So the big story out of Rev. Moon's Washington Times is that the new editor, John Solomon of the AP, will supposedly be remaking it into a normal, mainstream newspaper. Yesterday I related this claim to a Japanese journalist friend of mine, a longtime chronicler of cults who was once followed to his New York hotel by the Moonies, who own the influential national paper--and one in his homeland, too. He couldn't believe any American would fall for such a claim.
Neither can I, after watching this footage of the paper's 1997 anniversary party.
(If they take it down from You Tube, it will be available at my Moon TV site).
There you go. Orrin Hatch. George Bush. And the L. Ron Hubbard of the East.
Solomon does seem well-intentioned, in a naive kind of way, and it will be interesting to see what he does with the cranky hard-right paper. He's already taken impressive action to ditch the use of scare quotes around the word "gay," bringing Sun Myung Moon's paper into the 1980s. And the Confederates may have been cleaned out of the newsroom. But what about the cult leader in the attic?
It remains to be seen whether Solomon will tolerate a boss who shows up at company events, waving his hands and demanding that his staff put their energies into stamping out "free sex."
Or the Christian cross--but I'll save that one (from 2002) for another day.
