The Jaunts of the Very Rich

The blurb for the 1972 teevee movie:

"The brochure promised a tropical paradise. The guests were each very wealthy...the essence of the beautiful people. The Portals of Eden is the kind of place most of us can only dream of visiting...in our most disturbing nightmares. There seemed to be a rational explanation for everything...it was just a sudden storm that knocked out the electricity. The native staff's superstitions made them run away. They were cut off from the world, but help was on the way...But slowly the businessman, the playboy, the spinster, the housewife and the honeymoon couple would come to realize they each share the same secret...and the same fate. And even as one hope would be dashed, another new hope would take its place. That was the hell of it."

Salon's coverage of wingnut billionaires flying their pet supreme court justice out for walkies at a private Alaskan fishing lodge:

Alito's WSJ op-ed didn't mention SCOTUS takeover architect Leonard Leo's key role in ethics scandal 

 

Billionaire Paul Singer and the lodge owner "were both major donors to Leo's political groups," ProPublica reports

The investigative outlet ProPublica reported late Tuesday that U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito took an undisclosed private jet flight to Alaska in 2008 with billionaire Paul Singer, whose hedge fund repeatedly had business before the high court in subsequent years.

Alito refused to answer questions for the ProPublica story, opting instead to pen a Wall Street Journal opinion piece attempting to prebut the outlet's contention that his private jet trip with Singer was likely a violation of a federal law requiring Supreme Court justices to disclose most gifts.

The conservative justice insisted there was nothing untoward about the private jet flight to Alaska; his stay at a commercial fishing lodge owned by Robin Arkley II, a donor to the right-wing legal movement; or his decision not to disclose them. Alito wrote that he was "invited shortly before" the fishing trip—without mentioning by whom—and "was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant."

Notably, Alito also omitted the detail that Leonard Leo, co-chair of the conservative Federalist Society and a key figure in the decades-long effort to pull the U.S. judiciary to the right, helped organize the Alaska trip. A. Raymond Randolph, a conservative appellate judge, also attended.

According to ProPublica, Leo "invited Singer to join" and asked the hedge fund tycoon "if he and Alito could fly on the billionaire's jet."

"Leo had recently played an important role in the justice's confirmation to the court," ProPublica reported. "Singer and the lodge owner were both major donors to Leo's political groups."...

Yes kids, there was a time when a story about flying-rich-assholes-off-to-Hell-in-luxury was something a teevee network would greenlight and audiences would watch unironically. 

I Am The Liberal Media