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.

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