[RedStripe]

I think the whole "Surreal Life" idea of this thread is hilarious because of the wildly different personalities and characters of the people mentioned. But since the topic of conversation has turned to something else, I wanted to add my two cents.

I think it is validly debatable on which type of crime is worse (violent attack of a single individual due to anger/rage VS manipulative and remorseless deception fueled solely by greed), obviously, depending on how you define worse. So I won't go there. But I did want to say that in general, white collar crime is not nearly, not even remotely as fairly punished as compared to other more "common types" of crime. And as we have seen in the last few years, people's complete disregard for proper ethical behaviour and sound judgement has caused a tremendous loss hurting many many people.

So I personally wouldn't call their transgressions miles apart. Moreover, what Martha did wasn't even remotely as bad as what people like Kozlowski, Ebbers, Skilling, and Scrushy. Now those guys in my book were just bad, bad, bad.