<http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021216&s=reading20021203>
December 3, 2002
What Are They Reading?
by DOUG HENWOOD
SECRETS OF THE TOMB:
Skull and Bones, the Ivy League,
and the Hidden Paths of Power.
By Alexandra Robbins.
Little, Brown. 230 pp. $25.95.
Secret societies are manna for conspiracy theorists, and few are more
secret or more conspiracy-nourishing than Yale's Skull and Bones. Our
current President is a member, as were his father and
grandfather--and a strong contender for the Democratic nomination in
2004, John Kerry, was a Bonesman too. In fact, they pervade the
highest levels of American government (with a special affinity for
the CIA), business and journalism.
Sadly, though, much of what's been written about Skull and Bones over
the years has been right-wing conspiracism, a trend that's been
reinforced over the past few years by the Internet (for a taste, just
Google "Antony Sutton Skull Bones"). And the reports exempt from that
ideological contamination, like Ron Rosenbaum's, have been rather
thinly and unconvincingly sourced. But a fine exception to these
depressing rules is Alexandra Robbins's Secrets of the Tomb: Skull
and Bones, The Ivy League, and the Hidden Paths of Power.
Robbins, a recent Yale grad (who was in a much less famous secret
society, Scroll & Key), managed to loosen the normally tight lips of
Bonesmen young and old to reveal both what goes on within their
cryptlike building on the Yale campus and in the dispersed fraternity
of Bonesmen around the world. Her analysis of their power is far more
complex than the usual conspiracist sort, which usually casts
Bonesmen as the puppeteers and the rest of us ("barbarians," in Bones
lingo) as unwitting puppets.
Lest I be accused of careless sexist language use, "Bonesmen" and
"fraternity" are nearly 100 percent gender-appropriate words. Some of
Robbins's best reporting is on the twenty-year fight to coeducate the
society. First to propose this radical idea was the Bones class of
1971, just after Yale had admitted its first women. Old Bonesmen
("patriarchs" in Bonesese) summoned the rebellious undergrads to a
meeting in New York, where they were told to grow up and act like
men. The meeting was an occasion for McGeorge Bundy (Bones 1940) to
joke, "So Aunt Jemima's coming to dinner?" With wit like that, it's
no wonder Bonesmen do so well in the world. The patriarchs won, and
Bones stayed all male for another twenty years, when the living
members finally voted to join the twentieth century. And how did
Presidents 41 and 43 vote? They've never said, but Bush the Younger
did provide a clue when he told a PBS producer in 1994 that Yale
"went downhill since they admitted women"--a remark that deserves
much wider currency than it's enjoyed so far.
Gossip is fun, and learning other people's secrets is a thrill, and
Secrets of the Tomb delivers on such pleasures. But it also makes you
wonder about our leaders and the institutions that produce them.
Though there are some fine and decent Bonesmen (at least one of whom
used to work for this magazine), as an institution, Skull and Bones
is intensely secretive, hierarchical, bigoted and antidemocratic.
Kind of like the Bush Administration.
- O'Neill goes, Bono stays Chris Burford
- Re: O'Neill goes, Bono stays Doug Henwood
- Re: 'Neill goes, Bono stays Chris Burford
- Re: Re: 'Neill goes, Bono stays Doug Henwood
- Re: Re: Re: 'Neill goes, Bono stays Eugene Coyle
- Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Neill goes, Bono ... Doug Henwood
- Re: Skull & Bones and ISA's Doug Henwood
- Re: Skull & Bones and I... Chris Burford
- Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Neill goes... Eugene Coyle
- Re: Re: Re: Re: 'Neill goes, Bono ... Michael Perelman
- Re: Neill goes, Bono stays Carrol Cox
- Re: Re: Neill goes, Bono stays Michael Perelman
- Re: Re: Re: Neill goes, Bo... Eugene Coyle
- O'Neill and sectors of capitalism Chris Burford
- Re: O'Neill and sectors of capitali... Doug Henwood
- Re: Re: O'Neill and sectors of ... Michael Perelman