Madoff auction is fascinating but sad theater of the absurd

Of all the opportunities for laugh-out-loud irony, I'll pick Lot No. 28. That was the Clarice Cliff ceramic art collection, priced at about $1,500, which included a Cliff biography titled "The Bizarre Affair."

That it was.

I was in New York over the weekend to visit my daughter, but she had to work on Saturday morning. That allowed me to pick from among hundreds of entertainment options and I did, racing in a New York minute to the Sheraton Hotel & Towers.

I could make my case that the choice was strictly professional. I joined members of the media from the New York Times to Der Spiegel to National Geographic, all there to document in painstaking detail the dispersion of Ponzi-schemer Bernie Madoff's plentiful, and frequently peculiar, belongings.

I could say also that this was personal. Madoff's insatiable greed trickled down to my close friends in the Twin Cities who were laid off from honorable Jewish nonprofits when burned benefactors cut back on donations.

Or I could admit the truth, which was that I was so fascinated by this feeding frenzy that I was among the first to arrive and could have sat in the front row if I wanted to, but that seemed too eager, so I picked the second.

The auditorium was soon packed with dealers and deal seekers and the plain curious, culling through 41 pages, single-spaced, of a once-dominating man's life and everything in it, and I do mean everything.

A young New Yorker behind me was gleeful to score a red couch for his apartment for a reasonable $975, cheaper than what he could find at Ikea. He's still debating whether to tell his friends the couch's back story.

You learn a lot at an auction like this, even though there's really never been an auction like this, except maybe the first Madoff auction of jewelry last year in New York. (A third and final blast is coming to West Palm Beach, Fla., next spring.)

First, you learn that money doesn't guarantee class. "With all that money, he should have had better taste," commented a smartly dressed and deeply annoyed Texas rancher. But she did plan to bid. "I didn't come all this way to sit," she said.

An observer from Ohio, now living in Switzerland, marveled at all the dreck. "My house has nicer things than this," she said, amazed.

Second, you learn that, recession be damned, there's still a lot of money out there. A man two rows back, looking as ordinary as you and me, bought Ruth Madoff's emerald-cut diamond engagement ring for $550,000, leaving with a casually dressed woman and no hint of who he was or why he wanted it. A Steinway grand piano, valued at $7,000 to $16,000, went for $42,000. A leather bull footstool (Madoff collected bull-themed stuff, which should surprise no one) was valued around $300 and went for $3,300.

Even Bob Sheehan struggled with this one. The tall, white-haired owner of Gaston & Sheehan Auctioneers of Pflugerville, Texas, has been an auctioneer for 30 years, "but has never done an auction with this type of interest," he said. "The reach was worldwide."

He worked completely professionally with a partner for nine hours, with just a few short breaks, until everything was sold. But the troubling back story was not lost on him. "I've always thought it's sad that a man that really was successful and had made, I guess, lots of money ... why he would ... why did he go where he went? Why did the train derail? That's something I don't understand."

Many others are asking that same question in the Twin Cities, which was particularly hard hit. "Madoff wiped out a bunch of charities. People were cleaned out of their retirements," said a spokesman for the Jewish nonprofit community, who requested anonymity. "The impact is on real people, people working to make the world a better place.

"Yes, it was a spectacle," he said of the auction, "but ruining lives is not a spectacle."

Today, we have a lovely antidote to Madoff Madness. It's called Give to the Max Day. (Go to giveMN.org for more information.) "Madoff," said the nonprofit spokesman, "leveraged for evil. Today, we can leverage for good."