THE WASHINGTON TIMES: Where Moonies & Conservatives Meet

Since it first started publishing in 1982, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, which was founded by convicted federal prisoner and felon founder Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church has been a darling newspaper for many conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives continue to look the other way when Moon declares himself to be the "Messiah", and some adoring members of congress have even allowed Moon's church to hold some activities in federal buildings which seem to violate the separation of church and state. Senator Orrin Hatch, Senator Charles Grassley and the defeated former Senator Sam Brownback are some of the biggest supporters of THE WASHINGTON TIMES and often are given space to write goofball right wing opinion pieces that would make most normal persons only cringe.

Moon has been a long time supporter of the Republican Party and was known to even strongly defend Richard Nixon during his crisis over the White House involvement in the Watergate Scandal. And Moon was another big supporter of Ronald Reagan, whose foreign policy was characterized by one illegal activity after another such as the misuse of Agriculture Department CCC funds meant only for international disaster relief to allow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to buy billions of dollars of arms to build up the Iraqi military from U.S., French and Brazilian arms contractors. It something really stinks, then Moon is there to give it his blessing.

In 1982, when Moon founded THE WASHINGTON TIMES he claimed that the mission was to support anti-Communist goals as well as to create "an instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world". And of course part of that "truth" according to Moon is that he's the claimed "Messiah". A Capitol Hill location was once used by Moon for some sort of strange coronation ceremony where Moon was once coronated as the "Messiah" attended by some right wing members of congress and their families. Strangely, many of these same members of congress continue to insist to voters back home that they are somehow Christians, although they now seem to accept cult leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon as their "Messiah". None of these members of congress have been upfront with their voters back home that they have replaced Jesus with Rev. Moon as their new "Messiah".

And also unfortunately, THE WASHINGTON TIMES has also acted as a sort of recruiting grounds for some young journalists who then later take up work at more respectable papers such as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, THE POST or THE NEW YORK TIMES. What was so decent about THE WALL STREET JOURNAL was that it not only represented very good financial news, but the editorial page was historically slightly liberal in orientation, however as a larger influx of WASHINGTON TIMES talent seeks employment at papers like THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, it biases the reporting more to the same sort of right leaning doctrines of THE WASHINGTON TIMES and only pollutes the pool.

The newspaper business is very tough these days with advertising revenue way down and threatening many city newspapers very survival. Some cities such as San Francisco could conceivably even be without a daily newspaper if this economic distress continues much longer. Newspaper bankruptcies are a real epidemic these days. However the cult religion of Rev. Sun Myung Moon has found a perfect recruiting ground by influencing many conservatives and Republicans over to his way of thinking with his radical anti-Communist and far right politics with THE WASHINGTON TIMES. And unfortunately this has made many on the right far more accepting of the wild and strange cult religious practices of Moon and his followers, or of Moon's illegal activites that landed him in a federal prison to begin with.

Former conservative-turned-liberal writer David Brock who once worked at THE WASHINGTON TIMES has related how the paper rewarded writers who biased stories towards the right and spun news into political propaganda for the right. Surprisingly, for a bunch of anti-Communists, the staff of this newspaper operate much like the official news media of Communist North Korea or other other Communist nations. Moon was a former prisoner of the North Koreans, and has managed to hone their own propaganda style to a fine point.

The biggest fault of journalism that starts out looking for an ideological angle at which to publish news loses the critical angle of objectivity that should be a major component of most good mass media journalists. Everything is written as viewed through a prism of furthering the political right over at THE WASHINGTON TIMES, and not an honest reporting of the news. And further, Moon uses the paper to add some legitimacy to his cult religion as well. Many WASHINGTON TIMES readers will like the opinions of the paper and begin to become less suspicious when Moon replaces Jesus with himself as the "Messiah" or offers up other outrageous teachings.

Strangely conservatives will often oppose liberal culture such as some music, art, politics, movies or other culture because they fear that such culture will liberalize the opinions of society on political or moral matters. Yet many conservatives will freely rally to a newspaper founded by a religious cult member who seeks to undermine the status of Jesus as the founder of the Christian faith and replace him with a convicted felon as the "Messiah" who never claimed to heal the sick, raise the dead, or perform any miracles that have been attributed to Jesus by his historic followers.

Cultural liberals never have really sought to undermine the role of Jesus as the founder of the Christian faith. But they have challenged many of some moral views or other opinions often espoused by traditional structured religion. And if anything their sense of justice and fairness often reflected great influence from the teachings of Jesus. Some conservatives by contrast wish to dump Jesus altogether, and follow some self-declared "Messiah" like a Rev. Moon only because they agree with his politics. Intellectually, spiritually, culturally and morally, this cannot be the most wise path of all paths to follow.