I've never been one for cooking, entertaining company, or designing my home, so Martha Stewart is never exactly been on my radar before. Sure, I heard all about her insider trading scandal and subsequent imprisonment, who hasn't, but I really didn't know the first thing about the woman.
Then I started watching her television show, The Apprentice: Martha Stewart, which was a spin-off of Donald Trump's popular series. She was actually rather impressive in the way that she handled herself.
First of all, I had never even watched the original Trump series, so I don't know why I wanted to watch the Martha Stewart series. I think an acquaintance tipped me off that was rather entertaining so I checked it out. In case you're like me and have never seen The Apprentice before, the basic premise of the show is that 16 individuals compete over the course several months for an executive-level position with a six-figure salary.
It's a long, drawnout process in which these people and try to impress Trump by completing certain tasks that are reassigned to them. At the end of each task, members of the losing team were called into a conference room for a meeting with Martha Stewart and two other high-ranking officials from her company (one of whom was her daughter). The losers would then be sent packing by Martha and the winners would live to fight another day.
I later was able to learn quite a bit about Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, which is the name of her holding company. I heard about how the company was founded, discovered some of the basic philosophies that the executives embrace, and received a little bit of a glimpse into how they run their day to day operation. As viewers, we also got to see a side of Martha Stewart that not many people in the business world were privy to. In one case, reports were issued for members of the winning team as incentive.
Some of the rewards included hanging out with Martha at one of her many homes in the New York area. So a few of the candidates got to go horseback riding with her, play Scrabble with her, and even eat a homemade breakfast with her. After tuning in to the show, my perspective regarding Martha Stewart and the MSLO Corporation completely changed. After all, both entities had suffered from some seriously negative publicity in the months leading up to the premier of The Apprentice.
So if you're interested in learning more about Martha Stewart, then watching this television show might be a good place to start. It's a lighter, more entertaining look at the entertainment mogul than you are likely to find anywhere else and presents a good contrast to the way Stewart is portrayed in other media outlets. And of course we all know where Martha Stewart cut her teeth. She is a well-known diva of all things domestic, including cooking, gardening, entertaining, well I think you know what I mean. |
