It's hard to find any media coverage of the Bernie Madoff story that isn't drenched in a blood-thirsty for revenge tone. As everyone knows by now, Madoff received 150 years in prison for the crime of stealing money from affluent folks. And the whole world seems to be celebrating his sentence.
I'm not excusing what Madoff did, nor do I think the severity of his crimes is mediated by the fact that he stole from the rich. Madoff was no Robin Hood. He stole from the rich to give to the richer, namely himslef. What does bother me is the public's and media's celebration of his sentence.
I won't claim to have scoured the internet for stories offering a contrarian perspective; I could have looked longer and found more, but after spending the amount of time I did spend I became sick. I still can't get over the fact that everyone, those on the right, left, and in the middle, seem to think this matters. Madoff is being punished, but nobody is getting their money back and the dude is gonna die in prison. Why is this cause for celebration?
The only story I could find that offered anything resembling a critical perspective that goes against the prevailing punditry is this story on Alternet. Alternet is always good for offering an alternative.
This short piece simply asks us to consider why we celebrate the punishment of those who cheat the rich while we accept the fact that the poor get cheated and lied to on a daily basis and their swindlers never seem to receive any sort of punishment. Perhaps it is simple and this is just one more example of our glorification of wealth and the wealthy and our apathy towards the poor.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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Well my young friend, I would say a couple of things:
ReplyDelete1) I'm not surprised that you see even this punishment of an evil, rich man as somehow validating the rich/poor prism through which you see the world. The fact is, Madoff got punished for doing a terrible thing, period.
2) Our justice system is set up as a punitive, not retributive system...You get what you deserve, under the law, as administered by men and women in black robes...The sentence is NOT to help get the criminal better...There ARE punitive judgements that are, again, attempts to punish, not fix, the offender...and they are often ways to pay off victims, etc...Madoff got what he deserved as decried by the judge...And despite the belief that wealth buys a differential justice in our system (which, I believe, is exposed by evidence of wealthier individuals getting convicted less frequently than poorer ones) there are many, many instances where those we might expect to "get off" because of their wealth, get severe judgements because of what they did, etc...
3) Finally, there are plenty of cases where wealthy folks rip off EVERYONE, rich/poor, etc...and get nailed...You might be too young to remember someone named Charles Keating...the KING of the Savings & Loan debacle (eminating from the exact same thing that this current financial crisis came from...lax regulation and abuse of the system without any financial underpinning!) Despite significant wealth and measurable political clout (the Keating Five were 5 senators - one of whom was John McCain(!) - who enabled Keating and who were investigated and punished to varying degrees, albeit too lightly for my taste - because of their aid to Mr. Keating) Keating was tried and convicted...and received many years in jail...He truly WAS stealing from the more working class folks of this country to whom Savings & Loans catered...and it all fell apart when the ponzie scheme was unraveled...
While I understand your belief that somehow wealthy protect wealthy, I don't understand why you are shocked that there are no contrary views on Madoff...He is scum of the earth that abused all levels of people to enrich himself...who in his/her right mind would want to defend him and/or not rejoice in his 150 year sentence?
Cheers!