Indeed, Martha Stewart (the queen of clean) hangs over Real Simple like a friendly ghost, and small wonder. Editor Susan Wyland edited Martha Stewart Living for three-and-a-half years, and Time Inc. is no doubt hoping some of that circulation magic (nearly 2.5 million) will rub off here. (Time famously fumbled its own deal with Martha, allowing her to go off to multimedia fame and fortune.) Wyland began developing the Real Simple idea when she joined Time’s People Magazine Group in 1998.

But where Stewart’s shtick is studious affect (“Hollowed-out eggshells are lovely, natural holders for tiny flower arrangements” says a posting on Stewart’s Web site — as if you had time to hollow out egg shells, find tiny flowers and then arrange them), Real Simple eschews pretension. In a sort of high-falutin’ photo essay on flowers, we’re told to let go of our inner Martha: “When you get them home, don’t worry about arranging them; natural looks better and, well, more natural.”

(I was way ahead of the curve on that one.)

If the great fashion magazines of yore (Vogue, Bazaar) justified their swank fantasies as an escape from the humdrum, Real Simple (a sort of beauty-and-shelter hybrid) holds out a fantasy of austerity. “Life is complicated,” writes Wyland in her editor’s note and before going on to bemoan the harried lot of the modern woman. “We go to sleep with tomorrow’s to-do list scrolling in our minds. And I think a lot of us are longing for a way to make things simpler.”

“Life is short/full of stuff,” sang the Cramps, in a slightly different context. Real Simple longs to get rid of all that stuff for you — and I’m not just talking junk mail (though there is a piece on how to get rid of that). There is a whole section here dedicated to soul, and not of the James Brown kind, either. Martha Beck has an essay on the importance of personal rituals, while Elizabeth Houghton rhapsodizes on the lost art of writing a note in pen, putting it in an envelope and throwing it in the mailbox.

The desire to divest yourself of needless possessions is as natural and cyclic as the urge to nest, and at the end of our stuff-filled millennium, closet cleaning is all the go. Whether you view it as a fad or a natural progression, the revived interest in Buddhism (or at least talking about Buddhism) is another indicator of a movement toward spiritual dust-busting.

“The Art of Doing Nothing,” by Veronique Vienne, has been a surprising bestseller and can be found in your local bookstore nestled beside titles like “Simple Pleasures” and “The Woman’s Retreat Book.” The message is as old as “The Book of the Dead”: Relax, turn off your mind and soak your feet.

But magazines, alas, are made to sell stuff — even magazines dedicated to helping women get rid of stuff. Stewart overcame this inherent contradiction ingenuously: She markets and promotes merchandise designed to help you do things yourself (flocking pine cones and other homely tasks). She has also made herself a brand, so that her Web site, books, magazine and TV show are like beams radiating from the sun queen.

Real Simple is starting from scratch, though not without assistance. The 216-page premiere issue (hitting newsstands March 27) has a guaranteed circulation of 400,000 and includes 112 ad pages. A number of these ads are indiscernible from the editorial in their message (coffee is all about serenity now) if not their design (a spread for Wamsutta linens really threw me). More galling is the placement of some of those ads. There are dozens of right-hand, full-page ads where articles often should be. (Advertisers traditionally fight for right-hand pages as editorial battles to keep them.)

In what seems to me a rather fitting irony, a piece on “stress reduction” (that could have been titled “Meditations on running out of gas”) by Francine Prose is broken up with a butt-ugly ad insert for a variety of household products. Prose recently wrote a jeremiad against the vapidity of the Oxygen network and women’s magazines in general for the New York Times Magazine. For a writer who has benefited financially from writing for some of those same publications, it seemed an ungracious and self-serving move. Seeing her writing offset by a plug for kitty litter gave me some perverse pleasure.

There is some requisite editorial about things to buy here, most notably in the front-of-the-book section “small pleasures” and the sole fashion feature. But none of it is very high-end (OK, a $32 bra), and most of the emphasis in Real Simple remains on getting rid of it (whatever it is). There are articles about how to pay your bills online and do less laundry. (“The first rule you should establish is: one towel and one washcloth per person a week” — which I believe is the rule on Rikers Island.) A few months of Real Simple and things will start disappearing from your house so fast you’ll think your boyfriend is a junkie.

