The Other McCain

Meet John Duffy, a multimillionaire investment banker who is probably about to become a few multi-millions poorer when his wife’s divorce lawyers get through with him:

John Duffy, 62, the married CEO of the Keefe, Bruyette & Woods investment bank, has lavished millions of dollars’ worth of homes, jewelry and sexy outfits from Victoria’s Secret on stunning women in three different countries, according to his estranged wife, who is suing him in Manhattan Supreme Court.
His wife, Kathy Duffy, 59, charges in a salacious divorce proceeding that her husband has been engaging in “public and notorious adulterous relationships” and has doled out costly gifts to a trio of women in the United States, Canada and the Dominican Republic, a source said. . . .
Kathy’s lawyer described her client — who incredibly turned down a $20 million settlement offer — as “devastated.”
But “obviously, I cannot comment on details of the case,” said the lawyer, Leslie Barbara. . . .
One of Duffy’s alleged trysts involves the tattooed, blond lead singer of a rock band, a source said.
The singer allegedly netted a $73,000 car, a Rolex watch and other gifts from Duffy totaling more than $770,000, the source said.
Duffy, nicknamed “Duff,” has claimed that he had met the woman by chance in a Manhattan bar and decided to bankroll her music career.
His wife also claims that another woman received a $345,000 condo in Yonkers and a Connecticut spread worth more than $465,000, the source said. The homes were both bought within the past eight years.
The third woman received a home in tropical Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, a source said.
Duffy also bought her furnishings, paid for her educational expenses, a car and other gifts totaling more than $800,000, his wife claims.

(Via Memeorandum.) Quick arithmetic reveals that Duffy (allegedly) paid more $2 million to these three women, data which some graduate student in economics could probably turn into a master’s thesis on the market value of mistresses. What are we to make of the fact that his wife of 35 years has reportedly turned down a $20 million settlement offer? Three alternative hypotheses:

1. Her lawyers figure they’ll get a lot more than $20 million if they take the case to trial.
2. Her lawyers considered $20 million a lowball bid, and have leaked details of the case to the press in a gambit to get him to pay $25 or $30 million, thus to avert the days of disastrous headlines that a trial in public court would produce.
3. Mrs. Duffy doesn’t really care so much about the final value of the settlement, but is instead focused on getting personal revenge against her philandering husband by exposing the fact that he was, in essence, paying premium prices for cheap hussies.

Let’s face it: The $2 million in “gifts” Duffy paid to these three mistresses in the past decade would have bought him 1,000 trysts with as many $2,000-a-night call girls as he wanted. And a hundred high-priced hookers a year would probably be enough even for Charlie Sheen.

But what this pathetic scandal actually reveals is the true motives behind Democrats’ class-warfare rhetoric. When Obama talks about “millionaires and billionaires” flying around on corporate jets, he knows that many beta males have enough imagination to be envious of what those Wall Street big shots are doing with their wealth.

The oft-remarked “growing gap between rich and poor” involves carnal rewards, as well: Laid-off factory workers can’t even afford a $20 hand job from a local crack whore, while John Duffy’s buying one mistress “a home in tropical Santo Domingo,” a half-million-dollar spread in Connecticut for another mistress and a Rolex watch for a tattooed singer.

Where’s the social justice in that, huh?

Of course, from a free-market perspective, this shows that the stupendous incomes of the rich are not hoarded uselessly, but are instead distributed throughout the economy in various ways, including the gifts that fat-cat investment bankers lavish on their mistresses, and income earned by lawyers on both sides of the eventual divorce.

Frankly, I’d rather see John Duffy’s mistresses or Mrs. Duffy’s lawyers get that money than to see it sucked up by the IRS and used to hire a bunch of government bureaucrats. Mistresses and divorce lawyers aren’t trying to enforce a bunch of atavistic rules imposed by a freedom-destroying regulatory state. And government bureaucrats seldom provide me with entertaining headlines about high-profile sex scandals.