I’m only slightly younger than these two characters. I don’t know if I ever have look on my face like that. I hope not. It seems like I’d know it if I did. Those are not the kind of faces I’d like to live inside of as an older man. Dick and Bernie are both former young men of promise and ambition who pushed and shoved their way to the top – now they’re living inside of those looks.
I expect both of them had something different in mind for their later lives. I don’t know much about Madoff. He was out and about moving in high class circles, but the few articles people write about his life make him sound like a private guy, eating with just his wife at the same Italian Restaurant every week, moving from big house to big house. When you’ve got something that huge to hide, it’s hard to get too close to other people. I gather the Cheney’s are more gregarious, but hanging out with a bunch of rich conservatives doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. He’s spent a couple of weeks going around talking about how good he feels about the job he and Bush have done, but it’s been a monologue without any audible applause. Madoff, on the other hand, hasn’t said anything.
They are both widely reviled old men, about to walk into the twilight of life carrying the weight of their history with them. Neither Madoff’s silence nor Cheney’s revisionist view of himself changes the facts or the devastating impact they’ve had on the people who trusted them.
They’re both tragic figures. In Aristotle’s Poetics, he talked about the elements of a good tragedy. There was a figure of promise and ambition who was pushing and shoving his way to the top. Early in the story, a tragic character flaw, some piece of the persona that wasn’t quite right, was revealed. As the story progressed, the flaw became more apparent and ultimately resulted in the character’s downfall. In those Greek Tragedies, the actors often wore masks to portray the faces of their characters – masks that looked like the faces of Dick and Bernie…
I was curious about Cheney’s family background so I started looking. His Dad was a soil conservation agent for the Dept of Agriculture. His Mother was a softball player. I know that isn’t much to go on but I’m sure with Cheney’s penchant for secrecy anything he doesn’t want us to know has already been scrubbed. We know Addington’s Dad was a General so he shows the signs in practically every way mentally and phsically. What corrupts and makes some people so awful for lack of a better word? He has children and grandchildren, like others who want their families to have clean air and water and futures without evil doers destroying their futures. So what is it that makes him bypass those things in his brain?