She’s still a diva after all these years.
The domestic dominatrix and fashion-forward ex-convict Martha Stewart made a sulky star turn this week at Manhattan Civil Court, behaving like a well-dressed pawn in a boys’ game of “Let’s Get Martha.’’
She hasn’t changed a smidgen since 2004.
That’s when the self-appointed queen of home decor was tried and convicted of lying about a stock trade in a bid to protect her company’s bottom line, then frog-marched off to federal prison, where she played the ultimate girly-girl victim.
This time around, the stakes are even higher.
She’s now 71, with good skin and great hair. Martha showed up in court wearing a cream-colored Hermès blouse, reported the oh-so-serious Web site CNNMoney, chocolate suede Manolo Blahnik booties, and a treacherously short Lanvin skirt, which showed off Martha’s still-shapely gams. She wore more money on her back than most of the folks to which she sells her tchotchkes earn in six months.
But she’s Martha! Never one to miss an opportunity for product placement, she dumped the obscenely pricey Birkin handbags she schlepped to her federal trial, and clutched, like a cheap life raft, an Avery tote available from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia at Staples, purveyor of affordable office supplies — for the modest price of $79.99-$99.99!
Even in the dregs of the courthouse, Martha’s working it.
Martha, along with JCPenney stores, is being sued by retail giant Macy’s. She allegedly went behind Macy’s back, violating an exclusivity agreement, and signed a $200 million deal to hawk such products as cast-iron casseroles at downmarket Penney’s.
As is generally the case with the greedy gourmand of home furnishings, Martha doesn’t want to address the issues. She prefers instead to simply change the subject.
And the subject, according to Martha, is sexism.
Yesterday on the “Today’’ show, she bitched about her ill treatment by Macy’s CEO Terry Lundgren. She whined that Lundgren hung up on her — on Martha! — after she told him in 2011 that she’d signed up with Penney’s. They haven’t spoken since.
“Terry Lundgren is the consummate CEO,’’ Martha told Matt Lauer. “He is an excellent businessman. He should be able to discuss business in a businesslike fashion. Hanging up on a woman — a businessperson — I think was rude and not right.’’
On the witness stand, she suggested to Judge Jeffrey Oing that the suit was a nuisance designed to persecute her.
“It just boggles my mind that we’re sitting here, Judge.’’
Will playing the chick card work?
Despite Martha’s gyrations, her company might be in trouble. MSLO, makers of floral linen bed skirts that she unloads on penny-pinching Kmart shoppers, reportedly lost $56 million in the last year and laid off 12 percent of its staff.
She may live to regret the snooty barbs she aimed at Kmart shoppers, to whom she’s catered since 1997.
‘‘I paid the price for going mass market very early on: The Garden Club of Greenwich canceled my speaking engagement,’’ she testified.
Poor folks, she said, “were buying polyester; they were buying designs that were really, really sad.’’
Martha said her friends told her, ‘‘Oh, poor people don’t do their laundry as often as rich people, so they don’t want light colors.’’
But then Martha started separating less-affluent folks from their paychecks. “I released towels in pastels like pink, yellow and sage green. Our bestselling color towel that year was white, and I’m so proud of that.’’
What’s wrong with polyester?
The infomercial Martha delivered in court, presenting herself as the trod-upon esthetic savior of the little people, might not help her.
This case is about money and treachery, not misogyny and high thread counts. The trial goes on.
Whether or not Martha Stewart loses her silken shirt, she is certain to shed her swagger.
5-hr.-commute kid going places
Give this young superstar a medal.
It is humbling in today’s “me, me’’ culture that Santiago Munoz thinks little of getting up at 5 a.m. each day to begin a 5 1/2-hour round-trip commute from Far Rockaway to prestigious Bronx HS of Science, the longest educational sacrifice known to exist. He thinks he’s lucky.
“The trip I do every day to get to school everyone should be willing to do to get a good education, Munoz, 14, told The Post’s Jennifer Fermino. “I think I’m privileged to take a train compared to a donkey.’’
Some Third World kids who, like Munoz, are featured in a photo exhibit at the United Nations, walk an hour to school through war zones.
A Brazilian child commutes by donkey-back, a journey shorter than Munoz’s two-train, two-bus excursion.
Is it worth it? Munoz will go far, and I don’t mean on the train. Bravo.
Name this baby ‘Hope’
Are we witnessing a miracle in our times?
A tot born with HIV shows no traces of illness after aggressive treatment with anti-AIDS drugs from the time the tyke was just 30 hours old, doctors shouted.
The child, from Mississippi and now 2, has been off the drugs for a year now, and remains AIDS-free. If the baby stays well, this marks only the world’s second reported case of a cure for the dreaded affliction. Faith, and modern American medicine, just might hold the answer to a global scourge.
A wealthy dose of Mike
What recession?
Mayor Bloomberg’s pocketbook fattened by an astonishing $5 billion last year to $27 billion, making Hizzoner the 13th-richest human on the planet, Forbes magazine reported. Bloomberg was worth a piddly $5 billion in 2002 when he took office and gave up day-to-day operations of Bloomberg LP, the financial- information company he still largely owns.
One source told The Post’s David Seifman that Bloomberg could actually be worth a lot more than is written. Should he care? You can only ride aboard one private luxury jet at a time.
I just wish he could do something about keeping down transit fares.
Now hear this! It’s parents’ job
Hearing loss in youngsters has been a problem at least since we started blasting music into headphones decades ago. But after banning nearly every yummy thing you can eat and drink, Mayor Bloomberg’s Health Department is now planning a social-media campaign aimed at reducing the volume in earbuds kids stick in their heads from personal MP3 players.
Preventing kids’ hearing loss is a worthy cause. But I doubt youngsters, who think they’re invulnerable, will listen to the music of government nannies. I wish parents would yank the buds out of children’s ears.
Manufacturers should lower the volume on MP3 players. It’s the only way customers will be able to hear what they’re selling down the road.