Move Over Leona, There's A NEW Queen Of Mean!

Martha Stewart is the new Queen of Mean. Leona Helmsley was chump change compared to Martha. Martha's tormentor here, Tina Brown, was guilty earlier this year of designating neocons as opponents of FDR during the New Deal. The neoconservative movement emerged with the Goldwater candidacy in the early 1960s. That clinker cost Tina dearly on the reliability scale, but this piece on Martha Stewart is right on. The key point is #7: don't break the law and you don't have any problems. If this is (fair & balanced) hindsight, so be it.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Defendants
By Tina Brown

The Martha Stewart verdict sent another chill through the chastened world of post-Enron America.

United States Code, Section 1001 -- "Material misrepresentation to the federal government," the sinister new Zip code of humiliation where Martha now lives -- is the first course at upscale dinner parties. If the feds wanted to send a message about what was once playfully known as "fibbing," the news is: Message received, sir, loud and clear!

Manhattan's power women are resolving to finish their tax returns on time, review the immigration status of their babysitters, say warm good-mornings to their doormen, and admit on their customs forms to every last St. Laurent bag they picked up at the collections in Paris (no more snipping off the labels the night before).

The era of prosecutorial piety demands remembering the rules taught in nursery school: Be nice. Don't tell lies. Share. (Unless it's inside info.) Don't be a tittle-tattle. (Especially to the feds.) For the refrigerator, seven Post-its from the Martha mess:

1. Beware of freeloaders.

No one expected Martha's longtime pal Mariana Pasternak to perjure herself on the stand. But did she really have to supply that memorably damning detail that helped to bury her friend? I mean, of course, Martha's unlovably smug remark as she and Mariana sunned themselves on the deck in Los Cabos, Mexico: "Isn't it nice to have brokers who tell you those things?"

Mariana Pasternak was a lifestyle groupie from Martha's Westport, Conn., world. She had a history of unpaid taxes and owed $83,000 to her contractor for renovations. On their jaunts together, Martha paid for everything. But a freeloader will always harbor a small shard of rage at the necessity of being patronized. (Remember Kato Kaelin, the hanger-on "houseguest" who testified against O.J. Simpson?) Freeloaders turn on you in the end. You get what they pay for -- i.e., nothing.

2. White-shoe lawyers don't know how to dance.

Martha's mistake was to treat it all at first like a PR problem she could solve with heavyweight corporate legal eagles Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz instead of a top-notch criminal lawyer who never would have allowed her to open her mouth. She tried to fix it but she hired Robert Morvillo too late.

Some things are too important for PR. If she had just fessed up it might have been a few weeks of bad press and a whopping fine.

3. Nice guys finish last.

Peter Bacanovic, Martha's boyish, charming broker, was found guilty on four counts and will go to jail. He told a society friend last week, "I am destroyed in every way a man can be destroyed." Whatever his success as a Merrill Lynch broker, Bacanovic failed to understand that, when it came to the high stakes, he was still essentially one of the celebrity servant class. His loyalty therefore was a waste of time. The star will always determine the outcome.

Bacanovic's lethal, baby-faced assistant Douglas Faneuil was no fool. He swiftly cut a deal to testify against his boss and his boss's client. Sold out from underneath but unwilling to behave like a turncoat lackey and sell Martha out himself, Bacanovic ended up in the worst possible place -- trapped in the middle. After the guilty verdict nobody was listening to the loyal friends who appeared on the talk shows to tell the world what a thoroughly decent guy he is.

It must have been frustration at being defined as a slimy, conspiratorial walker as well as despair at the verdict that caused Bacanovic to suddenly blow his nice-guy image Monday by giving photographers the finger. It was Martha he should have flipped the bird to, long before.

4. Tune out at Christmas.

The curse of modern communications is the ability to always stay in touch. It leads to frantic, ill-thought-out, knee-jerk decisions barked into cell phones or punched into BlackBerrys. Half the disasters of business, politics and love are caused by blurting out a half-cocked first response. Once upon a time, there was a moment for second thoughts. At least you had to address an envelope and lick a stamp. No more. One click and you're doomed.

Bacanovic was a people-pleaser. Sitting in Florida, with his brain in storage for the New Year's holiday, he gave in to his instinct to pick up the phone and warn Martha about Sam Waksal's dumping his shares (a message relayed to her by Faneuil when, equally distracted, she called en route to Los Cabos, shouting into her cell phone over the sound of roaring plane engines on a tarmac in Texas). Maybe Bacanovic's urge would have been filtered by caution if he had been sitting in a suit and tie in the professional surroundings of an office.

5. Once you're on top, you're never offstage.

US Weekly may have a section titled "Stars! They're just like us!" But "just like us" does not include being unpleasantly, irritably human. When a celebrity is around, the "record" button on everybody else's mental video camera is always pressed. While the celebrity swiftly forgets the receptionist he or she scowled at, the receptionist will dine out on the scowl for months. (I still puzzle over -- and occasionally try to reproduce -- the sound that Douglas Faneuil alleges a furious Martha made on the telephone: "a lion roaring underwater.")

No one would read a book by Vogue editor Anna Wintour for what it might reveal about Lauren Weisberger as a personal assistant because no one is interested in Lauren Weisberger. But Weisberger's silly takedown of Wintour, "The Devil Wears Prada," was a bestseller. Kiss-and-tell goes only one way.

6. In the courtroom, don't think mink.

A luxe fur scarf on judgment day sends the wrong message.

7. If all else fails, try obeying the law.

© 2004, Tina Brown
© 2004 The Washington Post Company