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 The USA is a country of the most wonderful
opportunities available for anyone out there and the biography of a daughter of
the ordinary Eastern-European emigrants, Martha Stewart, is a well-written
proof of the statement. Her life is what some people would call the American
Dream. Only that the American Dream concept is applicable as long as it has
nothing to do with the American Justice and American juridical system.
Martha Kostyra was born in 1941. Her
parents are believed to be Polish according to one version and according to
another version they were Czech. Whichever it is, the family was very poor and
since Martha was born the family was preparing Martha not for any college or
university but to live a simple, long and pretty much boring life of a typical
Slavonic woman. Martha was taught how to preserve fruits and vegetables as well
as other goods by her mother and her father was teaching her how to watch over
the garden. It is really no big surprise that Martha got engaged and married at
the age of twenty.
Andy Stewart, a son of a broker, was the
employee of the publishing agency and he became Martha Kostyra's husband with
Martha's maiden name changed to Stewart. Andy had once asked his spouse to help
him throw a promo-party for his publishing agency. Martha and one of her
friends owned a business for arranging parties and luxurious dinners at the
time so she gladly agreed to take the challenge. Martha's mastership and her
extraordinary ideas greatly impressed one of owners of the agency and later
that night he suggested Martha to write a cooking book that would not only
include recipes but also hints and tips on how to throw a party. The volume
became a bestseller and Martha got famous. It is at that point where she
realized that the cooking sphere would bring her fame and wealth and Martha
began building her own franchise and an empire which goal was to introduce the
sophisticated taste to the American housewives.
The housewives were taught from the
TV-screens, newspapers, magazines, radio-broadcasts. Martha gave out the ideas
on how to choose the tones of the curtains correctly, how to wash the dishes in
a right way, how to serve a dining table, how to preserve vegetables, how to
plant the flowers and how to watch the garden, even how to pick a husband. Men
were also a part of Martha's teaching process. She taught them how to choose
right ties for different occasions, what flowers would better suit the bunch
for their lady and how to help their wives in the household chores process.
From the point of view of any typical
Russian or Slavonic housewife, Martha wasn't teaching the Americans anything
extraordinary. But all of the teachings were so different and extraordinary to
infantile and fast-food-fed American society so Martha has certainly found its
niche. Business lady's personality also came into play and helped her build her
own business empire. Apart from the cooking skills, strictness, her ambitions
and other features she possessed, Martha had those specific Slavonic charms so
valuable in the wild-wild west nowadays. She was the one you'd want to tell
about yourself to, one would definitely place trust her after simply looking at
her. Martha has that look of a person that knows it all and it isn't a big
surprise, to tell the truth, that at the beginning of the millennium Martha
Stewart, who was receiving hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars per
year, has already became the author of the forty books, a publisher of the
Martha Stewart Living weekly magazine, the owner of the Martha Stewart Living
Omnimedia company whose shares pumped the stock market in the year 1999.
The stock market story of Martha Stewart
became probably the most intriguing scandal in the American stock history.
Martha was successfully earning a bunch at the shares market and also became a
member of the New York's Stock Market Board of Directors. On 27th December 2001
Martha got to know from one of her brokers that Samuel D. Waksal, the owner of
the «ImClone» pharmaceutical company was rushed into selling its company's
shares after he got to know that the state rejected to give a license for the
cancer cure the company was so much hoping for. Woxle managed to get rid of
every share he owned and warned his family and friends to also do so. Martha
was one of those people he had warned. During one day and using the inside
information Martha has earned 45 thousand dollars on the stock market. Sam
Waksal eventually got into jail for seven years for using the insider
information at the stock market and an investigation for Martha Stewart began.
Many believed that Martha's guilt was not
as big as it takes to be charged with the deprivation of freedom. The judicial
trial for this woman was rather more of an exhibitive showcase than something
that had to be done. The wrought-up lawsuit was destined to show the equality
between people and that the power of law doesn't care whether it is a working
class member or a business lady. Eventually Martha didn't get sued for making a
fortune out of the insider information but for destroying the e-mail that could
have proven that she indeed had the inside information during the investigation
process. Martha Stewart's multimedia empire has lost 85 million dollars in the
share equivalent after the sentence statement.
One should not be surprised that such an
ambitious and strong willed woman did not break down in prison. There even was
a joke going around at that time that it wasn't Martha Stewart who was afraid
of jail but the jail was afraid of Martha Stewart. After getting out of jail
after being there for five months, Martha began working hardly on the new
projects' realization.
After conquering almost every media area
Martha Stewart's empire reached the internet space. Business-woman has picked
out several lifestyle-blogs and cooking recipes webpages to combine them
together into a network she called Martha's Circle.
This is what she is all about, the
(non-)typical desperate American housewife.
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