This edition of the Liga Weekly goes out to all the hardcore homemakers, diabolical color schemers, and otherwise crafty women people out there. This week, we salute your hero and figurehead, Martha “M. Diddy” Stewart: the ultimate parole model.

Yes, that’s right; I finished a team logo this week. And you can learn all about it in this post. Grab some cabbage and your favorite cutting board and we’ll be underway.

Of course, I’ll also award FAABulous prize$ for the Liga in week 7. I’m not sure anyone really cares about the FAABulous prize$, though, so this week marks my first attempt to include something that might be of interest to . . . well, anyone.

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martha, martha, martha!

On the cover of the May 1995 issue, New York Magazine heralded her as “the definitive American woman of our time.”

In 2005, Forbes.com called her the “Doyenne of domesticity,”* and estimated her net worth at over $1 billion.

But what went on during the ten years in-between? Well, that’s the stuff that turns a role model into a parole model. I’ve added a little emphasis, but here’s Wikipedia’s summary of the sordid tale: Martha Stewart does the crime, does the time.

According to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Stewart avoided a loss of $45,673 by selling all 3,928 shares of her ImClone Systems stock on December 27, 2001, after receiving material, nonpublic information from Peter Bacanovic, who was Stewart’s broker at Merrill Lynch. The day following her sale, the stock value fell 16%.

In the months that followed, Stewart drew heavy media scrutiny, including a Newsweek cover headlined “Martha’s Mess.” Notably, on June 25, 2002, CBS anchor Jane Clayson grilled Stewart on the air about ImClone during her regular segment on The Early Show. Stewart continued chopping cabbage and famously quipped, “I just want to focus on my salad.” On October 3, 2002, Stewart resigned her position, held for four months, on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange, following a deal prosecutors had made with Douglas Faneuil, an assistant to Bacanovic.

On June 4, 2003, Stewart was indicted by the government on nine counts, including charges of securities fraud and obstruction of justice. Stewart voluntarily stepped down as CEO and Chairwoman of MSLO, but stayed on as chief creative officer. She went on trial in January 2004. . . . Stewart was found guilty in March 2004 of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency proceeding, and making false statements to federal investigators, and was sentenced in July 2004 to serve a five month term in a federal correctional facility and a two year period of supervised release (to include five months of electronic monitoring).

I tried really hard to find a video clip of that Early Show from June 25, 2002. You can find almost ANYTHING on the internet—until somebody with a good lawyer makes you take it down. My guess is that’s what happened here. I offer my sincere apology to you, dear reader, for not coming through with this video.

Fortunately, I was able to find an image from that episode. As a guy, I’m not always tuned in to things like “body language” or “non-verbal communication.” But I’d guess that even the more-than-moderately-clueless guys out there could look at this picture and pick up on the fact that Martha is not happy with Jane. At all.

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the salad quote

To celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2007, USA Today put together a list of the 25 Most Memorable Quotes of the past 25 years. A few you might recognize:

• “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” – President Reagan, June 12, 1987, appealing to the Soviet leader to remove the Berlin Wall that divided East and West German sectors. It fell in 1989.
• “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” – Defense attorney Johnnie Cochran, Sept. 27, 1995, arguing that a glove used as murder evidence in the O.J. Simpson trial was too small.
• “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” – President Clinton, Jan. 26, 1998, at a White House news conference.

Coming in at number 12 on that list:

• “I want to focus on my salad.” – Martha Stewart, June 25, 2002, on CBS’ The Early Show, when questioned about the probe into her stock dealings.

There aren’t many women on that list, so I’d guess Martha might be secretly proud of her 12th-place quote. I’d also guess that she might be secretly peeved that her quote wasn’t the highest-ranked quote from a woman on that list. Nancy Reagan came in just ahead of Martha with an 11th-place finish for: “Just say no.” – Nancy Reagan’s anti-drug campaign slogan, 1983.

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simple math and the multimillionaire

Full disclosure: I have no experience, first hand or otherwise, in the art of becoming a multimillionaire. I think inheritance and luck probably have a lot to do with it. Beyond that, I imagine it takes an obsessive drive, a cut-throat business sense, and a continual struggle to maximize all your gains while minimizing all your losses.

I get that. I really do. And I think anyone would be concerned to receive a phone call like this:

“Hi, I’m your stock broker’s assistant. He asked me to let you know that the Acme CEO is selling ALL of his shares of Acme Systems stock before the FDA’s ruling causes share values to decline. It could be as much as 16% in a single day. That would mean that someone who owned, say, 3,928 shares could lose, like, $45,673 in stock value. This is a perfectly legal conversation that never happened.”

