RUTHFULLY YOURS

In Stephanie Madoff Mack’s telling, her husband Mark was plunged into a deep depression caused by his father’s heinous acts and by the opprobrium he faced from an angry public. His shame was so great that he attempted suicide once before he succeeded. Notwithstanding his debilitated mental state, Ms Madoff Mack took off for Disneyworld with her four year old daughter and her mother during the week that marked the second anniversary of the Madoff revelations and, in an act of incomprehensible judgment, left Mark to care for their 22 month old son. Despite the guilt that most people would feel at the knowledge that their child was alone with a mentally ill caretaker and ultimately with a hanging corpse for several hours, Ms. Mack points the finger of blame at her mother-in-law and brother-in-law for not having offered a better emotional support system for their tortured son and brother. The nationally televised interview was conducted by Chris Cuomo who served more as a teleprompter, offering such probing reminders to his subject as you were very angry or you were very upset.

Along with the viewing public, I would be more interested in finding out what deal was struck between the network and its interviewee to preclude Cuomo from askingsome of the following obvious questions on our minds:  how much money did you and Mark receive from Bernie as gifts; when you received 65 million dollars allowing you to live in three lavish homes,  did Mark, who worked in close proximity tohis father,  never question how Bernie was managing this and lastly, when you knew that the press would revive stories about Madoff during the anniversary of his apprehension, didn’t you think you should be with your fragile, suicidal husband to help him deal with the predictable pressure of this renewed publicity.

Ruth Madoff, the bookkeeper wife, who was in Bernie’s office practically every day, will appear on Sixty Minutes this coming Sunday, after which the New York Times will release its own lengthy interview of the woman who shared the life of immense wealth and luxury but claims to have been in the dark about its source. The Madoffs come across as exemplars of the same chutzpah epitomized by the defendant who kills his parents and throws himself at the mercy of the courts for now being an orphan. We may never know exactly what or how much the immediate family knew about Bernie’s manipulations but we do know that they were all intricately entwined, professionally and personally, in the family business and that they were all supported in their oversized lifestyles by this supposedly mysterious source.

While many of us will have our suspicions about why the family has not been indicted after all this time, and whether Bernie’s surrender involved a deal to help authorities retrieve as much money as possible in exchange for his taking the fall solo, we are being subjected to a barrage of publicity that serves more to confirm our suspicions than allay them. At no time in Stephanie Madoff Mack’s performance, did she express the desire to give part of the proceeds from the sale of her book and her publicity to help some of the victims of the Madoff fraud; at no time did she burst into tears of regret for leaving her husband alone with her child while he was so unstable; at no time did she express any squeamishness that the trappings of wealth she enjoyed and accepted as her due were all from one of the largest financial thefts in history. The final scenes of her interview show her frolicking in the ocean of a secluded beach with the children she would be better advised to sequester from the public eye rather than splash across our television and internet screens. As for Ruth and Andrew – playing the victim card is a very bad call this early in Bernie’s 150 year sentence – better to wait a century, until more of the walking wounded are deceased and the name Madoff  is slightly blurred in memory.