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Rev. Moon, Bob Dole, Chris Matthews and More
Sometimes I wonder which is worse: someone who never had principles (e.g., Karl Rove) or someone who once acted like a human being and then lost his way when the price was right. When I look at the Moon controversy, there are a number of people who initially took a principled stand against the anti-American megalomaniac but who changed their tune because either, 1) Moon dumped billions of dollars to help the American right; or 2) because they wanted to line their pockets. A good question. He provides a couple of examples of this, beginning with Bob Dole:
An example of the former is former Senator Robert Dole. In the 1970's, Dole was justifiably troubled about Moon's activities and his attempts to corrupt the American political system. In 1976, Dole held a public forum in Washington in which survivors and the families of victims of the Unification Church spoke about their nightmarish experiences with the cult. In February 1979, Dole held congressional hearings on the threat of cults in which discussion of Moon's pernicious activities were a prominent feature. Carlton Sherwood, a prominent paid apologist for Moon, credits Dole with setting into motion the investigations that led to the imprisonment of the cult leader for tax evasion... And a second example in Chris Matthews:
One of those corrupted by this easy Moonie money was Chris Matthews. To Matthews' credit, when the Moon-owned Washington Times was established in 1982, Matthews--who was then the assistant to then-Speaker Tip O'Neil--refused to grant the Times any legitimacy by not credentialing their operatives (reporters). Matthews quipped at the time, "We work hard enough responding to legitimate press inquires" It was a principled move. And he provides a basic breakdown of the media strategy used by Moon's many front groups to garner positive coverage and build legitimacy:
Moon and his underlings have covered their bases with a two-pronged media strategy: 1) Subverting journalism by becoming part of the media with the Washington Times, UPI, and Insight magazine; 2) Undermining media independence with Moonie front groups that give large conference fees to mainstream journalists. The 1992 Frontline documentary on Moon addresses this: And they have been incredibly successful in doing so. It is astonishing to me that over the last few years, as Moon has actually been crowned by an American Congressman in a ceremony at a Senate office building and embarked on a project to have Christian churches take the crosses out of their sanctuaries to signify that Christ failed in his mission and Moon is here to complete the job, the mainstream media has completely ignored the story. The only ones to do any investigative journalism at all are independent journalists like John Gorenfeld, Scoobie Davis and Robert Parry. Even the Christian media has ignored the issue. Ironically, one of the few exceptions is the Worldnetdaily, a web mag that typically publishes the worst brand of religious right propaganda. Joseph Farah wrote a scathing column about Moon, but it was pure hypocrisy; he claimed to have discovered how dangerous Moon was "more than a decade ago" and that it was "a lesson to me at the time on just how easy it is to be compromised", yet even after writing that column he was profiting from and promoting Moon's media empire. Even after he wrote that column, Farah's column appeared in the Washington Times and the Worldnetdaily was still selling subscriptions to Insight and the Washington Times and profiting from that relationship.
Rev. Moon, Bob Dole, Chris Matthews and More | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
Rev. Moon, Bob Dole, Chris Matthews and More | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)
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