Fiddling while the pot roast burned

Apparently, Martha Stewart's Holy Roman Empire of Homemaking is now little more than smoking rubble, says New York magazine in an lengthy exposé. After Stewart was busted in 2004 for securities fraud, she spent five months at a Club Fed for women in West Virginia. While there, she "taught yoga, picked wild dandelion greens, and learned to appreciate the simple virtues of vending-machine chicken wings." Upon her release, she vowed everlasting humility. Never mind that she flew home from prison in a Dassault Falcon jet. Stewart spoke of the “tremendous privilege” of bonding with her fellow inmates. "The new, softer Martha Stewart who emerged from prison allowed microwave ovens to be referred to in her magazines for the first time. She named one of her French bulldogs Francesca, after a fellow convict. She announced plans to do a TV show about rehabilitating ­errant women while they rehabilitated a house; a fixer-upper was bought in Norwalk." Needless to say, the shtick didn't last. The TV show never happened. By year's end, Stewart stopped talking about jailhouse yoga and her friend "Francesca the convict." Preening for a Fortune magazine interview, she revealed the biggest lesson she had learned from the ordeal: “I really cannot be destroyed.” Sweet. History's ash heap awaits.