The two faces of Michael Milken

Just finished James Marshall's Den of Thieves, which chronicles the insider trading scandals of the 80s that had Michael Milken at their center. As I read the book, which depicted Milken as a voracious, mendacious, controlling paranoiac who one year grossed $550 million for himself but still wasted hours haggling over twenty grand, I thought: this doesn't quite jibe with another Michael Milken I've read about.

So I went back and tracked down Keith Ferrazzi's mega-bestseller Never Eat Alone, in which he gives a fluff job to the man he can scarcely hold himself back from calling "Mikey." (As in "Let Mikey try it, he'll eat anything."). Here's the pearl of wisdom Mikey shares with Keith: "There are three things in the world that engender deep emotional bonds between people. They are health, wealth, and children." I guess that's what Milken had on his mind when he wrote volumes on how to commit new securities frauds back in the eighties.

So which is the true face of Milken? That of the hard-nosed financier ready to rape anybody for a nickel? Or the air-brushed version his legions of flacks would concoct to approximate him to his eternally bemused doppelganger, Ted Danson.

You be the judge. Me, I always figured that capital punishment should be reserved for crimes of capital.