perfidy

What the weeping hey has this country come to?

Yesterday [actually, March 23... as commenter Patrick Fleury wonders, 'God alone knows why it did not hit the news then.'] a bipartisan group of Congressmen-- US Congressmen-- attended a ceremony in which the Reverend Sum Yung Moon was crowned Emperor of America.

Cut to the ritual. Eyes downcast, a man identified as Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) is bringing a crown, atop a velvety purple cushion, to a figure who stands waiting austerely with his wife. Now Moon is wearing robes that Louis XIV would have appreciated. All of this has quickly been spliced into a promo reel by Moon's movement, which implies to its followers that the U.S. Congress itself has crowned the Washington Times owner.

But Section 9 of the Constitution forbids giving out titles of nobility, setting a certain tone that might have made the Congressional hosts shy about celebrating the coronation on their websites. They included conservatives, the traditional fans of Moon's newspaper: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA.), Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah), Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) and Republican strategy god Charlie Black, whose PR firm represents Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. But there were also liberal House Democrats like Sanford Bishop (D-Ga.) and Davis. Rep. Harold Ford (D-Tenn.) later told the Memphis Flyer that he'd been erroneously listed on the program, but had never heard of the event, which was sponsored by the Washington Times Foundation.

Rep. Curt Weldon's office tenaciously denied that the Congressman was there, before being provided by The Gadflyer with a photo depicting Weldon at the event, found on Moon's website. "Apparently he was there, but we really had nothing to do with it," press secretary Angela Sowa finally conceded. "I don't think it's quite accurate that the Washington Times said that we hosted the event. We may have been a Congressional co-host, but we have nothing to do with the agenda, the organization, the scheduling, and our role would be limited explicitly to the attendance of the Congressman. . . ."

The spokeswoman for one senator, who asked that her boss not be named, said politicians weren't told the awards program was going to be a Moon event. The senator went, she said, because the Ambassadors promised to hand out awards to people from his home state, people who were genuinely accomplished. When the ceremony morphed into a platform for Moon, she said, people were disconcerted.

"I think there was a mass exodus," she said. "They get all these senators on the floor, and this freak is there."

And yet, they stayed. Goddamn great. For pix, including face-shots of sitting Senators participating in a ceremony crowning a right-wing moonbat Emperor of these here United States, go here.

I always say that Washington can't get any worse, or any weirder. I must be a man of faith because time and again I'm proven to be wrong, wrong, wrong and yet I persist.

[wik] And that's the problem with emperors. Almost two months he's been emperor, and... what? Nothing! No largesse, no continental royal progresses, not even any beheadings or indulgences granted. I demand a recount!