Too much simplicity can be a dangerous thing, though. Take this advice from a service piece on cleaning your bathroom: “Next, spritz the bathroom mirror with glass cleaner and wipe it down with paper towels.” Or the observation in the flowers feature that “any signs of yellowing and withering … could mean they were picked quite a while ago.” Suddenly “real simple” starts to take on a “Forrest Gump” cast.

Trying to sell the simple life is a slippery task. Real Simple is handsome in its design; the food spread looked especially inviting and some of the writing is cool and concise. But there is an air of unreality to the whole enterprise that I find off-putting. The articles say incorporate these steps to simplicity in your daily life, but the pictures portray a life of cleanly privilege unlike any I know. “Art-direct your life” is more like it.

The reality of these contradictions is brought home in what I thought to be this issue’s signature piece, Megham Daum’s first person account of moving from Manhattan to … Nebraska. The high cost of New York living and the threat of ending up in Brooklyn compelled her to pack up and head for the heartland. “There are few fancy restaurants,” she writes, “no one gets dressed up for a night on the town, and movies never cost more than $6, and they never sell out.”

I like the idea of paying $6 for a movie and getting a seat with no problem. I’ve actually found a way to do that here in New York: It’s called a matinee, and most theaters still have them. Sure, it means taking time off from my work day and laboring later into the evening. It’s not often I get a chance to go to a matinee but it’s a hell of lot less of a commitment than moving to Nebraska.

It’s like the old farmer’s adage about breakfast and the difference between involvement and commitment, the kind of thing you’ll hear out in Nebraska. “The hen was involved,” the farmer says, “but the pig was committed.”

Which meant, naturally, that I only caught about five minutes of looking at the actual stage, and spent the rest of the time tweeting about how ridiculous this entire concept was. Apparently I didn’t miss much, either: Piers Morgan, in his typical celebrity ass-kissing way, spent the entire hour talking about how he was the inspiration for Charlie Sheen getting on Twitter (as if that’s a positive thing?); for getting Martha Stewart to have her fans tweet her something about pierogis live on the air (technology!) while she spoke about the proper etiquette for shouting out into the Twittersphere (Martha uses Twitter the way a lot of celebrities do: not to interact with her fans but as a sort of message board for her thoughts of the day); and for talking to Alyssa Milano in a fascinating story about why she decided to tell everyone the sex of her baby on Twitter.

About five minutes of the show was dedicated to discussing what the application was doing internationally, and zero minutes were spent asking Biz or Jack anything of interest, like why their co-founder Evan Williams wasn’t even mentioned during the entire hour. (My theory is that Ev is poised to become the next Eduardo Saverin of the tech world.)

At one point, Piers declared proudly to Alyssa, “We’re all Twits!” and continually referenced how Biz and Jack’s original idea was to have Twitter used for bursts of short, inconsequential ideas. Only two people managed to dispute that claim: Cory Booker (who used Twitter to help his city during the snowstorms this winter, and who joked off-camera that he was planning a flash-mob over to Mayor Bloomberg’s place after the show), and Gary Vaynerchuk, who frankly called Martha out on her b.s.

“Twitter is about listening,” not talking, said Gary, who used Twitter to help launch both his wine business on a grand scale, as well as his own Web show, “Wine Library TV.” Piers, who wasn’t really listening (you ever notice how the man never asks any follow-up questions?), turned to Biz and Jack and asked if they were worried that celebrities revealed too much about themselves on Twitter. If Biz and Jack had any concerns that night, creating the application that let us know Alyssa Milano will be having a baby boy was not one of them.

Piers spent most of the commercial breaks tweeting on his phone, not looking up when guests sat down at the table. I couldn’t really blame him: I was doing the same thing.

With a brand this perfect – a brand that, by merely existing, casts a pall over our own inferior, disheveled, dog-hair-covered lives – it’s only natural that Martha Stewart (the woman) would pay dearly for the hunger that Martha Stewart (the brand) created in us.

The next part was predictable enough: Martha herself was far from perfect, the books and magazine articles breathlessly reported. She was impatient, and bossy, and exacting, and cold. She sometimes experienced – gasp – uncontrollable emotions! This made her quite different from most women (who are in total control of their emotions at all times) and different from most businessmen (who are never arrogant or demanding). Yes, Martha was a woman who planted bulbs and winterized her garden and threw gorgeous weddings and started her own business then developed it into a multimedia empire, but she yelled at people sometimes, and that wasn’t a good thing.

