The smear of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama by the Moonie-owned Insight magazine is just the latest example of Moonie smears against Democrats (Robert Parry has a list, click here also). Clinton spokesman described the situation as "an obvious right-wing hit job by a Moonie publication that was designed to attack Senator Clinton and Senator Obama at the same time." The smear was to falsely suggest that Obama had a radical Muslim upbringing and was supposedly concealing his past. The story is a double whammy in that it attributes the smear to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Robert Parry called it "a strategy of slime and divide straight from the textbooks of a spy agency like the CIA."
But the smears by Insight's editor Jeffrey T. Kuhner on Sean Hannity's radio show today were even more nefarious. Kuhner gave the Moonie party line. First, he denied that Moon or the Unification Church has anything to do with the operation of Insight magazine. In response to Wolfson's comment about Insight being "a Moonie publication," Kuhner made the following statement,
First of all, the fact that our owners are the Unification Church is irrelevant. It's religious bigotry. It's disgusting. We don't go on about the Washington Post's ownership or the New York Times' ownership. Our owners have nothing to do with our publication whatsoever. So the impression somehow that we are conducting religious séances here, it's just part of this liberal smear.
REALITY: Moon has dumped over $3 billion dollars into his media empire which includes the Washington Times, Insight, and the UPI wire service. Although church officials downplay their role in their media projects, Moon gives his followers a different story. For instance, in 1989, Moon told members of the Unification Church's Leadership Conference something different. Straight from the Messiah's mouth:
So please take spiritual dominion in your states. You can proclaim spiritually to the government leaders, "I am the elder brother, you are the younger brother." Teach them what you have learned. I invited many congressmen and senators to come to conferences to be educated. Though they may not proclaim openly, many of them support me. Through the Washington Times, Insight magazine, and The World and I, I have been preparing the foundation for you to influence America. . . I am building up a media center, including a television studio and a wire service. Why? Because I want to be rich? No--to educate Americans in God's truth.
More disturbing were Kuhner's statements that appear to be a thinly-veiled attempt to incite radical Muslims to kill Obama. I have listened to the tape of Kuhner's comments several times and it seems as if he wants Muslim fanatics to go after Obama. Decide for yourself. Early in the interview, Kuhner told Hannity:
They [The Obama campaign] didn't know how to handle this story. What it tells me is: A) They are not ready for primetime. More importantly, they know the Muslim issue is something they can be hurt on. And Sean, the point I want to stress to you and all your listeners, and I think this is the $64,000 question. The radical Islamic fascists that we are now fighting in Iraq and across the Middle East, if there is one thing that they champion again and again is that they believe is that once you are born as a Muslim, you must remain a Muslim for the rest of your life and if you convert from Islam to Christianity, that is apostasy and you must be killed and beheaded. To me, the issue here that begs to be answered is: was Obama raised as a Muslim? Is he considered by his father to be a Muslim? If he was considered by his father to be a Muslim, it doesn't matter what we think. What matters is that the radical Islamists in the Middle East will consider him an apostate and will ask for his beheading. That's a question that the liberal media doesn't want to touch but it's one that needs to be addressed.
Later in the conversation, Kuhner told Hannity:
But as to the Muslim issue itself, we are working on a follow-up story. Here's what we found, I think, so far—I think we can viably say: it seems that Obama has been, to some degree, downplaying his Muslim background. It doesn’t mean that he attended a madrassa. It doesn't mean he’s some kind of--he was raised as a radical fanatic but he was raised, to some degree, as a Muslim. He did attend a Muslim school. It was not as secular a background as he claims. And I think there was some affiliation with Islam when he was young and I think he needs to come clean on that. And what I think is disturbing to me, and to be fair to the Hillary camp, is: why is Obama deliberately trying to downplay his Muslim background? What is he embarrassed about? What is he ashamed of? There's nothing wrong with being raised as a Muslim. You know, he converted to Christianity. What's the problem here?REALITY: Kuhner wants to have it both ways. One the one hand, Kuhner claims, without any evidence, that Obama was raised as a Muslim and that Obama had concealed this fact and that he shouldn't be ashamed of his supposed Muslim upbringing. Kuhner made this claim right after he said that if Obama had been raised as a Muslim, he will become the target of reprisals by Muslim extremists because he is now a Christian. To top it off, Kuhner blames the whole thing on Hillary.
While I found Kuhner's comments repulsive and shocking, I was not surprised. The Unification Church is less of a religion than it is a political movement. Sun Myung Moon’s current allies of convenience are members of the American political right--especially the Bush family. Moon's ultimate goal is a one-world theocracy in which Unification theology is the prevailing philosophy and every human being is a brain-dead Moonie; God help those who get in the way of Moon or his allies. Parry succinctly outlines Moon's demented plans for America:
Though The Washington Times dubs itself "America's Newspaper," Moon has declared in speeches to his followers that his goal is "the natural subjugation" of the United States and its people under his theocratic rule. . . For Americans who resist and try to maintain their individuality, he has vowed that they will be "digested."
The talk about those who resist Moon's vision is no anomaly (quick note: Bush the Elder once called Moon, "the man with the vision."). Moon recently told followers, "The Last Days are coming to America. Be careful. Those that oppose [Reverend] Moon will perish."
In Moon’s Manichaean (and deranged) worldview, because Obama is opposed to Moon’s current allies (i.e., the Bush Family), he then is an agent of Satan and not fit to live.
Note: Thanks to Moonboots for help with this post. . . I will postpone my post on Chris Matthews for tomorrow or Saturday.
UPDATE: Jeffrey Kuhner and Sean Hannity: two peas in a pod. I did a little more research on Kuhner and I wasn't surprised. In the wake of 9/11, Kuhner was a part of the Clinton Georgetown Speech Smear (Here's what Kuhner wrote). This is hardly surprising considering that the smear originated with Washington Times operative Joseph Curl. Even though the smear had been thoroughly exposed as such (even Opinionjournal.com's James Taranto retracted his criticism of Clinton on the matter), Slanthead included it in his book Let Freedom Ring (click here and scroll down to the seventh paragraph).
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