The Fatal Potpourri

By Crispin Sartwell

Martha Stewart is the empress of appearances. As much as anything, she is famous for looking soft, giving and sweet while imposing a will of steel.

The insider trading scandal in which she is embroiled is making life difficult in the empire of appearances. She invested in the biotech firm ImClone, which turned out not to have a cure for cancer after all. She dumped her stock the day before it all went south.

This is in the great American tradition of greed. But just as symptomatic of her and of us is the smouldering horror that is Martha Stewart potpourri.

At K-Mart, Martha markets ceramic potpourri cookers that employ candles in order to provide your home with that Martha Stewart odor you so desperately desire. But according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission in announcing a product recall, flames can "flare out of the side ventilation holes," causing injury or death.

This infernal potpourri seems so benign; it has such a good smell and, like Martha, it looks perfect. But it consumes everything in its path. Perhaps the fires currently consuming the American west emerged from a Martha Stewart potpourri.

The American suburban home is a scene of perfection: the gleaming surfaces of the lovely labor-saving appliances matched only by the underlying emotional inferno. Dad likes men. Junior is being abused by his priest. Julie just got her nipple pierced and dates for crack.

But mom is good. Mom makes a lovely home. Mom, in short, is Martha Stewart.

We can't achieve real decency, love, or truth. But we can cover up the stench. Of course, in our effort to make stuff smell good, we will no doubt immolate everything, destroying all in hellish conflagration.

But this is a small price to pay for perfect appearances.

Everything in Martha's world looks excellent. Appearances of such loveliness, however, can only be maintained by great wealth. This wealth, in turn, can only be maintained by the deepest sort of dishonesty. One might invest in cancer cures, for example, and jump off ship when things look rocky.

In fact, cancer is a good image of the whole activity, at least until it starts to ravage the exterior. Everything is fine as long as you're only dying inside.

Martha Stewart is the master of manufacturing appearances. She has made a science of the lie, and more importantly, she has made the lie into limitless wealth, limitless wealth that in turn is dedicated to maintaining the lie.

She smiles benevolently, and everyone knows that it is the sunny smile of fascism. It's a dictatorship of the appearance, dedicated to the manufacturing of the perfect surface that floats on the reality of pain and exploitation: the sweet scent of the fatal potpourri.

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Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Contact him through www.crispinsartwell.com