Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Donchya do, donchya do, donchya do me this here way, Torn Slatterns and Nugget Ranchers

They deserve each other

*Soon Saddam Hussein will get his trial. This has to be a case for Johnny Cochran:

“If his beard had nits, you must acquit.”

Quite a body of evidence
*Two people at UCLA have been arrested and charged with grand theft for allegedly stealing corpses and cadaver body parts. The accused might get off, but their lawyers will really have to go out on a limb.

The attorneys for the accused say the prosecutor’s case doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Good news, good news
*McDonald’s announced they are going to stop supersizing their customers. In a related story, Viagra announced they will continue to supersize their customers.

The Juice, guilty? Oh, please
*O.J. Simpson is being sued by DirectTV for pirating their signal. If convicted that would be O.J.’s worst television-related crime since “The Naked Gun” trilogy aired on cable.

Or “Coots for Loot.”
*If the George Foreman-Larry Holmes rematch happens, I think it should be billed as “The Thriller with the Griller.”

Quite a gap
*The two big choices at the movies are “The Passion of The Christ” and “Starsky and Hutch.” That’s like going to an art gallery and choosing "The Last Supper" or “Elvis on Velvet.”

Defense needed some work
*Jurors for the Martha Stewart case said they desperately wanted to acquit Martha, but that Martha’s lawyers didn’t give them any justification. Apparently their; “Even lying scary bitches deserve a break” defense didn’t hold water.

It’s been a long time coming
*David Crosby was arrested for gun and marijuana possession. Guns and pot? Apparently the former classic rocker was looking to start a career as Rap artist: Lesbo’s Daddy.

Since you asked:

The media reaction to the Martha Stewart conviction drives home a lesson I learned as a stock broker during the 1987 market crash: 99% of the people commenting in the press have almost no idea what they are talking about.

As a comedy writer and a charter member of the “Martha Stewart is a grasping, phony mean-spirited witch” club, and as a licensed stock broker, I have followed this case closely and, for once, I actually know what is going on. Make no mistake about it, Martha is guilty, but besides that, the one person who most went out of their way to put Martha Stewart in prison? Martha Stewart.

See, Martha wasn’t convicted on insider trading. She is convicted of lying about covering up her insider trading. Forget about the fact that, by using privileged information that the price of Imclone would drop the next day, when she sold her shares, Martha knowingly ripped off every single person who then bought those shares. (If you, or I, stole money from hundreds of people, trust me, we would be in jail.)

Did licensed stock broker Martha Stewart then learn her lesson? No, when she knew that she was about to be investigated, she dumped shares of her company’s stock before they tanked from the news. Martha deserves to go to prison not once, but twice.

Martha got caught on the insider trading and the Feds gave her a chance to come clean, an act that, at worse, would have resulted in some bad press and a big fine. But no, Martha told the Feds to go stuff their mushrooms. (The Feds don’t like that) And yet, turn on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, or Fox, and watch some dressed-up Yahoo yammer on and on about “The Persecution of Martha Stewart.” Why? Because the press knows that’s what people want to hear.

The market crash of 1987 combined a perfect storm of computer glitches, economic bad news and a nasty consumer confidence crisis that boiled into a full-blown panic. Had an investor bought on the same day of the crash, however, in one year, they would be right back to where they started. That's how fast the market corrected. But according to “Newsweek,” “Time,” and many more far less reputable publications, the crash was caused specifically by crooked brokers out to steal money from poor grandparents. Why? Because that’s what sold magazines. The fact that it wasn’t true didn’t seem to matter.

Martha Stewart is not just going to prison because she is a thief and a liar, although those are pretty good reasons. Martha Stewart is going to prison because of her haughty hubris. The fact that the two-faced domestic Diva’s own arrogance caused her remarkable fall just makes it all that much more delicious. And just. Any talking helmet on TV yammering anything different is flat wrong.