The Secrets Of Oakland, California - A Video For CNN's iReport

I created this video at the specific request of Tyson Chandler at CNN's iReport. The idea is to give viewers a look at the secret places in your town, so I made this one for Oakland:

Alex Shoumatoff's Vanity Fair Article On The Bohemian Club

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Bringing an end to a story that made my blogs famous, infamous Vanity Fair (VF) Contributing Editor Alex Shoumatoff finally published his work on the Bohemian Club’s timber management plan and how he got snared by police for tresspassing at its private retreat near the town of Monte Rio, Calif. 

If you remember, Alex Shoumatoff set out last year to help his Harvard roommate Jock Hooper do a smear job on the Bohemian Club, which is a kind of resort home for many San Francisco luminaries, and not all of them male.  Hooper was someone described as a "disgruntled former member" of the exclusive gentlemen’s club that has is favored by the business elite, former presidents, international leaders, and men who enjoy music, wine and song, and ok, I know at least two women who've recently been there (with their boyfriends).  The club's lightened up a lot over the years.

Anyway, Hooper quit the club when it wouldn’t approve his forest management plan (read: major ego) and then became the leading critic of the club’s plans to preserve and protect old growth redwood trees on its property.  He then got Alex and Vanity Fair to do some dirty work for him, or try to. 

Now I write this with the full expectation of being invited to the 2010 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, rather than having to sneak into it.  Hear me talking Graydon! 

This story started last year when Shoumatoff managed to sneak in to the Bohemian Grove during the annual event the club holds in July. But his wandering, covered in detail in his story, only lasted 40 minutes before he was arrested by security guards and a part-time service employee at the famed Grove who quickly spotted that the kind of sloppy, preppy Topsider-wearing editor was not one of their own. 

In VF, Alex writes that he was trying to fit in with that style of dress, but folks I talked to say he wasn’t hard to miss: he was dressed like a caddy wearing a Pebble Beach pullover and apparently asked off-beat questions that proved to be his downfall.  Most of which he mentions in his article. 

He was quickly captured cowering behind a bush, but his large body gave him away.  He was then arrested by the Sonoma County Sherriff’s Department, spent the night in county jail, and forced to pay a fine for trespassing.  His arrest was captured in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Gawker, Huffington Post, and, of course, here at zennie62.com and the San Francisco Sentinel .

Shoumatoff’s piece in Vanity Fair this month may be the first case of a hatchet job that turned into a hachet boomerang:  Club members say Shoumatoff’s piece is so  dramatized and so full of factual errors (that I will detail in a follow-up post), that it proves to be an embarrassment for him and well as Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. And they refered to being attacked by "right wing bloggers"! 

I'm neither right of center, nor posessing wings like a bird, but I am a blogger.  As an Oakland guy who hangs out in San Francisco a lot, has worked for and helped  many local politicians both Democrat and Republican (but I'm a Dem), and gotten to personally know a number of "Grovers" as Alex calls them, I can tell you they're more than a little tired of people putting them into this "conservative White male" box, especially since this "liberal Black male" has been invited to visit and by members who are not all White, and aren't at all conservative. 

I'm happy to come to their defense to be frank. 

I'm glad Alex got caught because he could have just used the contacts he was developing to visit the club in a legitimate fashion.  Instead, he bozoed his way in and looked like a clown in doing so.

And the club's forest plan?  According to several sources, it's going through the review process well.  But what I find so interesting even over the important consideration of the trees, is how one blue-blood institution, Vanity Fair, can muster the gall to call another blue-blood institution The Bohemian Club "elitist" when VF's not even invited me to its Oscar Party, and Graydon Carter will not take my calls. 

This'll teach 'em!

Alex Shoumatoff's Vanity Fair Article On The Bohemian Club Reveals His Unfortunate Reporting Approach

MySpace, Metacafe, Blip.tv, Crackle, Sclipo, Viddler and Howcast

Bringing an end to a story that made my blogs famous, infamous Vanity Fair (VF) Contributing Editor Alex Shoumatoff finally published his work on the Bohemian Club’s timber management plan and how he got snared by police for tresspassing at its private retreat near the town of Monte Rio, Calif.

If you remember, Alex Shoumatoff set out last year to help his Harvard roommate Jock Hooper do a smear job on the Bohemian Club, which is a kind of resort home for many San Francisco luminaries, and not all of them male. Hooper was someone described as a "disgruntled former member" of the exclusive gentlemen’s club that has is favored by the business elite, former presidents, international leaders, and men who enjoy music, wine and song, and ok, I know at least two women who've recently been there (with their boyfriends). The club's lightened up a lot over the years.

Anyway, Hooper quit the club when it wouldn’t approve his forest management plan (read: major ego) and then became the leading critic of the club’s plans to preserve and protect old growth redwood trees on its property. He then got Alex and Vanity Fair to do some dirty work for him, or try to.

Now I write this with the full expectation of being invited to the 2010 Vanity Fair Oscar Party, rather than having to sneak into it. Hear me talking Graydon!

