Washington Babylon — April 12, 2010, 11:26 am
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I’ve written in the past on various occasions about Morris Dees, head of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the bogus “civil rights organization” whose chief (and wildly successful) mission has been to separate wealthy liberals from their money. Last time I checked, the SPLC had more than $150 million in its treasury, more than the GNP of some of the world’s smaller countries, yet it did very little work to advance civil rights or fight poverty.
At a personal level, though, Dees has been able to avoid deprivation of any type. Over the weekend a friend sent me a slide show from a recent story in the Montgomery Advertiser, which offered an inside look at the local Dees estate.
Dees made a lot of money prior to founding the SPLC so he didn’t just get rich off of his “civil rights” work. But does a man this wealthy really need a compensation package worth — according to his group’s latest tax filing — $350,000?
More from Ken Silverstein:
Commentary — November 17, 2015, 6:41 pm
The Clintons’ so-called charitable enterprise has served as a vehicle to launder money and to enrich family friends.
Perspective — October 23, 2013, 8:00 am
How pro-oil Louisiana politicians have shaped American environmental policy
Lori DeBacker drives a Mini Cooper, owns a runt dog, and lives with her husband, a model-train enthusiast, in a twelve-room Victorian house whose tearoom is outfitted with three-quarter-scale furniture. “A woman can sit in it, but a man would never dare,” she told me. “I just like everything tiny. I’ve just liked tiny all my life.” In the second grade, bothered by the unrealistic food offered for Barbies, DeBacker decided to make her own out of clay. Her parents’ country-club friends were impressed and began commissioning meals for their own daughters’ dolls. Today DeBacker, who wears +300 reading glasses and a ring on every finger, enjoys creating minuscule cakes — “faux gâteaux” — and humorously altered, miniaturized versions of famous paintings. “I love to spoof the masters,” she smirked, showing me a postage-stamp-size reproduction of The Scream in which the central figure was replaced with an extra-agonized ghost. Making miniatures focuses DeBacker. “My mother always said this would drive her to drink,” she said, “but I think it keeps me from it.”
Lori DeBacker drives a Mini Cooper, owns a runt dog, and lives with her husband, a model-train enthusiast, in a twelve-room Victorian house whose tearoom is outfitted with three-quarter-scale furniture. “A woman can sit in it, but a man would never dare,” she told me. “I just like everything tiny. I’ve just liked tiny all my life.” In the second grade, bothered by the unrealistic food offered for Barbies, DeBacker decided to make her own out of clay. Her parents’ country-club friends were impressed and began commissioning meals for their own daughters’ dolls. Today DeBacker, who wears +300 reading glasses and a ring on every finger, enjoys creating minuscule cakes — “faux gâteaux” — and humorously altered, miniaturized versions of famous paintings. “I love to spoof the masters,” she smirked, showing me a postage-stamp-size reproduction of The Scream in which the central figure was replaced with an extra-agonized ghost. Making miniatures focuses DeBacker. “My mother always said this would drive her to drink,” she said, “but I think it keeps me from it.”
Lori DeBacker drives a Mini Cooper, owns a runt dog, and lives with her husband, a model-train enthusiast, in a twelve-room Victorian house whose tearoom is outfitted with three-quarter-scale furniture. “A woman can sit in it, but a man would never dare,” she told me. “I just like everything tiny. I’ve just liked tiny all my life.” In the second grade, bothered by the unrealistic food offered for Barbies, DeBacker decided to make her own out of clay. Her parents’ country-club friends were impressed and began commissioning meals for their own daughters’ dolls. Today DeBacker, who wears +300 reading glasses and a ring on every finger, enjoys creating minuscule cakes — “faux gâteaux” — and humorously altered, miniaturized versions of famous paintings. “I love to spoof the masters,” she smirked, showing me a postage-stamp-size reproduction of The Scream in which the central figure was replaced with an extra-agonized ghost. Making miniatures focuses DeBacker. “My mother always said this would drive her to drink,” she said, “but I think it keeps me from it.”
Lori DeBacker drives a Mini Cooper, owns a runt dog, and lives with her husband, a model-train enthusiast, in a twelve-room Victorian house whose tearoom is outfitted with three-quarter-scale furniture. “A woman can sit in it, but a man would never dare,” she told me. “I just like everything tiny. I’ve just liked tiny all my life.” In the second grade, bothered by the unrealistic food offered for Barbies, DeBacker decided to make her own out of clay. Her parents’ country-club friends were impressed and began commissioning meals for their own daughters’ dolls. Today DeBacker, who wears +300 reading glasses and a ring on every finger, enjoys creating minuscule cakes — “faux gâteaux” — and humorously altered, miniaturized versions of famous paintings. “I love to spoof the masters,” she smirked, showing me a postage-stamp-size reproduction of The Scream in which the central figure was replaced with an extra-agonized ghost. Making miniatures focuses DeBacker. “My mother always said this would drive her to drink,” she said, “but I think it keeps me from it.”
Average number of tourists who visit the South African township of Soweto each day:
Young Americans feel empowered by financial debt.
In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte, whose “war on drugs” has killed more than 6,000 Filipinos since July, said he would consider accepting refugees affected by Trump’s ban “in the name of humanity.”
"It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis."
© 2015 Harper’s Magazine Foundation. February 2017 cover illustration by Steve Brodner
