OK, here’s some good stuff:
If you are tired of family-values Republicans being exposed as vile hypocrites you’re not going to want to read the WashPost’s detailing of Richard Mellon Scaife’s divorce woes. If, however, you agree with me that this sort of thing never, ever gets tiresome, well, you’re going to lap it up like sweet, sweet cream. Sex! Money! Six pairs of sterling-silver asparagus tongs! A Lab named Beauregard!
HT to Lawyers, Guns and Money, who also claims to have turned up another reason to hate the Yankees — Derek Jeter, aka Herpes Harry.
(Herpes is making a real comeback, it would seem. All those who are free of this scourge, kiss your faithful partner, and make a note to talk to your kids about it. Valtrex or not, ewwww.)
Department of Looking on the Bright Side: At least the hand-wringing about Chief Wahoo is over for at least another year. In the meantime, for those of you who can’t leave the Cleveland Indians’ mascot alone, a modest proposal for a makeover. (Note: I have no idea how long the modest proposal’s been out there, so this may be older than dirt. I just like the idea of a ballpark with vindaloo available at the concession stand.)
Ellen DeGeneres, serial dog dumper?
Bow your heads for the Malibu Castle Kashan, destroyed by fire yesterday. And let’s all send good thoughts to L.A. Mary, Danny and our other SoCal readers who may be in harm’s way.
LA Mary said on October 22, 2007 at 1:03 pm
No fire near me right now. We all live in fear of a fire here on the hill since it’s so much like the Oakland Hills neighborhood that went up in flames a few years ago. Same sort of layout, narrow streets, close together houses, hillsides covered in dry brush. I don’t know where Danny is exactly, but there are fires in San Diego county and Orange county. What is truly scary about brush fire season is that a good number of the fires are started by arsonists. There are crazy people out there who see the big fires on television and think it would be so exciting to start one of those. The Malibu fire this time was started by power lines blown down by hot, dry winds, but the big fires up in the Santa Clarita Valley are possibly arson, as is the largest one in Orange county.
Keep those good thoughts coming. We’ve got at least another 36 hours of high winds, low humidity, high heat to get through according to the weatherman.
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brian stouder said on October 22, 2007 at 3:37 pm
The scathing humor and the juicy tidbits in the Mellon-scaife story were indeed quite entertaining!
Compared to the malevolent focus of evil in American politics that he is supposed to be, and contrasting that with the comically graceless fellow we see in the article (a billionaire going to a tryst at a $40 motel…in a chauffered limo???) reminds me of the Great and Powerful Oz/Professor Marvel (or maybe Dudley Moore’s hapless Arthur). Presumeably his leftwing bookend, George Soros, might also be a good deal less Towering and Impressively Frightening, when he gets his turn in the barrel
But this passage caught my eye in particular, regarding the $300,000,000 he is said to have lost on his newspaper –
These figures matter in the divorce because Scaife is arguing that the funds he forwards to the Tribune-Review should be deducted from his aggregate income, putting his annual haul closer to $17 million a year, a long way from the $45 million a year cited by Ritchie’s lawyers. If true, that would of course reduce the monthly alimony check he could owe his wife once there’s a permanent settlement.
Not surprisingly, Ritchie Scaife’s attorneys have a different view. They say that Richard Scaife operates the Tribune-Review with so little concern for profit and loss that it’s more a hobby than a business.
Wow!
Couldn’t he at least buy into either a more reputeable loser, or else a less un-profitable paper? Or – if he just wanted to throw the money away, fund an anual $10,000,000 journalistic prize program (and thereby buy some polish for his name), like the equally randy Pulitzer family?
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alex said on October 22, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Nice to see the bastard get his comeuppance after bankrolling the destruction of Bill Clinton. Hope we’ll get to see juicy details on all the other nasty mistresses he’s been propping up — the Heritage Foundation, the American Spectator…
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brian stouder said on October 22, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Nice to see the bastard get his comeuppance after bankrolling the destruction of Bill Clinton.
