When Madoff turned to face his victims in the courtroom and spoke of his life as "tormented" by his cruelty, his victims were unmoved. The news that his wife cries herself to sleep every night, consoled only by the $2.5 million she will be allowed to keep, impressed no one -- and certainly not his victims, who cry themselves to sleep every night, too. Would the Madoffs shed tears of remorse if they hadn't gotten caught? Dante is merciless toward the greedy; less condemning toward the lustful.

So, too, the public reaction to the misdemeanors of our randy politicians, such as the adultery of Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. But for his remarkable press conference and continuing interviews, in which he looks more a fool than a sinner, he might have earned greater public sympathy.

Human frailty is fathomable -- and forgivable. Though the state briefly was left leaderless for love, South Carolina survived his absence. By printing the private letters between the governor and his mistress, the press looked even more prurient than usual. We felt sullied by reading them, but read them we did. Who among us would not take pleasure in being addressed as Beloved (and who among us would not feel foolish if an intimate letter to a beloved was held up for public entertainment)? This was not correspondence between Antony and Cleopatra, but the media were the asp in the grass.

Michael Jackson is a moral tale well told before -- a talented man who dies before ripening into maturity. By all accounts, he long ago snuffed out his talent with drugs and an obsession with cosmetic surgery that exposed the qualities of the outer man as something less than skin deep. The stick figure he left behind was pecked to death by the hordes of freeloaders at Neverland. He could moonwalk better than anyone else, but where ultimately did the walk take him?

"For all the gold that is beneath the moon, Or ever was," Dante wrote, "(it) never could buy repose."

Will we never learn?