I just found out from a card with a picture of a laughing old man in sunglasses that we lost my high school journalism teacher, Mr. Pease, to prostate cancer.

Bob Pease was a Missourian who wrote novels and plays, coached JV football, and relished assigning banned books to his English class. When he taught our class at Buena High School in suburban SoCal, he was in his 60s, sort of a cantankerous but wise Western Wilford Brimley character.

Back then we would print stories from a 286 PC, lay them out with hot wax rollers, then drive the stacked pages down the Santa Paula Freeway, past the orange groves and crumpled mountains of Ventura County, to a citrus farm town with its own newspaper and printing press, something you needed before the Internet to get word out. The press shut down years ago.

One day after beating a deadline to put an issue to bed, we came to class to find that Mr. Pease had left us with a congratulatory letter he had typed up, praising us for prevailing against the odds. The last line quoted from the headline over my longhaired drummer friend Matt’s review of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “‘A Bloody Success,’ indeed.”

When you are 17 and have fresh memories of middle school P.E., with its mandatory jock strap inspections and other human rights abuses, it is hard to express what it means for someone like Mr. Pease to honor you. His class was the anti-P.E., where you were a trusted professional who could slip out for important editorial duties, though Mr. Pease may not have signed off on the time the three of us, during 6th Period, drove a car out of the school parking lot to pick up the new Porno For Pyros CD, for the music page, feeling like actual Spin critics. But the journey was undertaken in the spirit of loyalty to Mr. Pease and what he stood for, which was the freedom and dignity of the written truth.

Coverage in The Buena Vista slanted towards spring dances and water polo scores, but there was space for more. And with no Web, it was heady to be in the one class where a few had been vested with the power to disseminate unauthorized ideas.

As editors-in-chief, we took ourselves so seriously that I imagined that I was John Lennon to my co-editor Daniel’s Paul McCartney. As the 4.0 Most Likely To Succeed, Daniel could be Paul, the sunny counterpart. He could devote column inches to interviewing the student body president and promulgating teetotaler values (“People think drinking is cool. But what’s so cool about stumbling around like an idiot?”). And I, as John, could write columns accusing student government of being a Vichy sham. Mostly I just wanted a girlfriend. With patience and grace, Mr. Pease put up with all this.

The last time I saw him, in 1994, Mr. Pease was stooping over a stack of English papers, probably about Brave New World, as I walked in after my first semester of college. “Met any girls, John?” was the first thing he said.

The last time I talked to him it was about ten years later and you could still write articles in the craft Mr. Pease taught us, for money. I was sitting in a hotel lobby in Washington, D.C., waiting to meet a guy who was going to give me a stack of FOIA’d documents about nuclear submarines for a magazine article, when the urge came to phone Mr. Pease and tell him what I was up to. Suddenly there was a familiar drawl on the other end of my cell phone, as if the Pease hotline would always be there. I remember he made a crack about U.N. Ambassador John Bolton. And he told me he was still messing around with penning a Western novel, which made me happy.

This year I drove to my hometown, coming in with the sun going down on the orange groves and crumpled mountains. It made me think of a moment at the brink of summer. It was 1992 and two high school nerds in a black Camry were on the road to the printing press, with the wax layout sheets in back. The death of print news makes that feel like it was a thousand years ago. Mr. Pease initiated us into an ancient order, and whatever that means in this weird new century, I will always be grateful.

P.S. I have archived Legacy.com’s guestbook of tributes to Bob Pease here.

The following is adapted from a piece I wrote for this book.

“Cognitive dissonance” is what the psychologist Dr. Leon Festinger called the horrible grinding noise of two conflicting ideas in your head. The term is making a comeback in the world of Internet comment boards, where flame warriors use it to describe what happens when, for example, Orly Taitz, the Orange County dentist who claims the president was born secretly in Kenya, perseveres in the face of overwhelming evidence, including an actual 1961 announcement of his birth in the Honolulu Advertiser.

