Salon: Hail to the Moon king –no longer one of D.C.'s best kept secrets

[kskiska]

The deeply weird coronation of Rev. Sun Myung Moon in a Senate office building -- crown, robes, the works -- is no longer one of Washington's best-kept secrets.



You probably imagine your congressman hard at work in the Capitol debating legislation, making laws -- you know, governing. But your newspaper probably didn't tell you that one night in March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict and multibillionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin -- the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

To many observers, this bizarre scene would have looked like the apocalypse as depicted in "Left Behind" novels. Moon, 84, the benefactor of conservative foundations like the American Family Coalition -- who served time in the 1980s for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice -- has views somewhere to the right of the Taliban's Mullah Omar. Moon preaches that gays are "dung-eating dogs," Jews brought on the Holocaust by betraying Jesus, and the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls "Godism" -- with him in charge. The man crowned "King of Peace" by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church's Unification News: "Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father."

(snip)

… In a 1994 speech, he asked: "Do you like the smell of your husband's semen? Answer to Father. Does it smell good or bad? You may not like the smell of your wife's stool, but do you smell your own? Why don't you smell your own but you smell your wife's? Because you are not totally one."

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/06/21/moon/index.html

[theivoryqueen]

1. I read about this a while back - very strange

[EstimatedProphet]

2. AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

WHAT THE HELL DOES IT TAKE FOR PEOPLE TO WAKE UP TO THIS LUNACY?!?!? For God's sake, LOOK AT THIS!!!!! It's like a B-movie plot. I halfway expect what's going on today to show up on MST3K sometime! AND PEOPLE KEEP IGNORING IT!

[NMDemDist2]

3. I saw this months ago and it was so high on the "weirdness" meter

I didn't know what to say... and months later, I still don't :eyes:

[acmavm]

4. Now this is the part that really seems weird to me (well, it's all weird

but:
<snip>
On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon
<snip>
IN A UNITED STATES FEDERAL BUILDING???? What the hell is going on here? Since when do crazed felon dipshits like Moon get to commandeer a senate office building for their own personal use? And what the hell were elected representatives doing there?

This was one of the weirdest things I've read about in a long time, and it came with pictures no less.

[LittleApple81]

6. And it was included in a propaganda movie for Moon... in Korean.

I watched it... and I was screaming at the screen. It is such filth.. AND BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS PARTICIPATED. He is an equal opportunity corruptor. But he and his supporters are not equal opportunity for anything else.

[BraveMan]

13. U.S. Rep. Danny Davis

<>

[madrchsod]

5. davis got ripped up in our paper today.

a reporter from springfield wrote an article about danny and the moon king needless to say he had nothing good to say about the whole bizarre "coronation". "weird scenes inside the goldmine"

[newscaster]

8. Why is is that no one was taking names....

of the elected officials who took part in that nonsense? Maybe the term Impeachment might apply to them too.

Separation of church & state my ass!!!

[arcos]

9. There is a complete list...

it is floating around DU somewhere... I'll try to find it.

[BraveMan]

12. Notable attendees

-snip-



On the evening of March 23, a group of the Rev. Moon's associates gathered at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington. There, the Rev. presided over a ceremony presenting "Crown of Peace" awards to a number of honored guests. Several U.S. Congressmen -- Democrats Sen. Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Rep. Danny K. Davis of Illinois, Rep. Sanford D. Bishop Jr. of Georgia; Republicans Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland, Rep. Christopher B. Cannon of Utah, and Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania -- received "Ambassadors for Peace" awards.


Decked-out in a campy floor-length cape, the Rev. Moon was presented with an ornate gold crown and a lifetime achievement award. Introduced by a shofar-blowing rabbi, the Rev. told the star-studded audience -- made up of congressional members and a number of religious leaders -- that a "new era" had come: "Open your hearts and receive the secrets that Heaven is disclosing in this age through me."


The Rev. Moon may have turned a few heads by pointing out that while he is as human as the next guy, "in the context of Heaven's providence, I am God's ambassador, sent to earth with His full authority. I am sent to accomplish His command to save the world's six billion people, restoring them to Heaven with the original goodness in which they were created."


-snip-



From The Rev. Moon's last stand? by Bill Berkowitz.

[EstimatedProphet]

7. It's like there's some sort of mind-control device in Washington

that has taken over all our representatives. Suddenly I see the entire congress seems like Manchurian candidates...

[OneBlueSky]

10. bizarre in the extreme, but it all falls within the parameters . . .

of BushCo's new corporate theocracy . . . these people are legitimately crazy, and if we don't get rid of them, rest assured they will get rid of us . . .

CHURCH & STATE
by Neal Pollack
A lunatic Christian cult has the run of the White House and the ear of the president. What do they want? The end of the world. Be afraid.

http://www.thestranger.com/2004-06-10/feature2.html

(snip)

Color me even more unsettled when you consider that this is a country where, according to a recent ABC News poll, 61 percent of the people believe that the world was literally created in seven days, where public schools are teaching evolution as "just another theory," and where churches fill theaters with audiences dying to watch a nasty snuff film about Jesus. Americans, like people everywhere, are mostly good. But they're also quite susceptible to manipulation by charlatans. How many of you, in the last year, have had a conversation where someone casually threw out the funny suggestion that "Bush is the Antichrist"? I see a lot of you raising your hands. Well, it's no joke, sister.

Millions of Americans believe that Armageddon is coming soon. Revelation states that the first stage of the apocalypse will be a battle where four angels, "which are bound in the great river Euphrates," will be unleashed to "slay the third part of men." Then Israel and its allies must occupy the rest of its "biblical lands," which happens to encompass most of the Middle East, and then they have to build the Third Temple where the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque now stand, and... well, you see where this is going.

Wake up, people! It's worse than you imagined! The United States of America has been hijacked by religious nutballs who are trying to bring about the end of the world! We have to stop them now! The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Wolf! Wolf!

- more . . .

http://www.thestranger.com/2004-06-10/feature2.html

[ixion]

11. I still hold that dominionism is one of the greatest threats we face

Religious fanatics have no problem carrying out the most evil deeds as long as they believe that they are doing so in their lord's name. It's creepy, and it's something we should have gotten over as a species years ago.

But the fact that 61% of people believe that the world was created in seven days, provides some telling indications of how really stupid we still are, collectively speaking.

Talk about self-fulfilling prophecy. :eyes: