Giving Women a Bad Name

Raise hands, all those who believe that Ruth Madoff cries herself to sleep every night out of pity for her husband's victims.

What, no one?

Then raise hands, all those who believe that Ruth Madoff cries herself to sleep every night out of pity for herself.

One, two, three, eight million, twelve million, forty-two trillion .....

Her statement yesterday reflected astounding arrogance. The world remembers her frantically shuffling millions of dollars and pounds of jewelry around in the hours before her husband was arrested, trying to find somewhere to hide them that investigators couldn't find them or get to them, and flat-out lying about where they were going and why. The world remembers her bald-faced claims that millions of dollars in assets were hers and were totally unrelated to her husband's fraud. And a small part of the world remembers the frigid contempt with which she addressed waiters, hairdressers, tailors, and probably streetcar conductors during the decades in which she lived off money stolen from people who actually worked for a living.

As I often say, the problem with so many smart people is that they think that everyone else is stupid.

Am I picking on her because she's a woman, and women always go after their own more savagely than they go after men? No. I'm picking on her because she is no better than her husband, and because no one has picked on her sufficiently yet. I hope that will change.