Posts Tagged ‘Crime’

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the green one red.

Macbeth to Lady Macbeth, 2.2 59-62, from the Arden edition.
   
     The courtroom in downtown Manhattan overflowed on Monday with tears of rage and tears of relief.  When U.S District Judge Denny Chin threw the book at Bernie Madoff,  described his $65 Billion Ponzi scheme as “extraordinarily evil,” and sentenced him to 150 years in jail, there was an outburst of spontaneous applause.
      The Swindler, Madoff, had stood in front of  the judge. He told him of his remorse. He spoke of his own disbelief at what he had done.  “I have left a legacy of shame,” he told the judge . “I cannot make any excuse for my behavior,” he said.  He turned and looked at some of his victims. But the judge was unmoved. ”The breach of trust was staggering,” he said. “The fraud was massive.”
     Bernie Madoff, the swindler, the destroyer of fortunes and murderer of dreams, doesn’t have the  face of a monster.  He has a rather kind face, full of warmth.   Hannah Arendt once used the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ when she was writing about  the trial of  mass murderer Adolf Eichmann.   Somehow, it seems apropos. Monsters very rarely look like monsters.  Sometimes they look like  Bernie.