John Gorenfeld: First Man on the Moon
We're happy to see that the WP picked up on the story about Reverend Moon crowning himself king of Big Rock Candy Mountain or whatever it was in front of a bunch of apparently drugged congressmen in the Dirksen Senate building. Yay, bloggers, keeping the story alive, etc. But the Post does add something to the story that we here in blogotopia sometimes let fall by the wayside: Quotes from people who participated in the event. (There's a word for doing this. We'll think of it in second.)
In this case, the lawmakers who participated in the event tell the Post -- you'll never guess -- they were tricked! They had no idea! Sen. Mark Dayton (D-Minn.) told the Post that he thought he was "honoring a constituent receiving a peace award and did not know Moon would be there." His spokeswoman said, "We fell victim to it; we were duped." Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (Md.), thought he was there to "salute the Washington Times, a conservative-leaning newspaper owned by Moon's organization" and "I had no idea what would happen."
Of course. You can understand how they assumed it'd be completely normal. They just thought they'd be attending a mass wedding or something. "I had no idea what would happen," said Bartlett, "but I wound up married to Mark Dayton." They're registered at Hecht's.