Ah YouTube! What a boon to conspiracy nuts and
paranoia freaks! In the past, Dear Reader, you had to go to special
places—usually drugstores with big magazine sections—to get your fix of
extraterrestrials, Mothman,
our beloved chupacabra (Puerto Rico’s gift to the world, say I
proudly) not to mention that old favorite, the takeover of the entire world by
a highly secret, international group of financiers, industrialists and
politicians. Now, you can trot over to YouTube and see undercover footage of the Cremation of Care,
which does look a little crazy.
You may not
know the cremation, since most people, unlike writers, do important things: go
to work, raise kids, worry about the bills. But you might have heard about Bohemian Grove, the camp
of redwoods north of San Francisco, which for two weeks in July fills up with
rich guys peeing in the woods. If you haven’t, here’s a nice
little introduction by our old nemesis, Richard M. Nixon:
•
"The
Bohemian Grove, that I attend from time to time—the Easterners and the others
come there—but it is the most faggy goddamn thing you could ever imagine, that
San Francisco crowd that goes in there; it's just terrible! I mean I won't
shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."—President Richard M. Nixon on the Watergate tapes, Bohemian Club member starting in 1953.[17][40]
•
"If I were to choose the speech that gave me the most
pleasure and satisfaction in my political career, it would be my Lakeside
Speech at the Bohemian Grove in July 1967. Because this speech traditionally
was off the record it received no publicity at the time. But in many important
ways it marked the first milestone on my road to the presidency."—President
Richard Nixon, Memoirs (1978)
Ah, Dick!
Wonderful how much I don’t
miss him!
Well, the
Bohemian Grove is owned by the Bohemian Club, which was
set up in the late 19th century by a group of San Francisco men. And
here, by
the way, is Wikipedia’s
explanation of the origin of the name:
In
New York City and other American metropolises in the late 1850s, groups of
young, cultured journalists flourished as self-described "bohemians"
until the American Civil War broke them up and sent them out as war correspondents.[4] During the war,
reporters began to assume the title "bohemian," and newspapermen in
general took up the moniker. "Bohemian" became synonymous with
"newspaper writer".[4] California journalist Bret Harte first wrote as "The Bohemian" in The Golden Era in 1861, with this persona taking part in many satirical
doings. Harte described San Francisco as a sort of Bohemia of the West.[5] Mark Twain called himself and poet Charles Warren
Stoddard bohemians in 1867.
OK—coming
from a family of journalists, I can tell you that the words “journalists” and
“cultured” are rarely coupled, especially if a negative isn’t somewhere nearby.
And today, how bohemian is the club?
Not
very, given that you have to be rich and connected to get in—oh, and the
waiting list spans decades. The real question is what the hell goes on there,
since it’s top secret, which makes it excellent fodder for us conspiracy
theorists. But here are the top theories:
·
the
big boys are gathering to
mastermind the takeover of all governments to implement a “new world
order.” And guess who’s running it?
·
The
big boys like to drink and piss in the woods
·
The big boys are engaging in satanic rituals
Here’s
the problem with conspiracy theories—occasionally they’re right. So whatever is
going on north of San Francisco a month from now, we can probably say that the
CIA or FBI was seriously messing with Paul Robeson, a guy so
talented it’s easier to say what he wasn’t than what he was. Here, Wikipedia takes a stab at it:
Paul
Leroy Robeson
(/ˈroʊbsən/ rohb-sən
April 9, 1898 – January 23, 1976) was an African-American singer and actor
who became involved with the Civil Rights
Movement. At Rutgers University, he was
an outstanding football
player, then had an international career in singing, as well as acting in
theater and movies. He became politically involved in response to the Spanish Civil War, fascism, and social
injustices. His advocacy of anti-imperialism,
affiliation with communism,
and criticism of the United States government caused him to be blacklisted during
the McCarthy era. Ill
health forced him into retirement from his career. He remained until his death
an advocate of the political stances he took.
Ill
health? Certainly something happened to Robeson in Moscow in March of 1961;
with apparently no psychiatric history, Robeson became acutely anxious,
paranoid, depressed during what Wikipedia describes
as “an uncharacteristically wild” party. Eventually, he locked himself in his
bedroom and tried to slit his wrists. (The nurse in me needs to tell you—this
is anatomically impossible….)
Robeson
somehow ended up in London, where for almost two years he was zapped with shock
therapy and given heavy does of barbiturates. After his son transferred him to
a clinic in East Berlin, he “rapidly improved,” again according to Wikipedia.
But
if the son is to be believed, the whole thing was fishy. First, consider how
acute and how fast his symptom developed—he had been completely normal hours
before. Then, through the Freedom
of Information Act, Robeson ‘s son learned that the FBI and CIA had been
tracking his father and mother for years. And then, also while in Moscow,
Robeson had the same thing happen to him: an acute attack of anxiety,
depression, and paranoia.
So
what was going on? Here’s more from Wikipedia:
Paul
Jr. believed that his father's health problems stemmed from attempts by CIA and
MI5 to "neutralize" his father.[238][239] He remembered that his father had had such fears prior to his prostate operation.[240] He said that three doctors
treating Robeson in London and New York had been CIA contractors,[238] and that his father's
symptoms resulted from being "subjected to mind depatterning under MKULTRA", a secret
CIA programme.[241] Martin Duberman claimed
that Robeson's health breakdown was probably brought on by a combination of
factors including extreme emotional and physical stress, bipolar depression,
exhaustion and the beginning of circulatory and heart problems. "[E]ven
without an organic predisposition and accumulated pressures of government
harassment he might have been susceptible to a breakdown."
Whether the
CIA was involved or not, it’s certainly true that the fifties were a terrible
decade for Robeson—he was blacklisted since 1948, his passport was revoked for
most of the decade, and he got slapped in front of the House
Un-American Activities Committee in 1956. Wouldn’t you be paranoid? And it
seems that Project
MKUltra did exist, though the CIA destroyed a lot of its records in the
height of the Watergate
scandal. Remember, we were all nutso about the Communists, so the idea of
setting up brothels, installing one-way mirrors, and then giving unwitting
subjects LSD, interrogating the men later—all done under a program called Operation Midnight Climax—made
a certain bizarre sense. If better dead than red was true, then there wasn’t
much that you wouldn’t do….
From the
son’s account, Robeson never quite got back in the saddle; he was unable to
attend the celebration of his 75th birthday at Carnegie Hall. He had
been an activist, a socialist, a supporter of the Soviet Union, and of trade
unions. All of that, unfortunately, made him a little too hot a potato for
comfort. In his life, he had been able to do so many things: he played pro
football, he sang, he acted, he graduated from Columbia Law school, he spoke
out for the marginalized. What couldn’t he do?
Take on the
CIA.
Who of us
can?
