a good bad thing

Thursday, aug. 29, 2002   |   0 comments

Wow. I just got the September issue of Martha Stewart Living and it actually features an article full of personal finance tips! Looks like Martha’s really “living it up,” irony be damned. Just watch her go!

I’ve always been in awe, and of course very frightened, of Martha. Partly it’s her eerily consistent “voice from on high,” which Josh nailed so tidily in his fine treatise on the matter. You may not catch it at first, but try reading the magazine aloud — in olden times, Paul and I would take turns doing Martha readings, and it would really make us whoop.

But more than that, the thing that scares me is the incredible way she’s managed to balance and cross-reference her TV show, magazine, and website better than any one else out there. She takes full advantage of each medium’s strengths: Why scurry to write down the recipe of the funky duck soup Martha’s baking on this morning’s show when it’s right there in the magazine, neatly printed on a perforated card? Spy a spectacular penguin-shaped pie steam valve in the magazine? Hustle on over to marthastewartliving.com and buy the shit out of it!

The convenience of it all is almost obscene. Everything just reeks of her marketing genius. Yet even though you know that you’re playing right into Martha’s iron fists, it doesn’t stop you because, well, you want that fucking retro napkin ring, OK?

So I say, light ‘em up, Martha. Light ‘em up.