I think the “destruction” of Bill Clinton was vastly over-stated! And anyway, the Washington Post’s David Segal disagrees –
Scaife owns a handful of newspapers and newsweeklies, including the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, a conservative answer to the Post-Gazette. When he isn’t tending to this modest publishing empire, he’s underwriting what Hillary Clinton once called “a vast right-wing conspiracy.” His highest-profile expenditure is the $2.3 million he gave the American Spectator magazine in the mid-’90s, to try to unearth prurient and embarrassing details about Bill Clinton’s years as governor of Arkansas. (The magazine came up virtually empty-handed.)
“Empty handed”, other than Paula Jones, and then Monica Lewinski – and much grief thereafter – but whatever.
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alex said on October 22, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Whatever.
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Linda said on October 22, 2007 at 8:49 pm
Sent your link on Ellen to my sister. She has gotten hell from friends and acquaintances for sticking up for the shelter. But Ellen’s a full-grown woman who signed a contract–one that is written for the protection of the animal involved. I have even read that the shelter is evil for putting “animals above humans.” Well, duh. The humans can take care of their own hurt feelings. The animal’s life or death depends on humans doing the right–and responsible–thing, and often the only people who can make that happen are shelters.
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Jeff said on October 22, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Buckeye Lake to Bexley, Sewickley to Squirrel Hill to Scranton, the way people do selfish things and justify that selfishness in the face of evidence against self-interest, let alone justice — it looks pretty much the same everywhere. The wrapper changes from Lincoln Navigator to Chevy Nova, or $40 hotel room to . . . um, $40 hotel room, but . . . ok, even the wrappings look the same.
What he is doing is making a great promo for restoring a full-on inheritance tax to the IRS code. Death tax? How’s about saving future generations from the stupidity magnified by access to unearned wealth. Most sensible arguments against inheritance (sorry, Karl, i should say death tax, right?) are based on the vast majority of small businesses and non-mega-size farmsteads, but it doesn’t take too many Scaife and Pulitzer divorce proceedings (or Patty Hearst soap operas) for many people to sign on with the most equalitarian confiscation scheme that gets offered.
But for Scaife, i’m fine with it. Soak the rich, and maybe save their lives or at least their reputations. They may run off with the neighbor’s wife and rationalize the trip as self-actualization, but it won’t be in the WaPo.
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del said on October 23, 2007 at 9:37 am
Somebody told me that some ancient Greek philosophers argued against intergenerational wealth transfers. Kinda appealling, eh? Anyway, our western laws of corporations and trusts — entities of infinite duration and without human liability (save for places like Germany where execs go to prison for corp. tax fraud) — protect the Mellons et al.
The Beatles were right, money can’t buy love. And as for Scaife’s choice of lovers, who sounds more appealing, Ms. Ritchie or naughty Tammy Sue?
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harry near indy said on October 23, 2007 at 9:43 am
regarding the cleveland indian makeover:
lololololololololol … or whatever the kids say nowadays.
btw, i know a native american. i once saw him wearing a chicago black hawk jersey and asked him about his choice of clothing, because i thought he would think the logo was bigoted.
he told me that he doesn’t mind if sports teams were named after specific native american tribes — like the black hawks, or say, the chippewas of central michigan university. but he didn’t like the name of the washington redskins, which he thought was bigoted in general.
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LA mary said on October 23, 2007 at 10:17 am
An awful lot of San Diego county, where Danny lives, is on fire. At least a quarter of a million people have been evacuated and the fire is not just out in the edges of the suburbs. It’s hitting apartment buildings and businesses. The air everywhere around here is horrible and the skies are red. Let’s all keep a really good thought for him and everyone.
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ashley said on October 24, 2007 at 11:38 pm
FWIW, I was interviewed by the BBC World Service today. They wanted to compare the Gov’t response to the wildfires to the Gov’t response to Katrina and the federal flood.
Well, let’s just say it helps to be rich, white, and Republican. Now, the real question is, should they rebuild San Diego? I don’t want to see my tax dollars used to rescue those stupid enough to live there and rebuild their infrastructure. [/snark]
That being said, does anyone else remember the story of Ron Mexico (aka Michael Vick) and Herpes?
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