Posted on 07/10/2011 5:17:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Weaving Spiders Come Not Here" is the motto of San Francisco's Bohemian Club. The motto is supposed to represent the club's edict against doing business during its annual Bohemian Grove retreat, which commences on Thursday on 2,700 acres, 75 miles north of the city. As club spokesman and member Sam Singer explained, "It's a group of gentlemen who are really genuinely interested in arts, theater, jazz and rock 'n' roll." The retreat gives members a chance to "get away from work. It's forbidden to talk about or solicit business at the club or grove."
The "weaving spiders" motto also provides cover for a club that discriminates against women.
Thus, in the Bay Area, good liberals and civil libertarians, who would not dream of joining a club that refuses to admit blacks or Jews, raise their glasses in a club that discriminates against women.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul, is a member. _Vaughn Walker, the former federal judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage law, is a member. MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews is a member.
Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart is a member. Ditto band member Bob Weir. _There are more big names on the right, starting with former President George H.W. Bush, former Gov. Pete Wilson and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Business titans have long bankrolled the retreats. A roster of 2010 members released by norcaltruth.org -- the club does not release its membership -- includes a couple of Rockefellers and the ubiquitous Koch brothers. Hence conspiracy theories about sinister deals cut amid the redwoods.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt is a member. William R. Hearst III, trustee of the Hearst Corp., which writes my paycheck, has been a member. I have friends who are members.
John McCain has addressed the group. Ditto Francis Ford Coppola. _Like good Democrats, Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have avoided Bohemia. _"When I first started and they acquired my services, it was to help handle protests at the grove and the City Club," Singer noted. "Over the years, it's gone from a thousand people to literally one person."
That one person is Brian Romanoff of norcaltruth.org, and he told me he doesn't go there to "protest" so much as to "reach out and inform the members" as to why they should make retreat policy seminars -- on Afghanistan or nuclear power -- public.
He thinks some members are "probably guilty" of war crimes. He doesn't reach out to them. "I don't really want to get to know Henry Kissinger."
Sonoma State sociology professor Peter Phillips attended the retreat in 1994. The club was the subject of his doctoral dissertation. He told me that he met a lot of "ordinary rich guys" and "some very important people." Some men kept coming back to the same camps every year to discuss intimate issues -- their prostates, wives -- in an atmosphere analogous to a men's group.
Phillips also saw and heard a lot of networking. "They're very clearly talking politics and business constantly." _No weaving spiders? "I proved the opposite, quite clearly. I heard conversations about business. 'If GE comes in on the deal, we can get the Japanese to join' -- three men walking down a trail together."
Note to Mr. Hearst: I believe in the right to free association. I do not want the government to encroach on men's right to socialize among themselves, or force men to share gyms, bathrooms and poker games with women and shutter fraternities.
The Bohemian Club has a right to exist. California courts have upheld the club's right to exclude female members, but ordered it to hire female staff at the club and at the grove's food facilities.
I also believe in free speech, but that doesn't mean I would say things I believe others have the right to say. I do not believe the Bohemian Club is a social/theater/music club -- although I believe the former member who told me that's what the club's emphasis used to be.
Now I buy Phillips' summation -- that the retreat presents powerful "men celebrating their male eliteness, which is kind of how the world works."
The male-only bastion's discriminatory polices hurt women trying to compete in business and politics -- and everyone in politics knows it.
Do they allow Negroes?
Men only? Do they allow Queers?
Tough luck for them, then.
If the ladies want to go somewhere, let them work out at one of those women-only health clubs.
Nobody is stopping powerful women from forming their own “Bohemian Club”.
Obviously.
Oh, waaah. I cannot express how utterly tired I am, of hearing women whine about private organizations that have the temerity to freely associate with whomever, upon whatever grounds, that they wish to associate.
Go gripe to your fellow harridans down at the women-only gym, the women-only political club, the women-only business club, or, better yet, get off your plenteous and well-upholstered duffs and go form your own Grove of Bohemian Wymmin and dance around under the full moon baying to Gaia, for crying out loud.
Just shut up already.
Is she implying this is a bad thing?
If men weren't the ones doing the heavy lifting of public leadership and private business, day in and day out, when nobody is looking at them, "affirming" them, or "empowering" them, men would not be the movers and shakers in politics and business. It would be women. Or tree frogs. Or whoever was showing up and doing the work. Women would be the ones the whiners of the Western world were suing and protesting against, demanding the privilege of hanging out with them.
Notice, it's only the successful men whom women like this faux-conservative writer want to associate with. You don't see gals protesting their exclusion from men's shelters.
It is the blessing and the curse of womankind that they expect nice things to be served to them on a platter. This is their right and privilege in many areas of life. But no one can whisk away reality for them—especially not the reality of grunt work and obsessive networking, by which men create resources and lavish them on their wives and daughters.
The mentioned Judge Vaughn Walker is openly homosexual if that’s what you meant. If you meant something else, well, they did allow McCain to speak, Chris Matthews and Pelosi’s husband to be members.
And it’s not gay?
I’m still struggling to figure out what her point was in penning this lame, aimless screed.
So there’s a PRIVATE club that doesn’t want female members, and at one time wouldn’t hire female workers until forced to by the fedgov. So what?
Is she defending the club’s former hiring practices? She SHOULD if she actually believed in freedom of association!
I'm sure many would be delighted to belong to a club that excluded blacks and Jews (and Baptists and Chinese and three-headed guys from Jupiter). But who gives a freep? If they want to play, "I'm so Special and you're not!" like a group of 8th graders, why should adults care?
ruin everything
;-)
Right. I'm sure it never ever happens.
What about Lesbians? They’re not really women.
Put two women in the same room and you have two guaranteed outcomes -
Catfights and sexual competitiveness
Queers probably predominate!
Since they equate women with spiders, they most likely cater in that direction.
The whole thing seems chicken screwing, Queer to me.
I’ve always wondered about all Male clubs.
They have an all female club similar to this called the Belizean Club. Activities they describe as “a balance of fun, substantive programs and bonding.”
Love to be a fly on the wall at this gathering!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/business/03grove.html?_r=1
Weirdo ceremonies in robes around giant stone owl statues is just a man thing, honey.
Freegards
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