SHE'S MARTHA AND YOU'RE NOT | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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She's the messiah. For mere mortals who do not employ a staff of cooks, cleaners, pet experts, fashion coordinators, gift wrappers and chicken-coop cleaners, true Marthahood is impossible to maintain. While there's no doubt that even with one hand tied behind her back in a neat grosgrain ribbon, Martha could still bake, clean and throw together a hibiscus garland before breakfast, it doesn't change the daunting nature of the lifestyle she encourages. Her most frequently used word is "perfect" -- as in perfect pie, perfect antique, perfect little party. It's a word few people have much real life experience of. Other words she chooses, the phrases that pepper her quaint reminiscences, suggest a scarily militaristic attitude, a "living" that doesn't leave much room for breathing. Fruits are "englighted" with crème fraîche, spring blossoms are "forced." And when she writes of a redecoration project that "My house will once again be the home I believe it should be," one can't help hearing an ominous "or else" at the end of it.

Her ordinary, mostly female fans can't possibly hope to achieve the pristine order of her Connecticut homestead, Turkey Hill -- the Graceland of good taste. And because we fall short whenever we try, Martha somehow manages to make us feel guilty. She's the flawless, accomplished older sister who makes us want to paraphrase Jan Brady and cry, "MarthaMarthaMartha! Why is it always about Martha?"

She's all too human. The public gloating over her every misstep may have been overzealous, but it was understandable too. Who wouldn't be intrigued by the lady of the manor being sued by ex-employees and contractors she apparently never compensated? Who wouldn't rubberneck when the woman who dedicated "Weddings" to husband Andy wound up in the midst of one of the nastiest public divorces of the '80s, a meltdown that culminated with the estranged spouses agreeing not to "harass or abuse the other party"? A 1997 unauthorized biography painted Martha as a screaming diva, given to frantic bouts of compulsive behavior and public fits of tantrum throwing. Neighbors who knew her in her early married days recalled Martha the dervish, frantically tidying and refurbishing her home in a kind of faster pussycat! clean! clean! mania. Former staffers have railed over her controlling behavior, and spurned friends cast her as an opportunist and a liar. Her Nutley upbringing, they suggest, was perhaps not as rosy as she has painted it in her writings (watch her barking orders at her mother on her show sometime and draw your own conclusions), her relationship with her daughter Lexi has been at times famously rocky. What a relief.

While a huge part of her appeal is in her seeming invincibility, surely another is in her apparent dark side. If half the pleasure of watching her and reading her comes from the way she instills in us a luxuriant fervor to say, "Hey! I want to do that!" the other comes from the lazy satisfaction of sitting back, cracking open a beer and thinking, "That woman must be out of her mind."

As maddening and unrealistic to duplicate as the world she creates is, it's still an awfully comfortable place to visit. We may never keep our own beehives or knit our own mittens, we may be forever baffled as to where to find sliced kombu or a 3/32-inch piece of basswood, but it's OK. Martha offers at least the fantasy of both an elegance to aspire to and a sentimental comfort to remember. And when we scatter rose petals over the dessert or artfully arrange a few milk bottles on the windowsill, we are, for a few brief moments of our otherwise slovenly and harried lives, Martha. And it feels perfect.
SALON | Feb. 16, 1999

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