Academic

I can't pretend to have read Dante's Divine Comedy.  I do know that, in it, the author offers a vision of hell -- the Inferno -- that's organized like a parking garage.  Each descending level is reserved for a different class of wrongdoers.  Circle 2, for example, is reserved for the lustful. Circle 3 for the gluttonous.   Circle 7 for the violent.  Circle 8 is for sorcerers, hypocrites, frauds and deceivers, like Bernie Madoff.  Circle 9 is for those for betray their friends.  Oh right, like Bernie Madoff.

Circle 9 is as low as one can go.

Later today, Bernie Madoff will learn of his sentence at a courthouse on Pearl Street in NYC.  Much of the drama has gone out of the event -- the judge has aleady entered a forfeiture order for $170 billion.  None of the Madoff family is expected to be in court.

Still, the sentencing will be a spectacle.  Victim allocution will take up much of the day.

Some victims, like Ruth Madoff's sister Joan (now bankrupt in Florida), have said "pffft" to Bernie and won't be in the courtrom.  Other victims wasted no time in signing up to be heard.  They are a colorful group -- a concert promoter; a politician; a model; a long-time friend of the Madoff family; a middle-aged mom with both a teenager and aging parents now dependent on her; a former Madoff employee who lost his job and his reputation overnight.  It is fair to say some combination of rage, fear, vanity, pain, and a sense of the historical moment drive these people to speak to the court.  For some, the experience will be as defining as the fact and magnitude of their loss.