After being arrested as part of the Emperors Club sweep that brought down Eliot Spitzer last March, former hooker-booker Tanya Hollander moved on with her life. She’d always been into healing and New Age stuff, and while her job at the Emperors Club was semi-related to the field, she was more in her element as a manager at the Menla Mountain Retreat, a Woodland Valley conference center owned by the NYC-based nonprofit Tibet House. They liked her, too, and all was well there until someone told Menla’s managing director, Birgitte “Nena” Thurman, mother of actress Uma and a practicing Buddhist, about Tanya’s shady past. Thurman flipped out. “When we interviewed and hired her back in July, we had absolutely no idea that she had any involvement in such a thing,” Thurman told local paper the Phoenicia Times. “We’re extremely troubled to learn of her problems only now, and especially troubled that she withheld what’s clearly pertinent information about her background. Clearly, had we been aware, we might have hired someone else.” Jeez, what kind of Buddhist is this lady? Hasn’t she ever heard of Metta, otherwise known as goodwill, friendliness, kindness, forgiveness and one of the central tenets of Buddhism? Sounds like someone needs to spend a little time in the chanting hut.
Hiring Shocker [Phoenicia Times via NYP]
