When You’ve Got Good PR, Who Needs Shame?

We crossed one threshold of shame back when stars fighting addiction became “Entertainment Tonight” staples. Gone was AA with its anonymity. In was Betty Ford. Far from being an impediment, detox turned out to be a good career move.

Now we’re crossing another threshold as Martha Stewart emerges Friday from doing time at Alderson Federal Prison Camp more marketable than when she went in. The Old Martha was on cable (except for those occasional short segments paired with a Cuisinart on the third-rated “CBS Morning News”). The New Martha, who will be under house arrest for five months at her 153-acre Bedford, N.Y., estate, has escaped the ghetto of the high-numbered channels to breathe the clear air of the networks with two new shows, one of which is the only sanctioned spinoff of Donald Trump’s top 10 show, “The Apprentice.” She’s so hot, ankle bracelets could become stylish.

I’m all for ex-cons going on to lead fulfilling lives once they’ve paid their debt, but I do think they ought to start with a small show of remorse. Martha is having her comeback without even admitting what she did was wrong or apologizing to the poor schlubs who bought the stock she unloaded just before it tanked. At least drug recidivist Robert Downey Jr. pleaded for forgiveness before his comeback.

I had moments of sympathy for Martha, especially when I felt the prosecutor had gone too far. Men engage in insider trading every day at lunch. Was Martha singled out for trading while female? Then, when the prosecutor couldn’t get her for the underlying crime, he sent her to jail for making false statements. Some of her sentence had to be for just being so uppity and so devoted to table settings and glue guns. So I was proud of her for taking her lumps like a man when so few men in her situation do. (Enron’s Ken Lay, who plundered his company, leaving hundreds of clerks and secretaries penniless, is still hiding behind lawyers in a Houston mansion.)

But still, did she need to be so defiant about it? She went into prison early (deciding not to wait until her appeals were concluded), but only so she could be out in time for planting season. Only rappers get to be that remorseless. Snoop Dogg can be charged with murder, get cleared and then watch his next CD go platinum. But white-collar felons usually beg for forgiveness and do good works.

After serving 22 months, for instance, Michael Milken devoted himself to his ongoing philanthropic efforts and raising money for cancer research. Wealthy real estate developer and Sotheby Chairman A. Alfred Taubman, who was ratted out by his assistant, returned to polite society after serving nearly a year for price fixing to give away even more money than before. He’s also restoring the riverfront in depressed inner-city Detroit.

Martha shares something with them: They all came out looking better physically than when they went in. Taubman was noticeably svelter after a diet absent foie gras. Martha lost weight and the helmet coif. Milken learned there was life without a toupee.

What she doesn’t have in common with old-time white-collar felons is shame. And that’s the reason “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart” ultimately won’t work for her. It’s one thing if she were just returning to a show where she painted her henhouse aubergine and awoke at dawn to gather dewy grass for a spring centerpiece. It’s quite another to hold herself up as the role model for budding entrepreneurs. Really, there’s got to be some morality in a morality play.

The program Martha’s been training for on the inside should really be called “Crime Spinners.” Her five months inside were all about spin -- marketing her corporate turnaround and buffing her image. I lapped it all up: “Nice Spice Rack,” screamed the New York Post after Martha reportedly lifted seasonings out of the prison commissary and stuffed them in her bra. She taught yoga, helped inmates write letters and adapted haute cuisine to the microwave.

“Crime Spinners” would continue the effective work of her PR team. Each week would showcase a diverse and ever-changing group of panelists who would be taught how to succeed as an ex-con without being sorry. She could round up Bernie Ebbers, Kenny Boy Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Jack Grubman, Tom DeLay. (I’m assuming a little here, but some of these will appear second season.) She could teach the fine art of calligraphy when writing or endorsing checks of dubious provenance, how to use corporate aircraft for private vacations, securing loans that never have to be repaid and serving camomile tea in fine china cups while doing it.

Trump could make a guest appearance to show how your companies can go bankrupt but you keep the jet, the mansions and the beach property. She won’t be able to call on fellow remorseless recent ex-con Lizzy Grubman, the PR person who mowed down 16 people with her Mercedes outside a club in the Hamptons. The minute she got out of prison, she began rehearsals for her own show on MTV. Crime catapulted her from pimping for starlets to being one.

Shame is so last season. Let me this one time emulate the Donald: Martha, you’re fired.