Madoff is evil and corrupt but not as evil and corrupt as Dick Cheney

¿Quién es más malvado?

We live in an era of heartless, revolting dishonesty, writes Pat Murphy in Sun Valley, Idaho’s Idaho Mountain Express:

Bernard Madoff, the New Yorker who fleeced investors of $50 billion with heartless precision, and Vice President Dick Cheney, a principal architect of America’s ruin as an envied world leader and engineer of calculated abuse of power, share the same amoral lack of ethics except for one distinguishing fact.    Madoff forlornly admits his revolting dishonesty and theft of investments from philanthropists, friends, foundations and celebrities.

However, right up to the last days of his dark reign, Cheney not only refuses to admit his deceit, but boasts that kidnapping and torture of terror suspects, wiretapping Americans, ignoring Congress, lying to the public, launching a war on fraudulent grounds, alienating overseas allies, pandering to loony religious agendas and legislating for the wealthy were collectively beneficial to Americans.

I won’t quibble with anyone about the mendacity of Darth Cheney, but I’m wondering if Madoff’s reported admission of malfeasance—- an acute attack of transient mensch manifestation syndrome?—really makes him any less of a disgrace.

And I’m thinking: Not so much.