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After Martha Irreplaceable? He Can Only Hope.By Rick Horowitz Thinking being such an exhausting pursuit, sometimes I merely muse. And what I find myself most recently musing is this: If, before Martha, there was no Martha, do we really need another Martha after Martha? Or to put it another way: Can't we give this domestic diva thing a rest? Apparently not. The (black or blue-black) ink was barely dry on Martha Stewart's "guilty" verdicts before the various media were bubbling with speculation about who might replace her in America's hearts and minds and -- most especially -- wallets. You can just imagine the great relief I felt at discovering that there was no shortage of candidates. That there was, in fact, a pride of mini-Marthas just itching (in a sensitive-to-another-person's-tragedy way, of course) to take the leap to full Marthahood and all its weighty responsibilities -- were the American public willing, that is, to bestow such an honor upon any one of them. Have you imagined the great relief I felt? Excellent! Now, reduce your imaginings in a hand-forged cast-iron saucepan to about one-tenth their original size, and then discard 98 percent of that. What remains, I assure you, still dwarfs the dimensions of my relief. For one thing, the names of the various contenders were totally unknown to me. I don't mean that they were being kept secret -- not at all. They were right out there in the public prints, along with credentials and pictures and such. What I mean is that, even after seeing their names, these people were totally unknown to me. A woman named Chris Casson Madden already has something of a following, I was surprised to learn. Likewise someone named Katie Brown, and someone else named (a bit too efficiently, if you ask me) B. Smith. Each of them had already made a mark -- not a Martha-sized mark, but a mark nonetheless -- in the world of gracious living. One or another of them -- or even someone else lurking in the shadows -- might be positioned to take things to another level, a level best described as "iconic ubiquity," or in layman's terms, "constant nag." Yet all of this had happened without causing so much as a blip on my own radar screen. You're thinking this was willful ignorance. You're thinking I had long ago vowed to pay no attention to the Martha wannabes, but to devote all my energies instead to the genuine article, to worshipping at the shrine of the One True Martha. You're out of your mind. The pretenders' names were unknown to me because gracious living was unknown to me. Just as even Martha Stewart's name was only vaguely known to me, in much the same way that Asian flu was vaguely known to me -- something from another part of the planet, and worth avoiding. It's always possible that, in the years I was focused elsewhere, Martha had offered a half-dozen charming ideas for turning my piles of used newspapers into fun-filled mazes, or papier-mache recycling mills. It's equally possible that she had discovered how to turn fingernail clippings into festive holiday hors d'oeuvres. Possible -- but not likely. So what good was she to me? Hardly any good at all. And now a new generation of domestic doyennes? Put it this way: If the original hadn't captured my imagination, what chance would her successors have? Exactly. And for those who did manage to live their lives by the gracious word -- well, how willing are they going to be to transfer their loyalties to some pale imitation? Not very, I'd say. They're much more likely to keep applying Martha's most memorable teachings, even while teacher herself is preoccupied with accessorizing the standard prison jumpsuit. So maybe, instead of rushing to fill the diva gap, we could leave the position vacant for a while, out of respect. Out of fatigue. Whatever. We have to face facts: A person like Martha Stewart comes along only once in a lifetime. If we're lucky. Posted 3/11/04. For
gracious web browsing, just click to "Rick's"! It's a good thing.
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Rick Horowitz
