Martha and Hillary: Have they been treated fairly?
Martha and Hillary: a nation transfixed by the lives of two powerhouse females: both blonde, both brainy, both brazen (in their own ways), both wildly successful, both defying the odds and winning – at least in Stewart’s case, prior to her criminal charges. My question: Why are we transfixed and are we fair in our judgments of them? I’ve never counted myself a Stewart fan. Home-making, decorating, cooking, flower-arranging, etc. may be fine and valuable talents, but they’re not high on my list of desired skills. In fact, they do not make the list at all. Therefore, a woman who hones a career and earns billions, or hundreds of millions, teaching other women (let’s face it, Stewart’s customer base is almost entirely female) to polish home-making skills will never serve as my role model.
That said, however, her prosecution does summon one’s conspiratorial instincts. Why should Martha be prosecuted in connection with an alleged act in which she is said to have pocketed less than six figures while Enron poster boy and former top executive Kenneth Lay has thus far escaped prosecution? Lay, conversely, earned millions by presiding over the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. In the process, he destroyed the life savings of thousands of employees and investors. Martha, my dear, did no such mass damage.
We, the public and they, the Justice Department, are more obsessed with her because she’s got star quality, she hosts a national TV show. The products bearing her name grace the counters of retail outlets across the country and millions of bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms and kitchens. So it seems silly, given that, to presume she is subject to criminal prosecution while Lay and other male Enron corporate thieves are not because Stewart is a woman and Lay and company are not.
Yet it is also true that Stewart is a big-time donor to the Democratic Party. Lay, according to the conservative public interest group, Judicial Watch, “was a personal friend of and campaign contributor to President George W. Bush.” The same Justice Department is in charge of both cases.
Judicial Watch, which gained notoriety by burying former President Clinton and friends under lawsuits during his term in office, is now charging “the Bush Justice Department and its United States Attorneys appear to be engaging in a pattern of selective prosecution and unequal application of laws as they pursue various corporate corruption scandals…..Judicial Watch has several civil lawsuits against high corporate officials and politicians associated with Enron, Halliburton, Providian and others, in part because the Bush administration has failed to take strong actions against these companies (including Ken Lay).”
So, love or hate Martha, my dear reader, I ask you if this is fair?
On to Hillary. Our transfixion is natural. She is the only First Lady who has ever run for or won a U.S. Senate seat. While in the White House, she was one of perhaps two (Eleanor Roosevelt, the other) first ladies to develop her own career or engage in her own political activities, separate and apart from those of her presidential spouse.
My conservative friends tell me this is not why they palpably despise her – not, they say, because she failed to assume the traditional wifely role so dutifully fulfilled by Laura or Barbara Bush, or Nancy Reagan. No, they say they dislike her because she is deceitful. She lied after all, they say, about her involvement in the Whitewater “scandal.” They don’t believe Sen. Clinton’s account in her new book of her initial reaction to her husband’s infidelity with intern Monica Lewinsky. This legitimizes their ire.
Yet, they fear her so greatly she was the recent subject of a GOP fund-raising letter that urged Republican donors to dig into their pockets to stop “a new Clinton era in Washington” and prevent her from rising to “the very pinnacle of power in Washington,” according to a report in the New York Daily News.
The same folks who despise her are absolutely petrified she will run for president and win – or so they want donors to believe.
This despite repeat claims from the senator herself she will not run next year. So, love or hate Hillary, dear reader, I ask you if this is fair?
Bonnie Erbe, TV host, writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe@CompuServe.com.