How can anyone possibly feel sorry for Martha Stewart? Here she is, the head of a major corporation; she's worth hundreds of millions of dollars; and what does she do? She tosses it all away in order to save herself a scant $51,000.

$51,000 out of hundreds of millions! That isn't just stupid. That's not even poor judgment. That's 100% nuts! The stupid sonofabitch should have pleaded guilty by reason of insanity. If I'd been sitting on the jury, I think I might have bought into that theory.

Martha Stewart: Living

Prison living that is.

But facetiousness aside, just as the name Leona Helmsley invokes an involuntary tick of the eye and a desire to read Frederick Engels' Principles of Communism and take up your corner of the glorious red banner, so too does the name Martha Stewart invite the burning of effigies and the overturning of police cars.

Granted, that's an extreme analogy and since I dislike Communists as much as I do egomaniacal Capitalists, allow me to tone it down a bit.

Back in the '80s, there was a television commercial for Pantene shampoo that featured Kelly LeBrock. As in any commercial featuring an actor desperately in need of valuable public exposure (and, very likely, work), LeBrock peddled her product with the notion that if you, a flabby middle-aged housewife, were to merely dab a bit of this snake oil on your limp, drab, scarecrow scalp, you too would be the recipient of seductive winks and glances, not to mention all the oral sex you could desire.

When people saw this commercial, they couldn't help but laugh. Not because of any overt humor in what she said, but because it provided a glimpse into the conceited psyche of people like her. The words of this narcissistic horse's ass were permanently burned into the minds of every person watching and offered tantamount proof of what we all assumed to be true of people in her social strata. She said, "Don't hate me because I'm beautiful."

We don't. We hate you because you're an egotistical bitch.

Leona Helmsley said, "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes." This imbecile might have been a modern day Scrooge when it comes to money, but the judicial system isn't as miserly and handed her a nice prison sentence.