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Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom
 
 
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Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom [Hardcover]

John Gorenfeld (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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Book Description

March 1, 2008
What does it say about American politics when a famous 1970s cult leader publishes a Washington newspaper, dresses up in the U.S. Senate offices like King George III, and no one in D.C. seems to care? One night in 2004, at one of Washington’s most outrageous dinner parties, members of Congress bought a shining crown and robes to a billionaire mystery man who calls himself the True Father: the Reverend Moon, sushi mogul, conservative philanthropist, and publisher of the right-wing Washington Times. After Salon.com journalist John Gorenfeld broke the story of Moon’s  coronation, the New York Times compared the scandal to an act of the Roman emperor Caligula.
 
Now, in a witty work of investigative journalism, Gorenfeld explores the rest of the saga--the fascinating, absurd and politically-embarrassing story of U.S. politicians who jet-set with Moon. A cultural icon of the 1970s, Moon was once associated with mass weddings and parents who hired deprogrammers to seize their children from him. But as Gorenfeld discovers in telling the stories of people caught up in his world, Moon has long been the best-kept secret of the Right--despite naming himself Messiah and making megalomaniacal speeches better suited to Marvel Comics than Politico. Join the author on an arresting journey into 40 years of political decline, told through the saga of Moon and his shameless relationships with an all-star cast of GOP celebrities, ranging from Richard Nixon to George H.W. Bush, and from Jerry Falwell to Pat Boone.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"No American reporter knows more than John Gorenfeld about Sun Myung Moon's hidden influence and megalomaniacal ambitions. His investigations have explored Moon's deep penetration of the religious right, the conservative media, and elite political circles from the Bush family to Capitol Hill."   -- Joe Conason, author of It Can Happen Here


"an excellent new expose...If Don DeLillo had taken a lot of acid and grown a funny bone before he wrote Mao II, this is the book he might have written. What's scary is that it's true. Gorenfeld isn't a sensationalizer; indeed, with material such as Moon provides, he can more than afford understatement.”

Jeff Sharlet, The Revealer, 3/25/08

From the Back Cover

"A mind-altering expose of the cult within the cult, the Moon empire, and its astonishing influence inside Washington, the Republican Party, and the vast right-wing conspiracy."
-- Sidney Blumenthal, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime

“Bad Moon Rising is stunningly good. Stylish, exquisitely researched, and morally courageous, it reveals corruption to a depth and breadth unimagined by mere novelists.”
-- Rick Perlstein, author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

“Bad Moon Rising is a riveting investigation into how a cult leader has guilefully infiltrated and exploited the very heart of our democracy. John Gorenfeld lays bare the real story no one else has dared to tell.”
-- Sarah Posner, author of God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters

“Most of the press has treated Sun Myung Moon as an entertaining eccentric, overlooking the consequences of his widening reach into the corridors of power in the United States. John Gorenfeld has produced a book that explains—cogently and persuasively—why we need to seriously consider the Rev. Moon’s broadening influence and its implications.”
-- Dennis B. Roddy, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“A creepy kleptocratic tale of perverse messianic delusion and amoral Washington elitists that would be utterly unbelievable if not for the fact that it’s all horrifyingly, ridiculously true.”
-- Ken Layne, Wonkette

"The kind of fierce, uncompromising journalism that always matters in a world of ruthless phonies."
-- Tony Norman
, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette


Product Details

  • Hardcover: 329 pages
  • Publisher: PoliPointPress; 1st edition (March 1, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0979482232
  • ISBN-13: 978-0979482236
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #248,569 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in L.A., I went to the UC Berkeley School of Journalism. Since then I've written articles for Salon, the London Guardian, Radar, and other magazines. I'm a Bay Area journalist who has written about everything from North Korean monster movies to fugitive dot-com criminals, and I've been on NPR, Air America, and Canadian public radio. I blog at gorenfeld.net.

