Web reacts to Martha Stewart sentencing

"A tempest in a Cuisinart."

That's how one Web site--SaveMartha.com--summed up the long-running U.S. legal case against Martha Stewart, which reached a climax on Friday, when the so-called doyenne of domesticity was sentenced to five months in prison, plus five months of home detention and a $30,000 fine for lying about a stock sale. Stewart said she would appeal.

"Martha will receive lots of cookies and cakes while in the slammer," one creative writer said on the Yahoo message boards, which were filled with dozens of comments soon after the sentence was announced. "But what they don't know is that a small file will be inside one of those treats. She will use the file to open the front gate, and a limo will be waiting. Then a Lear jet will whisk her out of the country, where she will trade stocks with inside information and bake cookies."

The "to do" list on the SaveMartha Web site included a letter to President Bush asking him to pardon Martha. "A terrible injustice has been done to Martha Stewart," the letter said. "Her only real crime was to be too successful, thereby eliciting the enmity of misguided and misinformed citizens who feel that she represents the face of corporate crime."

CNN, ABC News, Fox News, The New York Times and the New York Post, among other Web sites, all flashed the news across the top of their Web sites when the sentence was announced. "Stewart Sentenced to 5 Months in Prison for Lying to Investigators," read a staff-written article that led The New York Times Web site. Many of the sites featured homegrown reporting rather than wire dispatches.

Google News carried nearly 1,200 stories related to the announcement by Friday afternoon, a sign of the story's immense popularity.

Martha's own Web site, Marthatalks.com, included a letter to her "friends." She wrote: "The sentencing decision in my case is in. As horrendous as it is, it was not unexpected, and I am not afraid of what the future holds."

Stewart Sentance

Something tells me that Martha would hve a much better chance of recieving a presidential pardon if Clinton were still in office.

It's been four years, sport

A Clinton joke? You can't be serious. Get over it.

[Al Feldzamen]

Martha Stewart

Martha Stewart, lest anyone forget, has been a very, very large
contributor to the Democratic Party and its candidates. Had she
been such a contributor to the other side, can anyone think she
would have been prosecuted this way??

How to make a shiv

Today on Martha Stewart Living, we'll be showing you how to make a shiv from a cafeteria spoon by sharpening it on the corner of your bunk, and how to entertain in your cell with toilet bowl gin and half a carton of Lucky Strikes.