How the “cognitive dissonance” thing got its start is sort of an amazing story, involving the mischievous university psychologist and his unwitting flying-saucer fanatic subject. The story begins on a depressing Christmas Eve in Chicago in 1954.

This was the night 44-year-old physician Dr. Charles Laughead stood outside a house in the western suburbs of Chicago, desperately watching the skies for his 6 p.m. ride, while he and his followers sang carols. Five years before Plan 9 From Outer Space, reporters were having a field day with the doctor and his series of failed predictions. But tonight was really going to be it. He planned to be on another planet at this time tomorrow. One headline read: SECT EXPECTS TO LEAVE EARTH TONIGHT.

They had staked everything on the prediction of the allegedly clairvoyant Ms. Dorothy Martin, 61. At 6 p.m. the creatures Laughead affectionately called “the boys upstairs”  would land in space pods to evacuate Man from a flood that would turn Cook County into a seafloor. A crowd of reporters, spectators and hecklers gathered to take in the futility.

* * *

“I’ve given up just about everything,” Laughead had said, preparing for one more attempt to leave Earth. “I’ve taken an awful beating in the last few months, just an awful beating.” Worst was he’d lost his job at the medical school. Alien rescue or not, his boss didn’t like that Laughead was stressing out students by claiming the U.S. was about to become an archipelago.

BELOW: Story from the Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1955–one of my favorite news heds.

Where the hell were the space pods? This wasn’t the first time the cosmos had left him swinging in the wind. Yet he persevered in a way that fascinated the Stanford psychologist Festinger. The psychologists got such a kick out of this that they planted a mole in his group to write down the details, laying the groundwork for Festinger’s landmark 1956 book When Prophecy Fails.

An earlier due date had come and gone already. The first time, some of the UFO people cried. Not Laughead. He got on the phone with reporters; he sent a press release to newspapers across the country, explaining opaquely: “Due to the confusion which has arisen from the prophecy, we have decided to unite forces to complete the prophecy.”

Because of press coverage, the phone was ringing off the hook with jokesters claiming to be the spacemen. One identified himself as Captain Video. Laughead’s daughter tried to tell him that Captain Video was the TV character who sewed a thunderbolt on his jumpsuit. But Laughead wanted to keep open the possibility it was a coded message. Everyone was so coiled up for first contact.

A second jokester phoned and invited everyone to his party across town. Mrs. Dorothy Martin, the matriarch of the UFO group, said this was it, this was the message.

“Put your coats on,” she said, and led a delegation across town, only to return, disappointed. The other humiliations had included a reporter’s cheap shot in the Chicago Tribune, observing that the Laughead kids must not think the flood was coming, seeing as how they’d set up ornaments in the living room for Christmas morning. And as the night grew long, other practicalities mounted: If the Earth wasn’t going to be doused, what was Dr. Laughead going to do about presents?

The phone rang and this exchange took place, transcribed by one of Festinger’s researchers:

REPORTER: Dr. Laughead, I wanted to talk to you with reference to this business about—you know—your calling the paper to say you were going to be picked up at six o’clock this evening. Ahh, I just wanted to find out exactly what happened…. Didn’t you say they sent a message that you should be packed and waiting at 6 P.M. Christmas Eve?

DR. LAUGHEAD: No.

REPORTER: No? I’m sorry, sir. Weren’t the spacemen supposed to pick you up at 6 P.M.?

DR. LAUGHEAD: Well, there was a spaceman in the crowd with a helmet on and a white gown and what not.

REPORTER: There was a spaceman in the crowd?

DR. LAUGHEAD: Well, it was a little hard to tell […]

REPORTER: […] Did you talk to him?

DR. LAUGHEAD: No, I didn’t talk to him.

REPORTER: Didn’t you say you were going to be picked up by the spacemen?

DR. LAUGHEAD: No.

REPORTER: Well, what were you waiting out in the street for, singing carols?

DR. LAUGHEAD: Well, we went out to sing Christmas carols.

REPORTER: Oh, you just went out to sing Christmas carols?

