Broken-hearted man

Over on the Brian Lehrer show, he's calling it "estate planning by massive coronary." And that is certainly true.

Mr. Lay testified at his trial that his net worth had declined to liabilities of $250,000, hampered by mounting legal bills and poor-performing investments. But his finances were apparently not so dire. According to legal documents filed at the federal courthouse here Friday, Mr. Lay had holdings in an investment account at Goldman Sachs valued at $6.3 million.

In addition, prosecutors said that Mr. Lay's full-floor luxury apartment in this city's River Oaks district had at least $1.5 million in value that could be forfeited to the United States.

The government's forfeiture effort ahead of the planned sentencing of Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling this fall, however, has been thrown into doubt, at least in relation to Mr. Lay's assets since the death of a criminal defendant before his sentencing and the appeal process may void the criminal case against him.

"Technically, he was found guilty, but that's extinguished as of today," said Joel M. Androphy, a prominent defense lawyer in Houston.

Ah, but Crazy Peggy is having none of that.

Putting aside all judgments and conclusions, all umbrage, outrage and indignation, and all debates on who was most responsible for the Enron scandal--putting all those weighty and legitimate concerns aside--isn't it obvious that Ken Lay died of a broken heart? We forget that people do, or at least I forget, but they do.

His life was broken and would never be healed. Or if it was to be healed it would happen while he was imprisoned, for the rest of his life, with four walls to look at. All was wreckage around him. He died, of a massive coronary. But that can be another way of saying broken heart.

Um, no, but, undeterred, she goes on to lament the passing of an age when he could have jumped bail and spent the rest of his life relaxing in Umbria. And she blames CNN for that.

You could hide or start over. As late as the 1950s a Blanche Dubois could have confidence her tale of lost love would be believed. She could rely on the kindness of strangers.

But no one's quite a stranger anymore.

Now, with modern media, there's no place to hide. In the age of Google there's an endless pixel trail.

You can't disappear and start over because you can't disappear.

And--I'm serious--there's a sadness to this, a less human, less rich, more constricted and constricting quality to modern life because of it.

Only Peggy Noonan could find a one-degree of separation between Ken Lay and Blanche DuBois (though the play premiered in 1947, not "the fifties;" are she and her editors that lazy?).

Hat tip to Madame Cura.