In her most recent column, Tina Brown compares Martha Stewart to Martin Luther King Jr., Eugene V. Debs, Vaclav Havel, and Nelson Mandela, all of whom spent time in prison and earned the "martyr's halo." Uh, no. That's silly, but Brown still makes a nice point about the rehabilitative effect of prison on Martha Stewart's image:

The level of venom Martha experienced was all about how she made every other mini-player in the media firmament feel like a wallflower. Status rage is always the ugliest. There's a strange lightness now to all the coverage, like the lifting of a curse. As Martha Agonistes she is finally interesting for reasons other than envy. She's been through something the tabloid narrative can agree is "real."

Martha should not have been prosecuted, but it may have been one of the best things that ever happened to her business. Take a look at the stock price of Martha Stewart Omnimedia over the past five years:

The recent runup in MSO's stock price largely reflects the sense that Martha has handled the entire affair with class. She even got a new body out of the deal.

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