Tabloid Monday

No, I'm not talking about Rudi Giuliani but the hypocrite who nearly single handidly financed the smear the Clintons campaign, Richard Mellon Scaife. When compared to Republicans like Giuliani the Clintons look like a normal family. When compared to Richard Mellon Scaife Giuliani looks like a normal guy. In what reads like something that should be in The National Enquirer the The Washington Post takes a look at Scaife's nasty divorce and what led up to it in Low Road to Splitsville.

But only Pittsburgh is the scene of the fabulously tawdry and surpassingly vicious spectacle that is the divorce of Richard Mellon Scaife.

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."

The culture of his own marriage is apparently past restoring. With the legal fight still in the weigh-in phase, the story of Scaife v. Scaife already includes a dog-snatching, an assault, a night in jail and that divorce court perennial, allegations of adultery.

Oh, and there's the money. Three words, people.

No. Pre. Nup.

Of course Scaife's affair with part time hooker Tammy Sue Vasco at the local No Tell Motel and the nasty divorce that resulted wouldn't be real news if it wasn't another case of the blatant hypocrisy of the "family values Republicans" as Scaife has spent millions of his billion or so trying to dig up dirt on others.

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.)

I'm not going to turn MEJ into a tabloid so head over tor the five page article in the Post for all the details.

Note
Everyone is interested in Tammy Sue Vasco. I have not had this many search engine hits since I did a single post on Natalie Holloway.