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XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN JAN 26, 2003 09:00:52 ET XXXXX MARTHA STEWART SPEAKS "It's sort of the American way to go up and down the ladder, maybe several times in a lifetime," Martha Stewart tells Jeffrey Toobin in the February 3, 2003, issue of the NEW YORKER, DRUDGE has learned. "And I've had a real long up -- along the way my heels being bitten at for various reasons, maybe perfectionism, or maybe exactitude, or something. And now I've had a long way down." MORE After newspaper articles announcing that Stewart was being investigated for insider trading began to appear, Stewart says, Hillary Clinton called to express her support. "Look at her ups and downs," Stewart tells Toobin. "And she was one of the first people to call me after the article and very nicely say, 'You know, you just have to hang in there. It's the process.'" Clinton is, Stewart says, "First Lady, knocked to death and now senator. You know, a very important person, still. Because she's smart, she's worthy, she's great. You know, that's what I hope I'll be thought of as." Toobin reports that "the criminal investigation is near a resolution, and prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's office... will decide in the next several weeks whether to indict Stewart" in connection with her sale of ImClone stock on December 27, 2001, on the same day that her friend Sam Waksal, the company's co-founder, was selling his. Stewart has maintained that she had previously arranged with her stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, to sell ImClone stock if it dropped below sixty dollars a share, which it did that day, although Stewart never executed a stop-loss order to that effect. Heidi DeLuca, who serves as Stewart's business manager, "has told investigators that she, too, had a discussion with Bacanovic about his plan to tell Stewart to sell ImClone at sixty." She has also told investigators that Stewart sold "a lot" of stock in late 2001 in keeping with her plan to give up direct control of her personal finances in favor of a professional money manager. Since news of the investigation broke, Stewart estimates, it has "so far cost her about four hundred million dollars," Toobin reports, "mostly in the decline in value of her thirty-plus million shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, but also in legal fees and lost business opportunities." Stewart also speaks about the toll it has taken on her public image. "My buddies: Dave, Jay, Conan. I miss the fun. They have a job to do, they can comment on anybody in a playful way, and I don't think it's at all damaging. In other parts of the press, more damaging. In terms of photography, even more damaging." Stewart says the photographs of her that have been appearing in the Post are "the ugliest pictures. And I'm a pretty photogenic person, I mean, and they manage to find the doozies." Stewart is appalled at the idea, recently expressed in Newsweek, that she should have been nicer to people on the way to the top. "I've never not been nice to anybody," she tells Toobin. The public's delight in her troubles has been, she says, "puzzling to me ... puzzling and also confusing, because my public image has been one of trustworthiness, of being a fine, fine editor, a fine purveyor of historical and contemporary information for the homemaker. My business is about homemaking. And that I have been turned into or vilified openly as something other than what I really am has been really confusing." Stewart is aware of how others view her, though. During a lunch break in her interview with Toobin in her Westport, Connecticut, home, he admired the chopsticks that had been set out. "You know, in China they say, 'The thinner the chopsticks, the higher the social status.' Of course, I got the thinnest I could find," Stewart responded. "That's why people hate me." Impacting Monday... ----------------------------------------------------------- Filed By Matt Drudge Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereportArchives.com for updates (c)DRUDGE REPORT 2003 Not for reproduction without permission of the author |
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