DR. LAUGHEAD: Well, and if anything happened, well, that’s all right, you know. We live from one minute to another.

REPORTER: […] Uh, well how do you account for the fact that they didn’t pick you up?

DR. LAUGHEAD: As I told one of the other news boys, I don’t think a spaceman would feel very welcome there in that crowd…

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll soon be using this Web site to serialize King of America, the online version of my book about the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, his Washington Times and a galaxy of politicians embarrassing themselves. More on that in a bit.

Here’s a preview, a passage on previous meltdowns foreshadowing this last week’s stormy departure of editor-in-chief John Solomon.

King of America is adapted from a previous version, Bad Moon Rising, published by PoliPoint Press in 2008 and available on Amazon. Didn’t like the title.

Imprisoned by a madman, only a monster can set him free.

For years I’ve been receiving a steady stream of inquiries from producers about rights to my popular 2003 Salon piece “The Dictator Who Snagged Me.” It’s about the incredible real-life story of Three Ninjas director Shin Sang-Ok (or Simon Sheen). Sheen and his movie star wife escaped from North Korea in 1986 with an amazing, against-the-odds story of surviving Kim Jong-Il and his mad dream of becoming the George Lucas of Pyongyang.

I’ve just written a screenplay with co-writer Patrick Runkle, based on this black comedy. It’s a little like The Last King of Scotland, only it’s true:

In 1978, Simon Sheen is a divorced, down-on-his-luck movie legend–the Orson Welles of South Korea–who searches for his ex-wife, Theresa, only to be lured into a kidnapping scheme orchestrated by Kim Jong-Il (Team America). Kim, famously obsessed with Friday the 13th, is next in line for his father’s job as cruel dictator of North Korea, but has visions of becoming the studio boss of a North Korean Hollywood. All he needs is the talent.

So Kim has Sheen shipped to the North and sentenced to a brutal prison camp until he agrees, years into his punishment, not to escape. Reunited, the couple rekindles lost love and plans a daring escape. They’ll earn Kim’s trust by agreeing to shoot the blockbusters dreamed up by Kim, including a loony Godzilla rip-off about a giant creature that stomps on capitalists. And they’ll get further into Kim’s world of cognac, women and power than almost anyone else to have fled the world’s most dangerous dictator.

Anyhow, it’s being read at various places. If you’ve landed on this page and are interested, drop me a line. (I own the rights to the Salon piece.)

Thanks for visiting. While a timeworn VHS tape of “The Natural” plays in the background, I’m wrangling with some HTML and putting the finishing touches on a book excerpt that will be on the site soon. Stay tuned, and be sure to check out the movie.

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Not everyone enjoyed The King of America, my shortfilm about the kinky world of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and the Republicans who love him.

Writes Moon follower Tossa, from Seoul, Korea:

It may seem strange that Rev. Moon chooses to speak about the sexual organ, but don’t you think that God had a plan in mind for human beings when he created us male and female? It would make sense that a Messiah should teach us about the true way to use our sexual organs. Don’t you think that sexual organs have a greater value than to merely allow for reproduction?

Um… 1) Sure. 2) Maybe not. 3) Yes.

Tim Burton directs this realistic account of turning over your manuscript to a Bay Area publishing house.

But thanks to people like Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead, who had me on her funny Village show Shoot the Messenger a couple of weeks ago, being an author doesn’t always have to feel like entrusting your cherished bicycle to a squad of clown paramedics. Thanks, Lizz!

Also thanks to hero columnist Rick Casey, who writes in the Houston Chronicle about the Moonie cult’s obsession with making longtime patron George H.W. Bush drink their juice.

Q. What led you to begin studying the influence of Rev. Moon on American politics?

A. I couldn’t believe the absurd relationship between conservatives and the Rev. Moon wasn’t famous. Washington’s guardians of moral virtue had found a way to team up with an iconic ’70s megalomaniac.

If Moon didn’t exist, a James Bond movie would invent him. It’s not that his theology is odd, but that he gives these mad speeches about installing himself as world leader. In Washington it’s treated as a campy joke. Only it’s not, because he publishes a major newspaper.

