Martha Stewart... A Good Thing?

Back in my days of writing for the Daily Universe, I wrote an opinion piece called "Martha's A Good Thing" in reference to my beloved Martha Stewart. It was at the very beginning of the ImClone scandal, long before she did time at Camp Cupcake. It was a (mostly) tongue-in-cheek piece about all the reasons to love Martha-- I think I came up with her creativity, the fact that she was a self-made woman, and her Polish heritage. I thought the whole thing was very clever, though it was maddening enough to one student that he wrote a letter to the editor blasting me for my "faulty logic" (figures he didn't have much of a sense of humor-- he worked at the copy center). Anyway, it was one of those things that was all at once pro-Martha and at the same time making fun of her enough that it would probably preclude me from any guest appearances on her show (though Anna G. from SNL makes frequent appearances).
Anyhow, Mutti and I were discussing Martha last night on our way home from the cabin. She and I agree that Martha's makeover-- you know, the post-prison pleasantries, etc.-- don't really suit her. She's trying for an image-revamp, but I'm not sure it's working.
And I wonder, is the whole thing hopeless? Once one falls from public grace can they make a full and speedy recovery? President Clinton seems to have managed. People still love all the stars in and out of rehab, though Michael Jackson seems beyond help (poor little Thriller). But do those same fickle and vertiginous rules apply to the everyday Jane on the street? I wonder, and I'm a little worried, because part of me feels the little glares from the people offended by my untarnished, yet sometimes sideways halo.
So what do you do when the people around you think they know what's going on in your life and get hurt about things that aren't real? Can you really apologize for something you didn't even do, or something that you didn't do on purpose? Unlike Martha, I still care what people think about me, but I don't know that I necessarily want an image makeover either. For better or worse, I'm probably going to be basically the same forever.