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Stewart says Mandela will be her inspiration to cope with jail

July 18, 2004

BY CHARLES LAURENCE


NEW YORK -- Martha Stewart says she's facing up to the prospect of doing time -- and that Nelson Mandela's example will help her to cope.

Asked how she would handle prison food, fellow inmates and strip searches, Stewart said she would take her cue from Mandela's prison experiences. The former South African president and anti-apartheid campaigner spent 27 years in solitary confinement.

"I could do it. I'm a really good camper. I can sleep on the ground," she told Barbara Walters in an interview on ABC. "If it is looming ahead of me, I'm going to have to face it, and take it and do it and get it over with. There's many other good people that have gone to prison. Look at Nelson Mandela."

The five month sentence Stewart received Friday was the most lenient punishment she could have gotten, but America's disgraced domestic goddess and former CEO said she was "terribly disappointed" by the sentence.

Stewart was also ordered to serve five months under house arrest after being found guilty of lying to federal investigators about a stock sale. In court Friday, Stewart spoke in a shaky voice of her shame, and asked the judge to "remember all the good I have done."

Only a few hours later, in the interview with Walters, Stewart changed her tune. While lawyers said she had been lucky, Stewart complained: "I had hoped for, at the most, some confinement, community service. Instead, I have five months of incarceration and five months of house arrest that is monitored."

During the trial, Stewart was accused of appearing arrogant and was criticized for carrying a Hermes Birkin handbag worth $6,000 into court. In her first TV interview since her sentence was stayed, pending appeal, she said she had been singled out because she was successful.

"Do you know, that is my only handbag?" she said. "And I bought it, I think, 12 or 14 years ago. I bought that for myself when I felt successful enough to buy a beautiful handbag. And it did not cost $6,000 12 or 14 years ago."

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