That's the moral I get from reading the story of Martha Stewart.

There can't be many in the civilized world who don't know who Martha Stewart is or what she's accomplished. But now that she is in trouble with the law, I wonder if she may remember those who she is reputed to have climbed over on her way up. It appears, in fact, it was one of these very folks, a junior stockbroker, that she tried to muscle in her alleged insider stock sale.

And it also appears that it might be his testimony that the government hopes will do her in.

I don't hold any brief one way or the other for Martha Stewart. Clearly, she is or was a very successful woman. But if her unauthorized biographies are to be believed her success was in part based on her willingness to ride roughshod over those who got in her way.

And, although she appeals to a lot of women for her ability and her knowledge of style, she does seem to be immensely self-assured, even arrogant in her persona. Nothing ever goes wrong in a Martha Stewart program.

Besides that she seems to have an ego larger than the average. Who else has a magazine named after them? Who has a corporation named after themselves?

Not many of us, I'd guess.

Indeed, Martha Stewart's success is, in large measure, because she has unrelentingly pushed her image and her seeming limitless knowledge on the world of style and grace.

You know: "It's a good thing."

The implication is that if Martha tells you it's a good thing, it is.

You just don't argue with Martha, everything Martha does is exactly right, no one knows as much about any subject related to style, as does Martha.

But if she knew, as she should have, about stock sales—she was once, after all, a broker herself—then she wasn't listening to those who knew better.

Whatever the outcome of her case—and to the casual observer the government's case doesn't look that great—she has been forced to eat humble pie for a while. One would think that might be a lesson to her.

I suspect, however, that it won't be, simply because people like Martha have a fatal flaw. They can't be wrong and anyone who thinks they are isn't worth dealing with.

All this also apparently can be said for Howell Raines, the former executive editor of the New York Times, who resigned recently over the fraudulent reporting of a couple of Times reporters. One just outright faked much of his stories. The other used a lot of information gathered by a "stringer," but didn't give the stringer (a part time piece-work reporter) any credit in his story.

Raines had the best of motives trying to foster ethnic diversity in the Times staff. But it turns out that Raines apparently let bad judgment overtake bad reporting. Even ethnic diversity has to have its limits.

And, in the end, Raines was done in by his poor judgment. But there may have been more to it than that. Raines also had made a lot of enemies by the way he treated other members of the staff. And this didn't help when the Times, which views itself a paragon among newspapers. The paper realized it had to clean its escutcheon, as it were, if it were to continue in that role. So Raines had to go and, finally, he took the hint and did.

I suppose the Times will be better for it. It will at least be able to hold up its head, having rid itself of an unfortunate and overbearing editor. Then we may think of it even as we think of Sammy Sosa and his cork bat: an unfortunate mistake.

And yet ... No paragon ever really is.

Like the day I discovered a column by the late William Lawrence, its science editor, had been lifted almost word for word from a NASA press release. After that I realized that even paragons have feet of clay, if I can coin a cliché.

Thus the moral I get from both these stories. No one is infallible, no one is perfect. Be nice to those you work with, no matter what their relationship or position may be. The associate you offend may some day be in a position to give you an equal amount of pleasure or pain.

Or as the Bible says, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."

That rule was written down a long time before either Martha Stewart or The New York Times captured our attention. Let's hope it is still around a long time after they are both gone.

Carl Heintze is a frequent contributor to the Willow Glen Resident. He can be reached at feodorh@juno.com.