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
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
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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