Sure, it’s Bernie whose very name is so universally reviled, and it’s Bernie who is at this very moment tossing salads or whatever the prison kids call it nowadays, but no one – no one – is suffering more than the missus, Ruth Madoff.  The NY Times has an article about her entitled The Lonliest Woman In New York, is how bad things are for her.

The Amagansett florist who decorated her husband’s annual corporate party in Montauk with lismachia, Queen Anne’s lace and thistles has banned her as a client, saying she will not associate with the wife of one of history’s most notorious financial scoundrels.

The florist, y’all.  She got banned from a florist.  No one ever gets banned from a florist! Aphids don’t even get banned from florists and they eat the flowers. She’s also been asked not to return to her hair salon where she gets her regular hair coloring, either subjecting herself to the horrors of SuperCuts or the rest of us to her natural hair color.  If you looked up the word ‘pariah’ in the dictionary, you would not see her picture because even the word for what she is wants nothing to do with her.

Needless to say, she’s no longer in any social circles.  Of course, it doesn’t help that those social circles, like the restaurants she’s unofficially banned from, are made up of the very people her husband swindled out of millions of dollars. One restuarant would welcome her back, under one condition:

Oriente Mania, the general manager of Sette Mezzo, an Italian restaurant on Lexington near 70th Street, said he would open his doors to Mrs. Madoff only if she paid $160 due from a meal she and her husband had in December. While Mr. Madoff had written a check to cover the bill, prosecutors had blocked it from being cashed, he said.

One tip for Mr. Mania, though: if a hedge fund manager has to pay for his meal with a check, there is probably a reason for it. Just throwing that out there.

It’s kind of funny, really.  Ted Bundy received love letters when he was on death row, even though he killed thirty people. Ruth? Her sons won’t even call her “Mom” anymore, even though she hasn’t been charged with any crime. She just kind of hangs around her penthouse all day, except the penthouse may be seized later this month by the bankruptcy trustees, and won’t that be fun. Where she will go afterwards is anyone’s guess; her Palm Beach house is already gone and she has had all her assets frozen except for food money.

You’ll have to search long and hard to find anyone who has an inkling of sympathy for her. It’s widely accepted that she was at best a complicit beneficiary of her husband’s scam and at worst a knowing accomplice. Having pulled $15m worth of money out of an account just a few days before the story broke makes her look a smidge guilty, and her complete and utter lack of effort to restore her good name in the past six months just doesn’t help either.

Maybe I’ll write her a love letter.  That would brighten her day, wouldn’t it?