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02/02/2004: Fraud & Conspiracy Fraud & Conspiracy

Nude Wrestling? Good Practice for Politics
or, Titans Baby Titans, Santo26 calls it again
from NY Times [registration and blood sample required]

It will be a field day for conspiracy theorists: President Bush and Senator John Kerry are not only graduates of Yale but also fellow members of the university's most elitist secret society, Skull and Bones. So if Mr. Kerry becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, the 2004 campaign will represent the first skull-to-skull match-up of Bonesmen in history.

Does this mean anything at all?

Well, aside from an opportunity to revisit all the weird, unsubstantiated but widely told stories about Skull and Bones initiation rites - like nude wrestling or having to recite one's sexual history while lying in a coffin - it suggests that the old East Coast blue-blood establishment may not be as washed up as people imagine.


Nude Wrestling? Good Practice for Politics
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

WASHINGTON

It will be a field day for conspiracy theorists: President Bush and Senator John Kerry are not only graduates of Yale but also fellow members of the university's most elitist secret society, Skull and Bones. So if Mr. Kerry becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, the 2004 campaign will represent the first skull-to-skull match-up of Bonesmen in history.

Does this mean anything at all?

Well, aside from an opportunity to revisit all the weird, unsubstantiated but widely told stories about Skull and Bones initiation rites - like nude wrestling or having to recite one's sexual history while lying in a coffin - it suggests that the old East Coast blue-blood establishment may not be as washed up as people imagine.

Second, it raises tantalizing questions: Did Mr. Kerry, class of '66, and Mr. Bush, class of '68, know each other at Yale? More to the point, did they ever participate together in a Skull and Bones rite in the club's windowless crypt?

The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second question is no, at least not as far as anyone knows or admits.

"Rest assured, there are no pictures of them dancing together naked," said David Wade, Mr. Kerry's spokesman.

The two crossed paths at Yale, where Mr. Kerry was the ambitious president of the Yale Political Union and Mr. Bush was the somewhat less ambitious president of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, otherwise known as the Animal House.

"I have had conversations with the president about John Kerry, and he has the utmost respect for him," said Donald Etra, a Los Angeles lawyer who was in Skull and Bones with Mr. Bush.

As for why Ed Gillespie, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, had been vigorously attacking Mr. Kerry for what he called his weak record on national security, Mr. Etra seemed to shrug over the phone.

"That's politics," he said.

Gov. George E. Pataki of New York, a member of the Yale class of 1967 who knew Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry in college, took an equally high road in an interview last week. Historically, Yale's best and brightest - only 15 a year - were tapped for Skull and Bones.

"The fact that they were both in Skull and Bones is a sign of respect that their classmates held for each of them," Mr. Pataki said over the telephone on Friday. Mr. Pataki has been campaigning for Mr. Bush, but he, too, had only kind words for Mr. Kerry. "I liked him," he said.

The larger question is whether Skull and Bones inculcated values of leadership - or, put another way, a sense of entitlement - in Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush, beyond what was already driven home by Yale.

Skull and Bones has, after all, a particularly illustrious alumni roster: two previous presidents (Mr. Bush's father and William Howard Taft), Averell Harriman, McGeorge Bundy, Henry Luce, Potter Stewart, the writer John Hersey and numerous officials in the Central Intelligence Agency, a traditional career path for Bonesmen.

Ron Rosenbaum, the author of the book "Explaining Hitler" and a New York Observer columnist who has written about Skull and Bones for the last quarter-century as obsessively as Ahab pursued his whale (Mr. Rosenbaum's words), said he thought that the club shaped the kind of president a man becomes, at least in the case of George W. Bush. Mr. Rosenbaum, a member of Mr. Bush's 1968 Yale class, lived next door to the Bones tomb.

"What Skull and Bones does is take preppy Prince Hals and give them a sense of mission," Mr. Rosenbaum said, referring to Henry IV's seemingly directionless son, whom Shakespeare turned into the heroic King Henry V.

"These are guys who could ease through life with privilege and money, as George W. was doing."

Mr. Rosenbaum said the death rituals of the club - he has reported seeing initiates kiss a skull in a 2001 ceremony - are not just mumbo jumbo. "The rituals emphasize a sense of mortality, that life is short, and you have a mission to make something of your life," he said.

Of course, the club has changed considerably over its 172-year history - women are now admitted, as are gays and minorities - and Mr. Rosenbaum said that it was far more important these days for the lifelong bonds it created among the elite.

Friends of Mr. Kerry say that he chiefly remembers the club meetings, on Thursdays and Sundays, as a chance to hang around with friends like Frederick Smith, who went on to found Federal Express, and Richard Pershing, the grandson of Gen. John J. Pershing, the commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I. (Richard Pershing died during the Tet offensive in Vietnam.)

Friends of Mr. Bush say he almost joined another secret society, but in the end Prince Hal did what was expected.

As Bill Minutaglio writes in his biography of George W., "First Son," there was a knock on the future president's door at Yale on the night he had to decide. When he opened it, Mr. Minutaglio recounts, his father, then a congressman, was standing outside "asking that his first son do the right thing and join Skull and Bones - become a good man."


Monday the 2nd of February, santo26 noted:


If both of these rich bluebloods pretending to be alternately a Texas Republican redneck and a Kennedyluvin' Massachusetts Democrat make it to the Presidential race, a lot will come spilling out, and people might be very peeved at the lack of a working- class alternative. Paging Jesse Ventura and/or Ralph Nader, your country needs you!


Friday the 6th of February, Abe Froman noted:


Didn't they make a movie called "Skulls" about rich powerful frat boys? I think a kid from Dawson's was in it. I digress, anyway I didn't know they actually used the same name.

However, I tend to doubt the validity of these secret societies; masons, skulls, the sassy secrateries' secret society, or the secret society for the abolition of secret societies. If we know about them, they are not so secret and generally between the news, internet, and your local library you can know about the dealings of politics, business, etc. i.e. look around!

It is very hard to hide a conspiricy these days.