I was drawn to the contradictions that ensue when Moon appears at fancy Beltway dinner parties and embarrasses the audience. Right-wing Republicans, keen on keeping the money flowing, will listen uncomfortablyfor 45 minutes to Moon as he chops the air with his hands and shouts things like, “Free sex is centered on Satan!” and, “No one can oppose me!”

Little did I know that it wasn’t just a story of wretched Washington amorality, but a haunting, 40-year epic of corruption. What hooked me was Robert Boettcher’s 1980 book Gifts of Deceit. Boettcher was a frustrated young congressional investigator, trying to warn America of Moon’s growing influence in Washington as part of a 1978 influence-peddling probe. Boettcher died a few years later, falling from his apartment, his book ignored.

There’s no one else in U.S. history like Moon. First he was accused of tricking tens of thousands of young Americans into joining a cult; in the Carter years, congressmen from both parties issued dire warnings about his apocalyptic agenda, involving a “Unification Crusade Army” that would topple democracy; and now he’s publishing The Washington Times, as if nothing ever happened.

Hope you’ll read the rest, here.

Former president George H.W. Bush (left) and longtime travel companion Sun Myung Moon (right)

Jeremiah Wright? Come on.

The Moonies have just trumpeted the latest delegation of their dreaded leader, Sun Myung Moon, to the Bush presidential library in College Station, TX. The occasion: a statesmanlike party Moon was throwing in D.C., from April 28 to May 2, 2008, celebrating his dreams of influencing world events and burying Jesus Christ.

The host: George H.W. Bush.

These mundane photos are from UPF.org, an official Web site of the cult. Moon is on record as opposing constitutional government; according to his church, he told the folks at the Bush library that he envisioned a world [emphasis mine]

where some of the weaknesses of democracy, and in particular the wasted efforts of extreme partisanship, can be relieved by the involvement of elder statesmen as senior advisors.

Elder statesman like, oh, for example, Washington Times publisher Sun Myung Moon, who has dumped over $3 billion into the conservative paper. According to a reliable source within the Moon organization who provided me with password-guarded HTML files, the Reverend elaborated on his fantasies last year in a sermon so shocking, it was not released to the public (unlike thousands of othersavailable online.)

All the irrelevant books in the world should be burned away. I cannot tolerate books that belong under the leftist ideology. Do you understand?

Here are some highlights of the past relationship between the Bush family and Moon’s cult, which typically poses as a world peace organization to cultivate an aura of gravity, sort of like Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets. (As seen here, the church also sometimes calls itself the “Washington Times Foundation” when convenient.)

1995. George and Barbara Bush give six paid speeches in Asia for Moon’s “Women’s Federation,” while mothers of cult members beg them not to. [Washington Post]

1996. The former president surfaces with Moon in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he’s filmed introducing the publisher as “the man with the vision” whose newspaper, the Washington Times, restores “sanity to Washington.” “Reverend Moon never told ‘em what to say, who to endorse…” [Reuters, BBC]

2005-present. George’s son Neil joins Moon for ongoing tour of the Third World. [AP]

2005. $250,000 is paid by a Moon company to George W. Bush reinauguration fund. [MSNBC]

2006. A million dollars apparently finds its way from Moon interests to the Bush presidential library. [Houston Chronicle]

2006. Former GOP insider Kevin Phillips writes that Moon “has been close to” the Bush family. Columnist David Brooks calls this a “bizarre assertion” and an example of “the paranoid style in American politics.” [New York Times]

2007. Michael Jenkins, chief of the American arm of the Moonies, is filmed making bizarre claims that the cult convinced George H.W. Bush to drink its “Holy Juice,” a mystery fluid that brings drinkers into communion with the Reverend Moon, during another trip to the presidential library at Texas A&M.
I ask about this. Spokesman Jim Appleby says, by e-mail: “the Office of Former President Bush cannot justify such a ridiculous question with an answer.” [YouTube]