The mystery of Skilling's guilt

Everybody's talking about Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker article about Skilling. John Carney at Dealbreaker has the best little summary. Of course therein lies Gladwell's talent -- he knows how to get people talking. He's got a clever little point about the difference between a puzzle and a mystery.  It manages to make sense to everybody even though you can't quite put your finger on what it means.

And, then, he adds the trump card of a new take on an old but still-interesting story. Skilling was everybody's favorite villain, but we're tired of talking about that.  So how about this angle -- although we still don't know exactly what Skilling did wrong (if anything), he'll be rotting in jail for a generation!  Wow. How cool.

I've already pointed out a zillion times that the criminal laws were wildly inappropriate to deal with this case.  Just maybe Gladwell's found a way to say it that people will finally listen to, even if they don't really understand it.

Comments

[Mary]

Fascinating that you bring this up on the day that poor Rick Causey, Andy Fastow's greatest victim, entered Federal prison destined to serve more years than Andy.

[vnjagvet]

Having read the article, it occured to me that Petrocelli would have done well to talk with Gladwell before final argument; that is, of course, if Gladwell had the understanding of the case before final argument was made.