My thoughts on Martha and bloggers...

I finally had a chance to watch the Martha Stewart interview that is making waves in the blogging community. In the interview Martha {yes, we are indeed on a first name basis} questioned "who are these bloggers?  They aren't trained editors at Vogue magazine." This comment had me curious.  Was Martha an editor at Vogue? What is her degree in?  According to biography.com Martha Stewart has a degree in European and Architectural history {a degree I would probably steer my kids clear of, because really, what does one do with that?}.

Martha Stewart is a gourmet cook who taught herself the skill from Julia Child's cookbooks.  She used this knowledge to start a catering business and then turned her skills at entertaining into publishing books on the same topic.  She's a smart business woman, who by all accounts is an expert with life experience, but no formal training. I think that Martha seems intimidated by bloggers taking over a niche that she once was so darn good at and ultimately seemed to have cornered.   Martha Stewart is a brand.   She's a company, she's got many people who work for her and who appreciate and scour non-expertly written blogs.  {Her people have stumbled upon my blog more than once.} She features bloggers on her show and she caters to them.  We provide revenue for her, we support her products, we test them and then we pimp them out.  Martha even features something called Martha's circle which showcases the latest news from her community of bloggers. For her to downplay how important bloggers are in our social media driven world is a bit one sided when in the interview she just talked about how Twitter is a good business move for her.  Supporting bloggers and these everyday moms and women would have been a better business move for her than trying to discount how important talented every day people are who just so happen to have the guts to put themselves out there and write about the process.   Her comment is very Martha Stewart.  She's not known as a sensitive caring individual.  She's known as a cut throat business woman.  I used to TiVo her show and when I watched it, I always felt like I was watching a train wreck.  There was more than one occasion that she made her guests feel awkward on the show {so much so that I was cringing at home} .  Martha Stewart isn't the most humble person.  She looks out for herself and is happy to plow down anyone who gets in her way. People are mad at Martha.  I'm not mad at Martha because her comment isn't out of character.  I never really liked her as a person.  She's a smart business woman with great style and talent, but I would never want to go to coffee or spend time with her. {probably a good thing because I'm cutting out all of my chances to  be a guest on her show by writing this} To say that I respect her less would be more like it. What do you think?