What’s in a name? Quite a lot, if you happen to have married into the Madoff family. Bernie’s daughter-in-law, Stephanie Madoff, wants to change her name to avoid association with the incarcerated fraudster. The wife of Bernie’s son, Mark, has asked New York Supreme Court for permission to change her surname to Morgan, citing death threats aimed at the family and an attempt to avoid any more embarrassment.
Not that you can blame her. A just-published 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll gave participants a list of disgraced public figures and asked who they would be most likely to forgive if they had to. Some of the candidates were met with relative leniency (22% of respondents opted to forgive philanderer Tiger Woods, and fugitive Roman Polanski got 3% of the vote). But Bernie? A big fat zero.
—Robert Murray
