Lifestyles of the VRWC

Richard Mellon Scaife is a name more or less synonymous with the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. His money funded the American Spectator's relentless but mostly fruitless search for something to pin on the Clintons, and his money is a key underpining of a range of right-wing stink tanks. He's a billionaire, not one of the really big billionaires, but still comfortable, and he made his money the old fashioned way, by inheriting it.

It's nice to know, though, that even an old scoundrel like RMS knows how to have fun. A lot of the details are coming forth thanks to an angry divorce. David Segal's Washington Post story dishes some of the dirt. The tasteful headline reads:

Low Road to Splitsville:Right-Wing Publisher's Breakup Is Super-Rich In Tawdry Details

Segal can't resist some schadenfreude:

Remember him? The cantankerous, reclusive 75-year-old billionaire who's spent a sizable chunk of his inherited fortune bankrolling conservative causes and trying to kneecap Democrats? He's best known for funding efforts to smear then-President Bill Clinton, but more quietly he's given in excess of $300 million to right-leaning activists, watchdogs and think tanks. Atop his list of favorite donees: the family-values-focused Heritage Foundation, which has published papers with titles such as "Restoring a Culture of Marriage."

It seems that Scaife's sixty year-old wife became suspicious and had him followed, to a very seedy motel - $28 for three hours - remember, RMS is worth about $1.3 billion. There he regularly met his mistress, a woman with a checkered legal past including an arrest for prostitution. The real fun ensued after his wife spotted the mistress entering Scaife's house. Hysteria, an arrest (of the wife), a dognapping (by Scaife), and two more arrests for the scorned wife followed.

The marriage was the second for each, but somehow Scaife neglected a rather essential ingredient of billionaire financial hygiene: a pre-nup. His loss, but lifestyle fans gain, I suppose.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more