Martha Martha Martha -- NOT!

I used to worship Martha Stewart -- her magazine has/had? tons of creative (yet not tacky) crafts, she demonstrated lots of delicious recipes on TV and she has tons of tips for every aspect of life (how to clean, cook, decorate, fix things). I was excited to pore over her Weddings magazine and website for advice on my wedding way before marriage was even in the picture. It also helped that she went to my alma mater (who else could boast that the "domestic diva" lived in the same, albeit probably more nicely adorned, dorm rooms?). Even after the whole jail thing and the Kmart fiasco (I always disagreed about her whoring out her name to such a cheap store), I stuck by Martha, looking forward to her TV segments or turning to her website for creative ideas. I even watched some of the horrid Apprentice episodes (but promptly stopped after realizing that the show wouldn't showcase anything really crafty).

Now Martha has a new show that's shown on Fine Living each night. How upset I am about it. Besides the stale content (a lot of it is compilations from her past shows -- I think she and her staff have run out of ideas), there are also a lot of ridiculous things that don't apply to most normal people who don't live in the lap of luxury (the episode with the raising of various breeds of chickens comes to mind -- I hope that she at least makes them into a good meal once in a while). But what peeves me the most is her excessive marketing of her products on her show, effectually becoming an hour-long infomercial on some days. In one particular lackluster episode, she answered questions from the audience because I'm sure no one would have wanted to trek out to the studio just to watch a few recorded sessions on a giant TV (I guess they couldn't get all the "star chefs" to come in at the same time). Anyway, one audience member's question was about cleaning her Le Creuset cookware. First of all, I'm not sure Martha actually listened to the question because she kept talking gibberish (or maybe she needed someone on her staff to quickly Google "how to clean enameled cast iron cookware" and to then type it onto the teleprompter for Martha to read and seem somewhat knowledgeable). Somewhere in this monologue she had to push her line of enameled cast iron pots sold at Macy's (if you didn't already know since that's mentioned in every episode). As if her incessant marketing wasn't enough, when she finally got around to answering the question, she talked about cleaning the inside of the pot whereas the question was about cleaning the outside of the pot. After she got clarification about the question, she chided the young woman for boiling over her food before realizing that it wouldn't be good for PR and had to throw in, "But that's OK" a little too late as the woman was probably already embarassed to the heavens. In the end I'm not sure Martha even answered the question fully but jabbered on some more to fill in the time because she really couldn't handle being put on the spot any more. That excerpt just epitomizes almost all that is wrong with her show and her endeavors nowadays.

In desperation I will still probably watch her show if there is nothing else on and if I need a good laugh to catch her at these moments when her character slips into her true snotty self, but I just have to publicly denounce my fandom and tear up my homemade Martha fan club hand-embroidered badge if I had ever been crazy enough to make one.