Whatever you say about Martha Helen Kostyra Stewart, she has elevated homemaking to an art. My mother, in fact, is irked because she didn't think of commercializing homemaking.
She's actually part of elevating the country's mass taste level. The same forces that created Martha and B. Smith (who's also great, BTW, and has no legal issues that we know of) have also democratized style to the point where you can get decent clothes at places like Target, Gap, Banana Republic, Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel.
For that, Martha deserves props. I also like the fact that she, like Oprah Winfrey, is a media personality who is not terribly thin.