Mr. Mellonhead

He's a nasty tool of the right (who no doubt considers him a fool). He's never truly worked a day in his life, but he has lots of money (inherited, of course). A life-long drunk (who's finally dry), but not many friends. And above all, he's not very smart.

Sound familiar?

If you guessed Georgie Bush, try again. This dumbo is Dickie Scaife.

And you can bet Richard Mellon Scaife's not happy these days.

Despite having spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the cause, his dream of a conservative republican majority is over. Even worse, his "Family Values" mantra has been exposed for the lie it is, with the sordid details of his impending divorce the source of snickering gossip in news outlets across the country.

I've followed this man since my Pittsburgh days. And the mess that is his life has made many liberals extremely happy. I count myself as one. As I sit here recuperating, it's like the best medicine for the healing process.

A wonderfully vicious piece on Scaife was featured in the style section in the Washington Post, Low Road to Splitsville:

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.

The sordid tale of love gone wrong. As Daily Kos, put it, Because Richard Mellon Scaife deserves it:

And now he is getting a messy, bitter, public divorce. We cannot let such personal humiliation go unnoticed, not when it comes to Richard Mellon Scaife.

We had known for a while that Scaife's marriage to his second wife Ritchie was on the rocks. News that he had her arrested for trespassing at his Shadyside house broke in the Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh's main daily) after Christmas 2005. The famously private man who made a point to lie and distort the private lives of public servants now found some of his dirty laundry aired in public. Much more is coming to light in the ensuing divorce proceedings. David Segal in the Washington Post gleefully runs down the details, including financial irresponsibility, dog-snatching, an accused affair with a prostitute, criminal charges...and no prenup.

And what of Scaife? As the Post says:

Dickie, as he's known to his handful of friends, acquired a mean streak at an early age, according to his now-deceased sister, Cordelia Scaife. (She once told The Washington Post that she and her brother hadn't spoken for 25 years.) His trouble with alcohol started when he was at prep school, and he later was tossed out of Yale when he rolled a keg of beer down a flight of stairs and broke the legs of a fellow student. His father, a below-average businessman, died a year after Richard graduated from the University of Pittsburgh. His mother was "just a gutter drunk," as Cordelia put it.

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.)

Though he jousts, indirectly, with public figures, Scaife seems to detest attention. He almost never speaks to the media, and on one of the few occasions he did, it was to tell a reporter, who'd sandbagged him on the street, that she was ugly and that her mother was ugly, too.

For the word on Scaife and the reporter, see Post Leaves Something Out About Richard Mellon Scaife.

And then for more on the history of this money man for the right, there's a 1999 Post series, Scaife: Funding Father of the Right and Money, Family Name Shaped Scaife, with his charming ways:

Richard Mellon Scaife, the most generous donor to conservative causes in American history, is astoundingly rich and has given away more than $600 million, yet is known to people who have worked for him as a cheapskate.

He has given at least $340 million to fund a "war of ideas" against American liberalism, yet no one interviewed for these articles could remember him discussing a book he had read or recall an original idea that came from him.

In his own small world in Pittsburgh, Scaife is known as a man who wants to be in control, who wants employees who say "yes," who is capable of bearing grudges for years. Once, it is said by knowledgeable sources, he compelled the Mellon Bank to fire a newly hired attorney in the bank's legal department because the lawyer was the son of a former employee Scaife had turned against.

Scaife has broken off relations with numerous friends and associates, waged a bitter, prolonged divorce battle with his first wife, has strained relations with his son and no relations with his daughter. He and his sister haven't spoken for 25 years.

Yet his friends describe the man they call Dick Scaife as charming, warm, easy to be with. He himself said once, "I'm genial and I'm jovial."

Genial, jovial and soon to be a little poorer after his divorce.

The only thing to make him even happier would be if his ex decides to donate some of his money to a few worthy liberal causes. One can always hope.

Tags: News, Pennsylvania, Richard Mellon Scaife, Politics