Today’s New York Times details a backlash against the philanthropy of the drug-dealing Sackler clan, best known here in New York as the donors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur (above), Sackler Wing and Sackler Galleries. The back story of the current controversy is told in Rogues’ Gallery, my book on how the super-rich have used that museum–and other causes–to launder their reputations and in the words of the book’s epigraph from Bernard Mandeville, turn “Private Vices…into Publick Benefits.” The story begins in 1963, and includes the family’s invention of modern drug marketing (Sackler made Valium the first $100 million drug); secret deals personally benefiting Dr. Arthur M. Sackler; and his and his brothers’ bare-knuckle bargaining, extraordinary demands, and threats against the museum’s board and administrators, including accusations of anti-Semitism against the museum, and homophobia against the Sackler family. “So what?” Sackler’s attorney snapped at me when I called him for comment. “Do you think most people who give money are easy to get along with? That’s life.” So is comeuppance, even when served cold.