Brad Friedman Byon 11/15/2009, 11:55am PT

While I've always known that the rightwing Washington Times was owned by the self-proclaimed Messiah and "Dear Leader" of the Unification Church, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, I don't think I fully appreciated just how directly in control of the paper the Moonies actually were. Nor did I fully appreciate how desperate the wingnuts must have been to give the appearance of "conservative" points of view seen emanating from a seemingly "legitimate" inside-the-beltway newspaper, even if it meant allying directly with a loony-tunes religious cult.

Well, so much for that self-delusion.

In any case, now that the wingers own both the Wall Street Journal and the bulk of the Washington Post, they can probably get by without the Washington Times if it comes to that.

A few selected on-point comments from the TPM story linked above, in which they post the first public statement from the Moon family (which also now owns UPI), about the ongoing, whacked-out internecine family battle over the newspaper most-frequently quoted by Limbaugh, Hannity and all the rest...

NowhereMan:

Were a "liberal, msm" newspaper of consequence owned by a foreign, religious nutjob, the wingers would have long since devoured the printed meal.

JohnGorenfeld:

Can you imagine what Sean Hannity would make of it if The Nation were owned by a billionaire cult leader whom evening news reports used to warn mothers about?

Kinkistyle:

The whole idea that a major newspaper and new[s] organization is owned and operated by a loony cult is just mind-boggling.

JohnGorenfeld:

Beltway folks may be jaded enough to yawn at the fact that a cult leader formerly mentioned in the same breath as Jim Jones is publishing the Washington Times; raving about ending Christianity ; and arranging for bipartisan dinner parties where he claims to be the Messiah But most other people I have talked to find Moon's ownership of the Times amazing. It's a living political cartoon of hypocrisy that ought to be at least as well known as the supposed evils of ACORN and George Soros.

Druidity:

The real surprise to me in this article is that Moonies own UPI. I couldn't care less about WT, I never read it and everyone knows where they lean. But a lot of local and national papers carry the UPI stories.



