Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Here's an important story for inveterate Rev. Moon watchers like me. Last weekend, the top executives of the Washington Times, owned by Moon, were all fired unexpectedly. Now TPM reports that the firing was done by Moon's older son Preston without his father's permission:
Hyun-jin Preston Moon, the son of Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon who controls the Washington Times, acted without his father's blessing in firing the top leadership of the newspaper over the weekend, a Unificationist and former Times staffer who is in contact with high church officials tells TPM.Preston's reasons for carrying out the shakeup are not clear to the source, but "one thing that is clear is that he acted alone. This is not something the Reverend Moon wanted, ever."
Very interesting indeed. And it looks like this may be part of a feud with his younger brother, who was named by Rev. Moon to succeed him in power upon his death:
It's unclear how intertwined the internal family dispute, which centers on Preston's anger at the selection of his young brother Hyung-jin Moon as Rev. Moon's heir apparent, is with the paper's lack of financial sustainability. That problem was cited by the Washington Times in the press release announcing the firings over the weekend. The operations of the paper have been heavily subsidized by the church since the Times' founding as an anti-communist outlet in the early 1980s.The Unificationist source tells us the feud dates back at least to a January birthday party for Rev. Moon at the church-owned Manhattan Center on 34th Street in New York. At that event, Rev. Moon designated Hyung-jin as the church's new leader. But Preston has "refused to acknowledge the authority of his younger brother" and "refused to comply with guidance from his father," the source says.
Both men are Harvard-educated and revered in the church. Hyung-jin, who is known for his flirtation with Buddhism years ago, has authored A Bald Head and a Strawberry, a book of essays with allegorical themes, and is known for his feat of 21,000 full bows performed in his parents' honor. Preston is an MBA who, besides chairing the Times' parent company, devotes himself to creating "One Family Under God" through harmony-promoting rallies he hosts around the world.
The New York office of the Unification Church has not responded to our requests for comment, and apparently does not have an official spokesperson.
The source tells TPM that with the weekend shakeup at the Times, "Preston took unilateral action, without consulting his siblings. [The fired executives] are all lifelong church members, who were loyal to the vision of Rev. Moon."
Though Hyung-jin Moon is the named heir to power in the Unification church, Preston Moon is the chairman of News World Communications, which is the parent company of the Washington Times. We could be witnessing the splitting apart of the Moon empire.
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Comments
I remember laughing at moonies when I was a kid. I guess I'm waiting for them to merge with scientology so we can have all the cult money grubbers in one spot.
Kids fighting over the spoils of daddy's ill gotten gains is so old school.
Posted by: MikeMa | November 13, 2009 9:53 AM
Ed stated:
Given the The Washington Times position within our nation's capital as the Fox News newspaper version coupled to the Washington Post increasingly sinking into a neo-conservative mouthpiece, it appears to me that the most powerful city in the world lacks a legitimate and capable news publisher covering global, federal and national affairs from the perspective of our nation's capital.
The result of this vacuum given the WaPo's loss of legitimacy is that I've found it increasingly hard to collect straight news from a source I can trust. I have become fond of the sister publication to Ed's Michigan Messenger, the The Washington Independent though they by design are a liberal-biased news source, where I'm cognizant that "liberal" tends to mean, "the unvarnished truth", still, I wouldn't expect them to cover all the news or make a sufficient effort to find conservatives that have thoughtful rebuttals to their point of view given their scarcity and irrelevance - that is not their mission statement.
I also occasionally scan the The Hill and Politico but their scopes are also narrow by design so I'm stuck with non-local sources, The Wall Street Journal now owned by Rupert Murdoch which obviously makes me nervous on the straight news side (their editorials have been apologia for the GOP my entire adult life), and the The New York Times.
Seems like a ripe time for an Internet-centric media source to exploit this wide open market opportunity.
Posted by: Michael Heath | November 13, 2009 9:56 AM
There is no 'dark side' of the Moons. Matter of fact, they're all dark.
Posted by: NJ | November 13, 2009 10:38 AM
NJ wins the thread.
