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Married . WithOUT Children

Heidi Rice

You won’t be able to buy her new line of products in your local Kmart store – that is, if you even still have one – nor can you order the products from a catalog. No, “Martha Stewart Prison Living” merchandise will be available only in fine penitentiaries everywhere. .

That is only, of course, if Stewart is convicted of the allegations she is facing of insider trading in the stock market.

According to news reports, the domestic diva allegedly dumped 4,000 shares of her stock with the drug company ImClone the day before the Food and Drug Administration declined an application for the company’s new colon cancer drug, Erbitux, causing its stock to plummet. Stewart is being investigated on charges that she received inside information on the FDA decision prior to it being released to the public from her good buddy, Samuel Waksal, who just happens to be the CEO of ImClone. .



This is a big no-no in the stock market world and highly illegal.

While Stewart claims that she had a previous verbal “stop-loss” agreement with her broker prior to the FDA decision to sell if the stocks ever dropped below $60 per share, investigators say they cannot find any evidence of such an order, which is typically on record in writing.



Stewart denies the charges, however, calling them “ridiculous” during a recent appearance on the CBS program “The Early Show,” in which she was demonstrating how to make a salad – proving that despite facing federal charges, a person should always know how to make a proper salad. .

Wielding a razor-sharp knife, Stewart proceeded to butcher a head of cabbage on the nationwide television show while being questioned by program host Jane Clayson as to her involvement in the trading scandal.

Stewart attempted to avoid the questions and bring the subject back to the art of salad-making.

“The secret to a successful salad is to finely slice and dice the vegetables into delicious bite-sized pieces,” she said, smiling through clenched teeth at her TV viewers and waving the knife around like a crazed Viking warrior. “A helpful hint is to draw the face of Rep. James Greenwood on the vegetable before you begin chopping. . “

(Greenwood is the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the House subcommittee investigating Stewart and ImClone.)

Stewart then began stabbing the head of the cabbage in a manner reminiscent of the Manson family murders.

“I don’t want to talk about ImClone, I WANT TO FOCUS ON MY SALAD,” she hissed to Clayson.

Even if found guilty of the charges and sent to the pokey, it is highly unlikely that it would stop the homemaking queen from touting her culinary and design skills.

“These little bars of regulation soap make WONDERFUL rosebud decorations,” Stewart would demonstrate from her cell, carving the flowers with a nail file she had smuggled into the facility.

Then there would be her new line of bed linen made specifically for prison cots.

“The 250-thread count should mean that your sheets will surely outlast your sentence,” would be her sales pitch.

In her orange prison suit, accessorized with delightful silver bracelets – a gift from prison authorities – Stewart would also take over the kitchen canteen, showing how chipped beef on dry toast can be made into a dining delicacy fit for a dinner party with 13 of your closest inmates. .

“Incarceration doesn’t mean one can’t live tastefully and elegantly,” she would inform her captive new audience of felons.

The prisoners would all cheer and whistle and scratch themselves.

Perhaps Martha Stewart would even write another book, “Entertaining and the Art of Prison Living” to complement her new product line. .

But until proven otherwise, Stewart must be presumed innocent of all wrongdoing and in the meantime, has hired a public relations to protect her precious image.

“I did not have stocks with that broker,” is the new slogan.

Heidi Rice’s column appears every Friday in the Post Independent. Visit her website at http://www.heidirice.com.


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