Miss Dowd noted that Mr. Gingrich would spend the weekend at the Bohemian Grove, “the exclusive men’s club in northern California. . . . The camp is a saturnalia of juvenilia, with a lot of old white rich guys running around naked and in sheets, costumed as Druids. They drink dawn-to-dusk gin fizzes, relieve themselves on redwoods, and put on theatricals where they dress up like women.”
I lowered my voice. “In the years I’ve been going to the Bohemian Club,” I whispered, “I have seen men naked only in the shower, and now I’ll tell you something in confidence.” Her eyes hungered for my revelation. The camera whirred. “The Admissions Committee of the Bohemian Grove does not like to admit to membership people who shower with their clothes on.” Miss Stahl simply smiled, gamely.
Did Maureen Dowd believe that men in the Grove go about naked? No, she did not. Two days before her story appeared she telephoned an old friend, an ex-member of the Club, who told her the naked business was sheer fantasy — “It just doesn’t happen.” Perhaps Miss Dowd thought to be cute by perpetuating the legend, and in a way she succeeded, and I’d even go so far as to deny that she was at this point sickeningly cute.
Saturnalia? Those in the Bohemian Grove who drink gin fizzes all day long (I know of two) drink gin fizzes from dawn to dusk wherever they are. A drunkard need not bother to travel to California in order to indulge his habit. But then Miss Dowd would rather spice up her column than report facts, proving only that the antagonism to Newt conquers all, even if it does not excuse all.
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