Okay, Martha, I was wrong; being a “babe” isn’t enough to keep
the Feds from making a felony case out of trying to save 40 grand
when the balloon’s going up the next day and you got it from the
horse’s mouth. But ask anybody else with a broker — not an on-line
account, but a real guy on the phone who tells you what looks good
and what’s not. If that broker has the head of General Motors as
another client and Mister G-M hollers “sell me outta G-M” one
morning and when your time to talk comes and the broker doesn’t
whisper something about lightening up on ol’ G-M, then you gotta
right to fillet ‘im like one of those fancy fish dishes you cook up
for King World, which is owned by Viacom, which owns CBS, and
nearly every other communication outlet except the Oglala Sioux
smoke and blanket service.
I know you’re going to say 40 grand wasn’t enough to sneeze at,
but at a jury trial, 40 grand to people who got nothing else to do
but go down to the courthouse every day is going to be big. Before
that time arrives — and if the East Coast sniper case is any
indication, it could be years — you gotta do something about that
image.
Know this. A model with brains is a weapon of mass destruction.
Women shun her. (Where are the feminists hollering in your behalf
here?) Men fear her. See that fed tremble when he read your
indictment? A model who carves a piece of the action for herself
with K-Mart, stamps her own name on her own company and owns more
than half of it and walks around on the clean part of Long Island
unmarried makes Saddam Hussein look like Shirley Temple.
Something’s gotta be done before trial time and we’re not
talking about breakin’ an arm running into a camera. Speaking of
cameras, did you know that the Martha Stewart story led the CBS and
ABC evening newscasts Wednesday? Led them, and on a day when the
President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Israel, and
the Prime Minister of Palestine had agreed on the outlines of peace
in the Middle East! You blanked ‘em, babe. And with Peter Jennings
in Aqaba, Jordan, in person, quietly waiting his turn until the
Martha Stewart story got told in New York!
Here’s the plan. Take lessons. You got to keep your passport, so
you can travel. Go to Europe under an assumed name and take golf
lessons. Practice in your backyard every chance you get, it’s big
enough. This year is too late but it’ll give you a year to get in
shape. We hit ‘em next year. Qualify for the 2004 U.S. Open golf
tournament. I know, you’ll have to win a few smaller amateur titles
first, but if you can deal with King World, mess up a TV studio
kitchen and have somebody else clean up the mess, sub-par golf is a
cinch. There’s no one guy like Hootie standing in the gender
doorway. A whole association, and they’ll cave, just like the
producers at CBS and ABC.
Think of how this changes the game. Martha Stewart makes the cut
in the U. S. Open….first woman to … Annika Sorenstam cables
good wishes. That other Martha cables Hootie Johnson, again. Every
sportswriter grovels, repeats all the self-flagellations he used in
the Sorenstam story of the year before. The NYSE closes two hours
early to see you make the cut. And, Martha, if the past is really
prologue, you win the damn thing! And not in Annika pants,
Martha, in a skirt, not too short, but …
There now. We can hear Ashcroft now, can’t we, calling his
minions in New York. You do wonders with squash; he’ll do even
better with quash. After the clippings from the Annika thing, how
could the system withstand the tidal wave of Open Champion Stewart!
Sure it’s a challenge, but compared to those you’ve seen, a walk in
the park.
I got a list of good teaching pros in Europe. Call me. On a pay
phone.