But then Martha allegedly dumped some stock she was holding from her friend’s company, because she allegedly found out that it was about to tank. The SEC, which spent an entire decade turning a blind eye to this sort of thing, decided to make a big show of prosecuting Martha Stewart and sending her to jail (at the exact point when they might’ve exerted a little more energy on, say, regulating credit default swaps or one of the other absurdities that led to the world economy imploding before our eyes).

So Martha did some hard time, we felt sorry for her, and then she made a comeback, which is by now a crucial part of any enduring brand’s narrative arc. Sadly, though, the fortunes and reputations of a few other individuals were harmed in the storm of Martha’s trial, and for mere mortals who don’t happen to be internationally known branded entities, making a comeback isn’t quite as easy as it is for Martha.

And so, we become witness to yet another tell-all book, this one by Martha’s former best friend and confidante, Mariana Pasternak. If, at this late date, you still wonder what Martha Stewart is really like, the 395-page tome “The Best of Friends” will cure you of that affliction henceforth. In it, Pasternak paints an excruciatingly detailed portrait of the countless magical moments that she and Martha shared as close friends, moments inevitably sullied in one way or another by Martha’s insensitivity or insecure maneuvering or controlling behaviors. None of this is at all surprising since Martha’s alleged flaws were painstakingly detailed in Christopher Byron’s unauthorized biography “Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia” (and elsewhere). We know how Martha allegedly belittled her husband, or how she allegedly demanded way too much of everyone around her. Yes, writers and gossip hounds have knocked themselves out to demonstrate to us, time and again, that far from the glossy, Cheshire-cat-smiling image of domestic perfection, Martha is a domineering macho woman who tramples willy-nilly over the soft underbellies of every last colleague and friend she knows with her big old hobnailed gardening boots. Always on her way to some TV taping or big-named cocktail party, according to these accounts, Martha is preoccupied and careless and she hurts people using words.

Pasternak is made “uncomfortable” or hurt by Martha again and again over the course of their friendship, but missing from her tome are the carefully reconstructed moments where she actually confronts Martha about her insensitivity, and demands better treatment. No, instead Pasternak focuses the full force of her steel-trap mind to conjure up this or that glorious night spent wining and dining with Martha, the “antique English porcelain plates” they ate from, the “deep, linen-upholstered” chairs they sunk into, the marvelous paintings that hung on the walls, the views of the sound or the ocean they enjoyed, the wonderful petunias or the bamboo that was blossoming fragrantly that afternoon. Day after day, night after night, we’re treated to the wonder of Marthaland, only to have Martha herself come in and spoil everything. Pasternak confides in Martha that her marriage is falling apart, and Martha announces it triumphantly to a whole roomful of people, saying “Brava for Mariana!” Pasternak is “flushed and flustered” and “baffled” that Martha would turn her “agony into a stage-worthy scene from the theater of the absurd.” Another time, Martha makes a speech and “for the first time in our friendship, she publicly acknowledged my role in her life” by thanking Pasternak, by then a realtor, for helping her find her latest property. “Martha did not say I never took a commission, but the simple thank you, for me, was more than enough, and it brought tears to my eyes.”

See how our intrepid author rises above petty grievances? A simple thank you was more than enough. But these moments of teary-eyed gratitude mixed with resentment are only the tip of the iceberg, once we come to the long list of fabulous trips that Martha and the author take together, trips with the author’s two daughters whom Martha has come to refer to as her goddaughters. (They aren’t her goddaughters, mind you, but Pasternak quite graciously allows Martha to bask in the illusion that they are – just one of many, many tender mercies Pasternak bestows on poor, pathetic, needy Martha out of the pureness of her heart.) Yes, Martha and the author and the girls travel to the Galapagos Islands and to Egypt and to Peru and to other places, and each trip is laid out in detail, the glamour and luxury but also the moments when Martha became overbearing or reckless, suggesting some dangerous excursion (taking a little boat down the Nile, horseback riding in Peru without helmets, arguing with a taxi driver so vehemently that he lets them off in the middle of the desert). Adding insult to injury, Martha covers all expenses and sends a bill to Pasternak after each trip (as agreed upon, but the various methods for splitting the bill and adding interest are questionable as far as the author is concerned). Couldn’t she simply tell Martha she’d like to split the bill differently – or better yet, couldn’t she simply say no to the next lavish trip? No, because Pasternak would never, ever deny her two daughters such a wonderful opportunity to see Egypt or the Galapagos. So “I paid Martha the amount I was told, grateful for the opportunity to have given my family such an unforgettable voyage.” Here we are once again: Angry, but immensely grateful. Who is the mixed-up woman in this picture?

