And focusing on star power distracts us from substance, such as the off-camera moves to gut corporate reform.

Weill made oodles of money from his stock options, huge salary and bonus checks during the boom years, when Citi’s Wall Street subsidiary, Salomon Smith Barney, sold billions of dollars of now worthless securities to investors. Salomon has admitted wrongdoing, and Citi is trying to settle actual and potential charges. The hot news on Weill is that in 1999 he supposedly leaned improperly on Salomon’s star telecom analyst, Jack Grubman. The reason: Grubman’s changing his negative opinion on AT&T’s stock to positive would help Salomon get a big piece of a huge stock sale that AT&T was planning.

It certainly would make for a dramatic scene: in a clash of giant egos, the forceful Weill orders Grubman, no pushover, to change his AT&T opinion. Grubman and Weill have repeatedly denied that this happened. And one additional fact muddles the story line even more: Citi already had AT&T’s business, Grubman’s negative rating notwithstanding. Salomon was a lead underwriter of every AT&T debt and stock offering dating back to 1998, when Salomon and Smith Barney combined. AT&T also did extensive commercial-banking business with Citibank. Yes, Grubman turned positive on AT&T in November of 1999, and Salomon was a lead underwriter of the AT&T Wireless stock sale in April of 2000. But even after Grubman turned negative on AT&T again in October of 2000, Salomon stayed a lead underwriter in every debt and stock offering that AT&T made.

Weill and AT&T chairman C. Michael Armstrong are buddies, and sit on each others’ board. And people in the know say that Armstrong complained to Weill about Grubman’s trash-talking AT&T. So what? Having AT&T complain to your boss isn’t much fun–and I speak as someone who had that happen a few years ago. But it’s not illegal or even immoral for AT&T to complain and for the boss to listen. If the boss does something, that might be a story.

Now, to Martha. Unlike Weill, she’s a small fish–albeit a highly publicized one. We know what she did: selling 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems the day before the company disclosed an unfavorable ruling that sent the stock price reeling. It seems from the public record that her broker knew that ImClone’s controlling shareholders were selling and he suggested that Martha sell. Is that a crime on her part? Not at all clear. It’s an even bigger reach to say, as the SEC does, that she tried to manipulate the price of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia stock by proclaiming her innocence in ImClone.

Martha, who got $58 a share for her stock, may have a legal problem for allegedly misleading investigators by saying there was a plan for her to sell ImClone when it fell below $60. But this is trivial stuff. So why has Martha been on magazine covers (including NEWSWEEK’s) while bigger players–like Tyco’s Dennis Kozlowski and Enron’s Andrew Fastow and Adelphia’s John Rigas, who have been indicted for real crimes–got far less play? Star power over substance.

Whacking Stewart and Weill is certainly fun, and it’s nice to have tangible villains. Dealing with personalities is lots easier for pols and regulators and writers than dealing with boring stuff like accounting and the SEC’s budget and regulations covering 401(k) plans. But this is one of those times when substance really matters. William Webster is an honorable man. But speaking as an investor, I’d much rather have the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board run by a knowledgeable pension-fund manager in his 50s, like John Biggs of TIAA-CREF, the original candidate, than by a financially inexperienced 78-year-old. Trimming back the growth in the SEC’s budget, as the Bush administration has proposed, strikes me as a terrible idea. And the president’s recent 401(k) “reform” announcement totally missed the point. He addressed the problem of workers’ being unable to sell company stock in their 401(k)s when those accounts are frozen temporarily. The real problem is that employees often have far more 401(k) money invested in company stock than prudence suggests they should. Let’s fix that big problem, not the tiny one.

So obsess away about the Weills and Marthas. But remember that even the widest movie screen in creation isn’t large enough to show us the real big picture.