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So Martha Stewart was convicted.
I'm not a Martha apologist, not even close, but I have to wonder about this whole business. Forgive me if I am missing something, because this is just the sort of celebrity circus I tend to deliberately overlook, but...
Didn't somebody give her a hush-hush tip that her stocks were about to tank? And so she sold them off, right? And then lied about it.
Okay, well, let's take the actual selling of the stocks first. I ask you, WHAT THE HELL WAS SHE SUPPOSED TO DO? If the president of Acme Inc. gives me a call and says, hey, Ken, keep this on the down low, but as of Monday morning you might as well wipe your ass with Acme shares, am I supposed to actually hang on to the damned things and lose my pants?
And then she lied about it. Well, duh.  Isn't that what you're supposed to do when you're in trouble? Lie? Of course it is. After all, us normal non-billionaire people do it all the time...sixteen times a day, on average, according to one study. And we teach our children to lie, too.
Maybe it's a matter of who she lied to. You're not supposed to fib to the authorities, are you?
Well, why not? It's not like the authorities never lie to us. At best, you can trust three out of every ten things George W. Bush says. The percentage is even lower for our esteemed (?) Premier, Dalton McGuinty. The authorities make a living out of lying, and it's a pretty good living, too. But they expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth from us mere peons? So help me, God!
James Halperin wrote a novel entitled The Truth Machine that ought to be required reading  for everyone. It's the story of a supergenius who creates a 100% effective lie-detector, and said device's subsequent effects on society, nearly all of which are profoundly positive. Imagine knowing for certain if someone is guilty of a crime, merely by asking him. Imagine Big Business forced to run in total transparency. Imagine foreign policy being subject to a Truth Machine.
I try not to lie. I'm not always successful--I've told some whoppers in my time. I usually lie for one simple reason: because the truth would get me in trouble. And never mind that the lie, when discovered, always yields considerably more trouble than the truth would have in the first place. I tend to conveniently forget that little nugget.
I used to lie in order to tell people what they wanted to hear, in an effort to avoid an argument. I don't do that near as often any more, because it's quite literally not me. It's better, I have found, to be yourself.
As far as Martha goes, I bet she'll be out in time to prepare her world-famous egg nog (about nine-tenths of which is pure, unadulterated booze), but you know what? I doubt her sentence means she'll never lie again.