{"id":4551,"date":"2010-12-12T08:38:54","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T13:38:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=4551"},"modified":"2010-12-12T13:18:24","modified_gmt":"2010-12-12T18:18:24","slug":"in-the-mirror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/12\/12\/in-the-mirror\/","title":{"rendered":"cracks in the mirror…"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
Mark Madoff, son of Bernie Madoff, had it all<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n
before dad’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme was exposed<\/a><\/strong>
New York Daily News<\/font><\/strong>
By Jonathan Lemire and James Fanelli
December 11th 2010<\/div>\n

Mark Madoff, the handsome prince of Bernie Madoff’s ill-gotten kingdom, lived the sweet life before his father’s $65 billion scam imploded. During one three-month period in 2008, he racked up more than $77,000 chartering private jets to hopscotch around the country. He vacationed at his $6.5 million, 3.3 acre retreat in Nantucket and a stately farmhouse in tony Greenwich, Conn. The seasoned fly fishermen also frequently planned outdoor excursions. <\/p>\n

"Mark loved his lifestyle, loved the fact he could fly on a private jet or walk into Dunhill and spend $200 on an umbrella," a trader told Vanity Fair in 2009. His family life seemed just as enviable. The 46-year-old had been happily married since 2003 to his second wife, Stephanie, a stunning blonde who was a rising star in the fashion industry. The couple had two young children and raised them in an exclusive SoHo building that rocker Jon Bon Jovi also called home…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
The journalists seemed to be struggling to find something to say about Mark Madoff’s suicide – that he was a victim of his father’s sins, that he was worried about being sued, that his wife was off in Florida and changed her name, that he was depressed. I didn’t personally feel anything that felt authentic when I heard it yesterday – kind of blank. I remember reading that the brokerage upstairs that he and his brother ran wasn’t doing well and had been chronically supplemented with money from dad’s operation – an expensive ‘front’ for Dad’s real business on the floor below. <\/div>\n
\n
But the high life vanished exactly two years ago Saturday, when he and his brother turned their father into the feds. After his dad’s arrest, Mark Madoff and his family became pariahs, and many victims believed he was complicit in the Ponzi scheme. He and his family suffered death threats. A fusillade of lawsuits – including a $200 million claim by Bernie Madoff’s bankruptcy trustee – has also restricted his spending and movement of finances.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I guess I thought of the family as complicit in the scheme, whether they knew about it or not – living the high life based on Daddy’s Money; "stunning wife," "exclusive SoHo building," "stately farmhouse in tony Greenich, Conn.," "chartering private jets to hopscotch …" <\/p>\n

\n
The Madoff stigma became so bad that even his wife turned her back on his family’s name. Last February, she petitioned a Manhattan judge to change her last name to Morgan. Friends said Mark Madoff buckled under the infamy, withdrawing socially, obsessing over news accounts and fearing the possibility he would be criminally charged one day. The stress exacerbated a chronic stomach-pain condition and frayed his marriage, according to reports.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
As I write this, I do remember feeling something when I saw it on television. "He still lives there?" was the thought that went with the feeling as I realized that he was still in SoHo. I remembered a book, Trapped in the Mirror<\/strong>. It was about children raised by self absorbed parents whose personae are built from their parent’s projections. An earlier book, Prisoners of Childhood<\/strong> addressed the same topic – kids who become the window dressing for their parent’s pathology and struggle throughout life with vague feelings of emptiness and aloneness as they live out their parents dreams.<\/div>\n

I know I don’t personally see a great deal of difference between Bernie Madoff and the Hedge Fund Managers or bonus-rich CEOs who live that life. It all seems like a scam to me – filtering money out of our economy to pay for such an excessive lifestyle. But as I think about it, my feeling about Mark Madoff is something else. He seemed locked into the life that was created for him. If two years ago he had thrown his "stuff" into the mix of the Madoff estate, moved to Painted Rock Alabama [maybe with some arbitrary name], and gotten a real job – I’d feel differently. So would he. Instead, he committed suicide with his two year old son Nicholas in the next room – trapped in SoHo<\/em>, a prisoner of Madoff<\/em>. Apparently all he could see was the cracks in the mirror.<\/p>\n

This is<\/u> the stuff of trans-generational psychopathology, but probably not directly because of the sins of the fathers<\/em>. I expect Mark didn’t really know who he was, and didn’t know he didn’t know until 2 years ago. I doubt that it was Bernie and Ruth’s ill-gotten wealth or even their fall from grace that lead to his suicide. It was likely more in their failure to teach Mark how to find a self and a life of his own [probably because they were never taught themselves]. Let’s hope the now Ms. Stephanie Morgan can help Nicholas escape the Madoff family curse…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Madoff, son of Bernie Madoff, had it all before dad’s billion-dollar Ponzi scheme was exposed New York Daily News By Jonathan Lemire and James Fanelli December 11th 2010 Mark Madoff, the handsome prince of Bernie Madoff’s ill-gotten kingdom, lived the sweet life before his father’s $65 billion scam imploded. During one three-month period in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}