Even in the wake of Martha’s unexpectedly getting left by her husband, Andy, for a younger woman, Pasternak is less than forgiving. In tears, Martha confides that Andy once had an affair with Erica Jong, a confession that makes Pasternak “profoundly uncomfortable”: “I had the queasy feeling that Martha was telling me this to manipulate my feelings for a man she knew I had loved.” Indeed, how insensitive of Martha, not to respect Pasternak’s feelings for Martha’s ex-husband! Yes, it seems that Martha’s most vulnerable admonition yet “had a sort of surgical precision to it” and was less a reflection of Martha’s considerable grief than a method of manipulating Pasternak.

As if that weren’t enough, Martha ruins Pasternak’s hopes for true love with a suitor, who wants to sleep with Pasternak under Martha’s roof, but Pasternak says no, reasoning that it would be a rude way for Martha to find out about their interest in each other, considering that Martha used to be interested in the man herself. Even though Martha never knows about it or says a word to Pasternak, Pasternak’s choice not to go for it is all Martha’s fault. “By the time I realized I was permitting her to bully me yet again into surrendering my chance at personal happiness, the man I wished to be with was on his way out of my life.”

Not surprisingly, Martha also had a major hand in unraveling the author’s marriage. “Sometimes I wondered if, had he been less critical of Martha, I would have felt better about our marriage. At first I thought yes, but then, as time wore on, the answer came: No, I would not. By belittling Martha, my husband had unwrapped a new part of himself, and I didn’t like what I saw.”

We don’t like what we’re seeing either. By belittling Martha, Pasternak unwraps a new part of herself on every few pages. While Martha herself comes across as the same sharp-minded, ambitious, self-serving woman with a good sense of humor and a very bad sense of other people’s emotional experiences, Pasternak, on the other hand, is the ultimate Nightmare Lady Friend: She passively plays along with anything Martha wants, admitting that she’s flattered that Martha Stewart, “one of the Western world’s biggest stars,” is “crying on my shoulder.” She accepts invitations to fabulous parties and goes on more great trips and sips champagne and savors big bowls of Ossetra caviar and then, when Martha is brought to trial and Pasternak is investigated and asked to testify, she distances herself from Martha but her life still crumbles around her. Most of Pasternak’s real estate clients abandon her, people whisper about her on the street, and she forecloses on her house.

Unfortunately, by the time we get to the big trial, Martha isn’t exactly smelling like a climbing tea rose, but Pasternak has proven herself so exasperatingly passive and so disloyal to her old friend by laying out the humiliating details of Martha’s impulsive flings and “stalker” behavior, using each incidence to paint Martha as weak, weak, weak – you know, in the ways that pretty much every single, slightly neurotic, emotional woman on the entire planet is weak at one point or another – that we’re ready for Martha to not just betray Pasternak, but leave her in the dust, taking all of those powerful friends and big names and luxury trips and roasted quail that Pasternak loves so dearly along with her.

Ultimately, it’s the chaos surrounding Martha’s trial and the damage it does to Pasternak’s reputation that brings Pasternak down, not Martha herself, and Pasternak is the one who stops returning calls before the trial even begins, thereby finally signaling all of the anger and resentment that was welling up over the years, but that was so terribly inconvenient to confront or address as long as the big names were mingling and the Cristal was flowing.

One can imagine that it was Martha’s comeback and return to glory as a more humble, more self-deprecating version of her old brand that finally sent Pasternak over the edge and into the arms of a drooling book publisher. Sadly for Pasternak, her tales of Martha’s cheapness, manipulations and naive mooning over men are liable to flesh out a character study of a woman whom the public long ago judged as lovable in spite of great flaws. Her brand revived, her Cheshire smile employed while joking about baking “green” brownies with Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart the woman and Martha Stewart the brand may just be unsinkable.