Posted by: Eric Lund | November 13, 2009 10:58 AM
I'm also bummed by the lack of a decent newspaper here in the DC metro area. Never could read the Washington Times, and I maintain my WaPo subscription mainly for the Style/comics section, the TV guide, and the Weekend guide.
Maybe it's time to revive the Washington Star.
Posted by: Mandrake | November 13, 2009 11:38 AM
I have proudly refused to read the Moonie Times since my arrival in DC 20 years ago (I buy the Post most days for the crossword puzzle, the DC Weekly section, Eugen Robinson and, on Mondays in the Fall, recaps of winning New England Patriots games). There is scuttlebut around DC that the shake-up may have wide-ranging ramifications for the paper, as it is suffering the same financial problems of all the other newspapers in the country. I did notice this morning that the newspaper boxes around my office still had Tuesday's edition of the Times - apparently they haven't been serviced since then.
Posted by: CPT_Doom | November 13, 2009 12:54 PM
Maybe Moon's son will buy out The Family, and we could witness an all out right-wing cult civil war.
Posted by: Reverend H.L. Spork | November 13, 2009 1:48 PM
I just came over here from reading The Onion and for a moment I thought I still was.
Posted by: Tom | November 13, 2009 1:49 PM
This is the start of Sunni and Shia Unificationism.
Posted by: AL | November 13, 2009 2:01 PM
You should at least provide a link to the original story, Ed, if you're going to quote so voluminously from it.
Posted by: tacitus | November 13, 2009 2:12 PM
. . . is known for his feat of 21,000 full bows performed in his parents' honor.
That's pretty creepy.
At 3 seconds a bow, that's 17.5 hours spent bowing. What kind of parents are pleased by this degree of ass-kissing?
Posted by: Molly, NYC | November 13, 2009 3:29 PM
Molly, NYC "At 3 seconds a bow, that's 17.5 hours spent bowing. What kind of parents are pleased by this degree of ass-kissing?"
I think it was to balance out the other time. You should've seen his abs after his feat of 21,000 sit-ups.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | November 13, 2009 6:47 PM
"I think it was to balance out the other time. You should've seen his abs after his feat of 21,000 sit-ups."
"Perfect Abs in 17.5 Hours"!!! He could make a(n even bigger) fortune hawking that vid.
Posted by: Rick R | November 13, 2009 7:11 PM
"Upon his death"? I thought Moon was supposed to be the second coming of Christ. Shouldn't he be planning to ascend bodily into Heaven or something?
Posted by: Nemo | November 13, 2009 8:32 PM
Now that the Moon empire is in discord, it's time for rationalists to start throwing more chaos at them, strategically timed and placed to amplify the existing discord and break them apart. Anything that can be done to further stir up the sibling jealousy is good.
Realistically this is going to have to come from, or look as if it comes from, somewhere that is not immediately suspect. Korean Americans and former neocons (there are many) are ideally placed to know the cultural scene and appropriate language to use.
Spreading some rumors to the effect that the Moonies were discussing merging with The Family, would be interesting. Study what The Yes Men do and duplicate that style. Do it at a time and place when it's not expected. The goal is to get both the Moonies and The Family to issue denials. When you get them issuing denials, you've scored a direct hit.
Here's to hoping that Sun Myung drops dead while in the fond embrace of a follower who is in her mid 20s. Yes, and here's to hoping the coroner's report about same gets leaked. OTOH some naughty person can create just such a coroner's report and leak it anyway. If you can get them to deny it, you've scored another hit.
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I recall when the Moonie Times first came to the Bay Area in bright orange newspaper boxes.
Someone went around putting stickers on the boxes, in bright orange with violet lettering, saying "Public Urinal: insert 25-cents, open door, and piss here!" It would not surprise me if passers-by at night, particularly those who were a wee bit inebriated, did just that.
Pity for the workers who had to collect the soggy stinking messes out of those boxes the next day, but in any case the Moonie Times disappeared from town shortly after this little prank got started.
Posted by: g347 | November 14, 2009 3:40 AM
So, the Moonie cult is in chaos. Scientology is still being rocked by media scrutiny and by Anonymous. I hope these cults go away once and for all.
Posted by: Virginia Plain | November 16, 2009 6:29 PM