. In fact, it’s those charges that prosecutors are zeroing in on.

Those alleged activities also involve her former stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, who faces his own legal hurdles – charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He’s pleaded not guilty.

What’s infuriating about the whole Stewart case isn’t that she did or didn’t do what she’s accused of, but that she’s become the butt of jokes across the media that cast aspersions on everything she’s ever accomplished. And she’s accomplished a lot: model, caterer, stockbroker, cookbook author, company spokesman – and then her magazine, TV programs, books and more. She became an industry in and of herself and it prospered under her name.

And that’s the rub, because there’s more to this than some alleged stock-sale shenanigans. You just don’t see the personal attack when the accused stock fraud individual is a man.

What this whole case has enabled is an attack on a woman who is smart, attractive, driven, clever and successful. What makes it worse is that she’s successful in an area that feminists and the popular culture hate: the home.

While Martha Stewart didn’t actively promote stay-at-home motherhood, what she presented to the public – and which the public, to judge by her success, loved – was a return to gracious living. She demonstrated how to cook and bake and decorate and sew. It was a return to the arts of homemaking – or as several generations would recognize it – home economics. She presented it with warmth and charm – and was hated for it by the very people now gloating at her legal problems.

They don’t care whether she broke laws, they’re just delighted to take her down a peg, or two, or more. How dare she have standards? (Yeah, she’s tough – and?)! How dare she enjoy doing homely tasks? How dare she encourage women and children and, indeed, all family members to care about grace and beauty in the home?

Indeed, how dare she be an all-around woman – feminine, womanly, smart, talented, tough and successful! That’s a combination today’s coarse society detests and is determined to destroy. If it involves destroying a particular woman, so be it. This time, it’s Martha Stewart. She isn’t the first and won’t be the last.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the real crime.