The Cubscout chapter I was in was horrible, but my kids thought theirs was great ....
As with any group that has many local chapters, there are some great local groups and some horribly bad ones. HOG membership is free the first year after you buy a bike, so it might be worth it to check out your local chapter just to see if there's anybody you want to ride with. If your chapter sucks, no loss, just don't go back.
My local HOG chapter does put on a lot of 2 to 7-day well-planned rides, 1 or 2 per month during the riding season. The political bullpucky stays pretty low. There are posers, but the majority of folks seem to actually ride. The dealer seems to let the elected leaders run the show. From what I've heard, all this seems to be unusual.
I'm staying in HOG for a while so I can easily get a rental bike and get into the 100th party when we go to Australia next year. I prefer to ride in small groups of 1 to 6, not 50 to to 1000, so I only ride with the group occasionally. And personally, I can do without all the patches and pins stuff (shouldn't you have to kill somebody to get patched?...

I do appreciate their charity work, so I show up and help out when they do MDA, etc.