 

Customer Reviews

11 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (11 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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24 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Things you didn't want to know, March 25, 2008
By 
Katrs (Michigan USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom (Hardcover)
This is an excellent and well written book. The facts and details are well researched. It's the kind of book that makes you wish you could bury your head in the sand. There are couple of slow parts but that's to be expected in a book that has to layout some detail and background information. It's well worth the time and money spent just to have an understanding of the inner workings and failings of our political system and how greed can create a whole flock of silent sheep.
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30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Pied Piper of Pusan, March 31, 2008
By 
Gordon Neufeld (Schenectady, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
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This review is from: Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom (Hardcover)
When looking to explain the ascendancy of the paleo-conservatives in U.S. politics, few commentators have remarked upon the sinister and seminal influence of the enigmatic and unfathomably wealthy Sun Myung Moon. Who else has the resources to unflinchingly lose billions on a newspaper, The Washington Times, merely to champion conservative causes, in the teeth of all evidence and in defiance of all flagrant hypocrisy? John Gorenfeld in Bad Moon Rising chronicles the rise of a pseudo-Messiah to the point of fooling a brace of senators and congressmen into crowning him "King of Peace" at the Senate Dirksen Building in 2004, in a wide-ranging account that moves back and forth from Moon's early years in Korea in the 1950s to his dotage claiming imaginary converts from among the ranks of dead U.S. presidents.

This is the story of a man who would not be deterred, even by his failure to live up to his own teachings, from aspiring to the title of "King of Kings" and leader of all the world. The fact that he must make this claim by subterfuge, by staging events that appear to mean one thing to the general public but another to his own disciples, means little to him. Appearances are all to this would-be Messiah.

If I was to fault this important book in any way, it would be for minor errors of fact. I was a member of Moon's Unification Church from 1976 to 1986, so I know what I'm talking about. In particular, Gorenfeld's claim on page 13, which he repeats on page 75, that the American branch of the Unification Church reached a "one-time peak of thirty thousand members" is simply untrue. The 30,000 figure was a goal that I often heard the members being urged to attain in the late 1970s, when achieving that level of membership was considered crucial to Moon's success in America. When this goal could not be reached, members took to claiming that it had anyway by including people who had merely attended a Moon-inspired lecture or shown mild interest in the ideas of the "True Father". In truth, even at its peak, the Moon movement likely never exceeded 5,000 full-time, committed members in America.

Another reviewer has complained of the confusing structure of this account, which moves associatively from personality to personaltiy, instead of providing a meticulously chronological record of Moon's rise, fall and (seeming) resurrection. This structure, which works well enough in a magazine article, is indeed confusing in the context of a book. On the other hand, there are 53 pages of notes, which more than answers the claim that the text is insufficiently annotated.

These are quibbles. This book deserves 5 stars because it exposes the heinous influence of a rarely acknowledged foreign influence upon American politics -- one which has provided bottomless cash contributions to conservative causes, and which has in consequence helped to puff up the hubris of the George W. Bush presidency to the point where it may fairly be likened to the Roman imperium.

This is not to say, however, that Moon and his organization actually control any one American political party; Mr. Gorenfeld makes no such claim. Rather, he points out that Moon's enormous wealth has been used to shift the American political dialogue sharply to the right compared with where it stood in the early 1970s. This rightward shift in American politics has occurred without Moon having to give direct orders to any one politician and without his controlling any one political party. It should be added that in recent years the Washington Times has declined in influence because of a schism among the elderly Moon's sons, two of whom are vying to control his movement in the light of Moon's senescence and probable impending death. Nevertheless, the rightward shift in American politics that Moon helped to finance will continue as his most dubious legacy long after he himself has mercifully expired.
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21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Such an important book - and a very good read, March 22, 2008
This review is from: Bad Moon Rising: How Reverend Moon Created the Washington Times, Seduced the Religious Right, and Built an American Kingdom (Hardcover)
It's so important for us to understand the forces seeking and gaining control over our democracy - and Moon is certainly one of the more dangerous ones. Gorenfeld has not only done extensive research, he's pulled it all together in a page-turning, great read.

From the Washington Times to the sushi we eat, Moon has so much influence - it's time we knew what his operation was all about.

Thanks you Mr. Gorenfeld for doing some real journalism!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
family federation, can smash the whole world, love organ
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Reverend Moon, Unification Church, Washington Times, Sun Myung Moon, United States, New York, South Korean, True Father, White House, North Korea, Capitol Hill, True Parents, Divine Principle, Washington Post, Michael Jenkins, Kim Il Sung, Returning Lord, San Francisco, United Nations, Rising Tide, Orrin Hatch, Spirit World, Heung Jin, Latin America, Jerry Falwell
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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