So I can understand why it would be tempting to go out and sell your $285,000 worth of Acme stock ASAP. Sure, it would look suspicious if the FDA’s ruling came out the very next day. But if I can avoid losing $45,673 in stock value, it’s a risk I’m willing to take!

But here’s where the fact that I’m not a multimillionaire comes into play. I have no idea what my net worth is, but I guarantee it’s nowhere near $285,000. I’m pretty sure it’s nowhere near $45,000. So my risk/reward calculation is a little different than Martha’s would be.

According to the SEC, Martha Stewart’s ImClone Systems stock would have lost $45,673 in value on Friday, December 28, 2001. She kept that dog from biting her on Friday by killing it on Thursday. But according to Forbes.com, Martha Stewart was worth approximately $650 MILLION in 2001.

To put that in perspective . . .

Friday, December 28, 2001 was nearly ten years ago. To be more precise: The total number of days between Friday, December 28th, 2001 and Tuesday, November 1st, 2011 is 3,595 days. This is equal to exactly 9 years, 10 months, and 4 days.

Supposing Martha Stewart lost $45,673, not just on December 28, 2001, but EVERY DAY since:

$45,673 per day × 3,595 days = $164,194,435

But Martha started with a value of $650,000,000. After losing $45,673 EVERY DAY for 9 years, 10 months, and 4 days, She is still worth $485,805,565.

At a rate of $45,673 per day, it would take almost 39 years for Martha’s $650,000,000 to be used up. She was 60 in December 2001; she would be 99 by the time the money ran out.

So the risk/reward evaluation could be put in terms like this: do you risk going to prison to avoid losing an amount so inconsequential that you could afford to lose it every day for the rest of your life?

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the million-dollar cabbage

A visual representation might be more effective. On that Early Show set, way back in 2002, Martha Stewart was chopping cabbage when she told Jane Clayson that she wanted to “focus on her salad.” So, by way of visual example, I present to you the MDC:

This cabbage represents one million dollars. The problem with this cabbage: it has a blighted leaf. It would probably be browner in real life, but I’ve made it a bit redder so it stands out to the eye. Besides, red ink and financial loss have a certain connection in our economic subconscious. This blighted leaf represents $45,673 (or something like $50,000).

Here’s what that blighted leaf looks like if you have $650 million worth of MDC. I thought about going “Where’s Waldo?” on y’all and hiding the blighted leaf somewhere in the cabbage patch, but I quickly became overwhelmed with the task. So I’ll give you a clue: look towards the upper right.

Here’s the crazy thing: when Martha Stewart was released from prison in 2005, her net worth was ONE BILLION DOLLARS. Here’s that blighted leaf again, this time in a $1 billion patch of MDC.

Basically, Martha Stewart went to jail because she wanted to avoid a brown leaf in her cabbage patch.

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parole models

So what makes a parole model? Well, it starts with having the right attitude in a criminal risk/reward analysis.

If the risk is prison, how big must the reward be for me to want to break the law?

• role model: it doesn’t matter how big the reward is, I’m going to do what’s right
• “average” guy: if the reward is really big, I’d go for it
• parole model: if there’s any reward at all, even a tiny one, I’m in

Once you have the attitude, all you need is the jail time to make it legit (eventually, the one does lead to the other). Check out this depiction of Martha’s time behind bars:

Stewart said that her prison nickname was “M. Diddy.” While in confinement, she took a job and became an informal liaison between the administration and her fellow inmates. The People special, Scandals! That Rocked America, stated “Some expected America’s goddess of domestic perfection to fall into terminal despair. Instead, with the drive that would make her a billionaire, Stewart took her lemon of a sentence and made lemonade. Heck, she made a lemon soufflé.”

Now THAT, my friends, is a parole model.

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streakers and money

Week 7 was rough on the full-roster streaks. Only six teams extended their streak to 7 games; the other six decided to start fewer than 10 players.

Streaker bonuses follow the Fibonacci sequence: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, … This Fibonacci streaker bonus (F) becomes part of the multiplier and is added to the $11 base amount.

With 6 teams on bye in week 7, the goodbye bonus award (A) is:

6 × ($11 + F)

As always, the weekly reward (R) is $11.

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other business

The Best-of-the-Worst award in Week 7: Bullmeisters (241.66 FP). Doug will receive the usual $13 award AND “the pot.” In this case, the pot is $462, so the total award amount is $475.

This leaves just one Lucky SOB: Bust a Move (191.6 FP). Ashley will receive the lucky dollar.

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The post ran long and late, but it was fun to work up some new content. I hope you enjoyed it. More to come.

Good luck to y’all!

-Prof.