This story started last year when Shoumatoff managed to sneak in to the Bohemian Grove during the annual event the club holds in July. But his wandering, covered in detail in his story, only lasted 40 minutes before he was arrested by security guards and a part-time service employee at the famed Grove who quickly spotted that the kind of sloppy, preppy Topsider-wearing editor was not one of their own.

In VF, Alex writes that he was trying to fit in with that style of dress, but folks I talked to say he wasn’t hard to miss: he was dressed like a caddy wearing a Pebble Beach pullover and apparently asked off-beat questions that proved to be his downfall. Most of which he mentions in his article.

He was quickly captured cowering behind a bush, but his large body gave him away. He was then arrested by the Sonoma County Sherriff’s Department, spent the night in county jail, and forced to pay a fine for trespassing. His arrest was captured in the San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Gawker, Huffington Post, and, of course, here at zennie62.com and the San Francisco Sentinel .

Shoumatoff’s piece in Vanity Fair this month may be the first case of a hatchet job that turned into a hachet boomerang: Club members say Shoumatoff’s piece is so dramatized and so full of factual errors (that I will detail in a follow-up post), that it proves to be an embarrassment for him and well as Vanity Fair editor-in-chief Graydon Carter. And they refered to being attacked by "right wing bloggers"!

I'm neither right of center, nor posessing wings like a bird, but I am a blogger. As an Oakland guy who hangs out in San Francisco a lot, has worked for and helped many local politicians both Democrat and Republican (but I'm a Dem), and gotten to personally know a number of "Grovers" as Alex calls them, I can tell you they're more than a little tired of people putting them into this "conservative White male" box, especially since this "liberal Black male" has been invited to visit and by members who are not all White, and aren't at all conservative.

I'm happy to come to their defense to be frank.

I'm glad Alex got caught because he could have just used the contacts he was developing to visit the club in a legitimate fashion. Instead, he bozoed his way in and looked like a clown in doing so.

And the club's forest plan? According to several sources, it's going through the review process well. But what I find so interesting even over the important consideration of the trees, is how one blue-blood institution, Vanity Fair, can muster the gall to call another blue-blood institution The Bohemian Club "elitist" when VF's not even invited me to its Oscar Party, and Graydon Carter will not take my calls.

This'll teach 'em!

Fox News' Roger Friedman's Leaked "Wolverine" Review Gets Him In Trouble With Fox News, News Corp

More at HuffPost: “FoxNews.com entertainment columnist Roger Friedman has drawn the ire of News Corp bosses after writing a review of a leaked version of the upcoming 20th Century Fox blockbuster "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" — and he'll have to answer to Fox News executives in a meeting Monday morning.

Friedman's FoxNews.com column Thursday — since deleted — was a review of "Wolverine" that studio bosses viewed as an implicit endorsement of movie piracy, according to Deadline Hollywood Daily's Nikki Finke.”

Who gets hired for Obama's green jobs?

Do you need to be able to build solar cells, or have an advanced chem background to work on cellulosic ethanol? Of course not - the first round will be traditional trades - electricians, steel and iron workers, the people who wear hard hats not three piece suits, the people who have the kind of jobs IBM can't move overseas. It's win~win!

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Sara Lacy Returns Home: A Note On How A Good Relationship Should Be

I just read Sarah Lacy's post on how she misses her husband and that he's a great guy for being patient as she travels for her work, which is writing about all things -- all almost all things -- tech. It was heart-warming. It also reminded me of how one has to have a great relationship just to survive the demands of today's work world. Congradulations to two great people.

Gingrich warns of third party in 2012

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich is warning of a third party mutiny in 2012 if Republicans don’t figure out a way to shape up.

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Obama Breaks Up 'Heated' Spat Between Sarkozy, Jintao

"...The exchange between Sarkozy and Hu got so heated, said a source -- who is not a member of the Obama administration -- it was threatening the unity of the G-20 leaders' meeting... But Mr. Obama stepped between the two men, urging them to try to find consensus, and giving them a "pep talk" about the importance of working together."

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Eric Holder Wants To Release Bush Interrogation Memos

Attorney General Eric Holder wants to release classified Bush-era interrogation memos. But U.S. intel officials are fiercely lobbying the White House to block him from moving forward.

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663,000 U.S. Jobs Lost in Mar., Pushing Unemployment to 8.5%

Despite better-than-expected reports on everything from housing to manufacturing this week, recession-wary U.S. companies are still shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs. The government reported that the nation's employers cut 663,000 workers in March, push the unemployment rate up to 8.5 percent, the highest in nearly 26 years.

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Hedge Fund Paid Obama Adviser Summers $5.2 million

By Roberta Rampton WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, financial disclosure forms released by the White House showed on...

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W.H. team discloses TARP firm ties - Kenneth P. Vogel - POLI

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, pulled in more than $2.7 million in speaking fees paid by firms at the heart of the financial crisis, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America Corp. and the now-defunct Lehman Brothers.

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