Sunday, August 15, 2004
 New Statesman [UK] Aug 16 2004: It does not augur well for this country, I fear, that both George W Bush and John Kerry are members of the same tiny, highly secretive club. The Skull and Bones society of Yale University ...
A few days ago, at a Washington lunch; two of the men there told me, separately and furtively, that they had just returned from "Bohemian Grove" - yet another secret little gathering that meets for 16 days every summer among the redwood trees of northern California. The vast majority of Americans do not even know that such a secret society exists, though every Republican president since Calvin Coolidge has been a member. The combined wealth of the 2,500 or so members, I am told, is roughly $100bn; its membership is all-male, nearly all-white, and mostly Republican.
These exclusive societies flourish in the land of the free. Skull and Bones was started in 1832, the Bohemian Club in 1872. Every college and university in the United States is ridden with fraternities, clubs that often have bizarre initiation rites, and which are formed expressly for the purpose of denying membership to others.
Perhaps it is a hidden effect of living in so competitive a society: those who belong to such bodies need to reassure themselves that they are still members of a group that others cannot join. Even successful men still feel the need to indulge themselves in this way.
Bill Clinton, a Democrat deemed sufficiently successful to be allowed into Bohemian Grove, has flown into Sonoma County airport to spend time amid the 2,700 acres 70 miles north-west of San Francisco.
[...]
Tricky Dick Nixon joined in 1953 and two of his advisers, John Ehrlichman and "Bob" Haldeman, became members, too. But Nixon was caught on the Watergate tapes telling them what he really thought: "The Bohemian Grove, which I attend from time to time - it is the most faggy goddamned thing you could ever imagine . . ."
Ehrlichman later wrote: "Once you've spent three days with someone in an informal situation, you have a relationship - a relationship that opens doors and makes it easier to pick up the phone."
Which, I am sure, is precisely why Bohemian Grove exists. Men of power meet, and power thus proliferates. George H W Bush was horrified when his son could not be bothered at first to take up his invitation to join Skull and Bones, and promptly flew to Yale to make sure his Boy George joined up. John Kerry needed no such paternal prodding. Like the elder Bush, he knew what was good for him - the lifelong membership of a club from which 99.999 per cent of the American electorate is excluded. - 1905: Bonesman Taft goes to the Grove
Labels: bohemian grove
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