In the end, then, it’s Pasternak who elicits our sympathy the most. If she’d never befriended Martha and been drawn into a world that ultimately revealed itself to be Martha’s world, not hers, she might never have stooped to this, writing a book filled with arrows that bounce off Martha’s steely branded exterior and careen back toward the author, who is, after all, not a brand, just a vulnerable (and apparently very angry) human being. 

 Welcoming S-Factor creator Sheila Kelley, one of the first and foremost ladies of the “strippercizing” field, Martha gamely rolled her shoulders, swiveled her hips, and yes, did a little swing around the pole before announcing, “I want to do the upside down things.” 

While it’s true her moves yesterday won’t get her a job at Scores any time soon, it’s hard not to love a 68-year-old woman who heads a media empire, knows how to sew her own clothes, can bake an amazing cobbler, and isn’t afraid to learn how to give a lap dance on national television. Vowing to go to Kelley’s New York City S-Factor studio next week for a full lesson, she said, “Why shouldn’t we all do that? Right?” Why not, indeed, gutsy lady. Or as Martha would say, perfect.

So what better gift could we, the pop culture adoring public, receive this holiday season than an appearance by Mr. Gin and Juice on the very special cookie episode of “The Martha Stewart Show”?

On Friday, the two icons bantered about their respective side projects, with Martha expressing her admiration for Snoop’s iPhone apps and his new, seriously genius GPS Navigation system. But what they were really there to do was get their Doggystle bake on.

Mixing up a bowl of cocoa goodness, it didn’t take long for Snoop to muse that “We’re missing the most important part of the brownies.” Martha, not missing a beat, delightedly goaded him, “Which is? Which is? Which is?” Snoop then elaborated, “No sticks, no seeds, no stems,” prompting Martha to explain, “He wants green brownies.” And there was a gleam in that woman’s eye that told us, “I really hope he’s holding.” (Martha experts will recall a similar schtick during last summer’s “Pot Show” with Jimmy Fallon.)

And then do you know what they did? They made some bomb-ass green brownies, bitch! Okay, so Martha’s were only verdant by virtue of the festive sprinkles strewn atop. Still, we totally think Martha’s a bit of a head, which makes us want her to be the one to show us how to make the perfect skull bong.

Snoop, while refusing Martha’s sincere entreaties to rap for her, did go a little folk when he sang “He’s got the whole bowl in his hands.” And after a discussion of masculine pursuits, Martha’s parting words of the segment were a fond bit of advice. “All of you women out there,” she said, “build your man a man cave, and he’ll be just like Snoop Dogg.”

Cramer’s never hesitated to show emotion before, but on Thursday, he showed a new, vulnerable side. “I’m a little nervous. How bad is it gonna be? Is he gonna kill me?” Cramer said. “You should be nervous,” (Martha) Stewart said. “He’s fast as lightning!”

“I’m not, I’m slow as molasses,” Cramer replied. Considering that the entire conceit of “Mad Money” is that Cramer is manic — “mad,” if you will — this new, self-deprecating incarnation of the man seems pretty implausible.

The reason Cramer sounds so wounded? Well, he says, Jon Stewart is a role model for him:

The reason why it’s been so hard for me, the attacks, is that early on I patterned my show off of his, which is that you can do an entertainment business show. And then suddenly to be attacked by a guy that’s your idol makes it difficult.

I can’t make up my mind whether this is laughable or tragic. The main lesson of “The Daily Show,” it seems to me, is that nothing is quite so funny as laughing through our tears.  Stewart’s rise is due, in large part, to his brutal honesty. (See, for example, his well-known interview with prominent Iraq War booster Douglas Feith.) If Cramer really does imagine himself Stewart’s student, then he’s missed the point of his idol’s work. Just this week, he dismissed the “Daily Show” anchor as a mere “comedian” who hosts “a variety show.”

Moreover, if “The Daily Show” works because it finds entertainment value in setting the record straight, then, as I wrote earlier this week, “Mad Money” functions in precisely the opposite fashion. Cramer himself has said that, for the sake of being entertaining (that is, watchable, rather than cripplingly depressing), he likes to stress positive financial news — reality be damned.