Goodbye, Bernie. Maybe something good will come out of this
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Did I expect 150 years? Of course not. Would I have been satisfied with a third that many? For a 71-year-old gonif, you betch. The fact is, this guy pulled off a crime that is simply startling by its magnitude.
But there are two things that I still don’t understand — one that offends me and one that heartens me. The offensive: People are screaming for his head because of the sheer amount of money he stole. He caused huge suffering to real people, the crowd roars. It’s not like Ivan Boesky or other rascals who clearly broke the law — but you couldn’t really point a finger at their victims.
All true. BUT…why is it that we are more outraged when a billionaire wipes out other billionaires than when a run-of-the-mill scam artist cheats a little old lady out of her social security checks? Or charges destitute immigrants a fortune with bogus promises of help getting citizenship? Or charges deeply indebted people a hefty fee to allegedly help them get out of debt — and then does nothing?
These people are every bit as reprehensible as Bernie Madoff — in fact, far more, because they are playing off their victims’ desperation, while Madoff is playing off greed (yes, I know, I’m conveniently ignoring the charities he scammed). The dollar value shouldn’t matter — when you are left penniless, it doesn’t really matter if you’ve lost $1,000 or $1 million.
The one heartening thing: We have a history in this country of glamorizing big-time crooks. Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Jesse James, John Gotti, they’ve all been looked at with as much idolization as disapproval.
Bernie Madoff is the biggest crook we’ve ever seen. And he got away with it for decades. But I haven’t seen one sign of grudging respect, let alone idolatry.
Maybe, as a society, we are finally learning that villains are to be disdained, not extolled.
And lastly, maybe, just maybe, the huge publicity this case has gotten will persuade people of all financial statuses that cliches become cliches because they’re true. And that the old saws — there’s no such thing as a free lunch, anything that looks too good to be true probably is — have become cliches for just that reason. Maybe, if someone offers us a chance to double our money without risk — or to go to the head of the line for citizenship, or to settle our debts for 10 cents on the dollar — we’ll look askance rather than smile and sign away our cash.
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Claudia, you are so very right. Lower income people are preyed upon all the time. Mostly by the very system that is supposed to help them. If they have an appointment for food stamps, the office is way across town, they need childcare for their appt. and to take the bus, etc. Our society sets up all these roadblocks to the poor and we all look the other way. Being poor doesn’t just include lack of resources, it also includes lack of access/ability to get to those resources.
The biggest thing that bothers me about the BM case is the utter lack of shame from him. I know that most of his victims were wealthy, but how many of them worked really hard for that money? Made good decisions about investments (most of the time)? Are too old now to really go back to work? This is why I feel sorry for them.
Amen on that. Sometimes it seems as if this society conspires to keep people poor. I know that’s not the case, but on particularly gloomy days I almost feel that it is.
And yes, I feel sorry for Bernie’s victims. I want to see greater equality by bringing poor people up, not by pulling rich people down.
But I can’t fully agree with you on this one. Those who “Made good decisions about investments (most of the time)” almost by definition did not get wiped out by him. (The only way I forgive myself for never having sold my NYTimes stock is that I never put all my assets into it) Those who really believed that their money could keep doubling, through booms and busts, through terrorist attacks and hurricanes — I still feel sorry for them, of course I do, but they have to take some responsibility for their loss.
And if you saw BM (what wonderful initials for him!)at the sentencing hearing, he really did seem ashamed. Please, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that should have impacted his sentence (okay, maybe the judge should have just given him 148 years). But fair is fair, he really seems totally abashed.