Since When Is Martha Stewart A Scold?

There are few celebrities who brave the humiliation of public scrutiny and morally untenable affluence with the panache of Martha Stewart. The 80-year-old stockbroker-turned-lifestyle maven — the face of several magazines back when people read them, 97 books, a syndicated advice column, a long-running radio program, and enough branded home goods to keep the global population in supply of salad forks for the next millennium — is by all counts an American treasure. She was famously busted for flagrant insider training, then never snitched and took her time head down, later befriended and possibly bedded weed king Snoop Dogg, bagged Anthony Hopkins himself, and now spends her free hours posting quasi-literary musings from her farm in Katonah, New York, surrounded by poultry and plows at almost every turn. We should all be so lucky.

So riddle me this: since when is no-snitch Stewart a narc? Here’s an item in People on Jan. 26:

Earlier this month, Ina Garten commented on a post of Reese Witherspoon's and revealed that her "formula" for coping with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic includes drinking "more large cosmos." But Stewart isn't totally on board with that advice.

"I do not agree about taking to drink to cope with things like the pandemic," the lifestyle expert and businesswoman tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "To me that's not charming."

Sure. No one needs more wine propaganda in a market that already addresses the 25 to 55 female demographic like they’re sentient bottles of riesling. But this is coming from a woman who posts trashed more than Susan Orlean (consider these mirror pictures, or her recent comments on a bird Instagram page called “thebestlittlehenhouseintexas”).

It feels like just yesterday that Martha announced her partnership with shitty wine purveyor, 19 Crimes, to debut the unforgettably assonant name, Martha’s Chard. In fact, it was Jan. 12. And yet here she is, mere weeks after Chard’s soft launch, taking a dump on a fellow alcohol-loving businesswoman just trying to get by. In any case, I have a personal connection to this story. I am one of the lucky few who have tried Snoop Dogg’s 19 Crimes Cali Red Blend, which comes highly recommended from Martha herself. Well, inflation must have come early, because I only tasted one crime and that was charging $10.99 for 750mL of piss.