However, it's not news that a viciously anti-American religious figure has invested billions of dollars in financing the U.S. conservative movement and put fat wads of cash into the pockets of many prominent Republicans, including members of President George W. Bush's own family.
While Sen. Obama has to explain what he knew and when he knew it about Wright's angry sermons, the Bush Family floats above its financial and political associations with the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a South Korean theocrat who had denounced the United States as "Satan's harvest" and likened American women to "prostitutes."
In his angry sermons, Moon has gone further than saying "God-damn America" as Wright did to vowing to sweep aside American democracy and individualism as he builds a one-world state.
Once his plan to "swallow entire America" is complete, Moon told his followers in one sermon, there will be "some individuals who complain inside your stomach. However, they will be digested."
But Moon's hatred of America is not deemed news, in part, because Moon has financed the Washington Times since 1982 to the tune of more than $3 billion, according to former newspaper insider George Archibald.
Moon also has lavished many millions of dollars more to pay for conservative conferences and to bail out key right-wing figures when they have found themselves in financial distress, including Republican direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie and the late Jerry Falwell.
Plus, Moon has paid large speaking fees to former President George H.W. Bush estimated in the millions of dollars and has feted President George W. Bush's brother Neil at recent events for the Moon-sponsored Universal Peace Federation.
In 2004, thankful Republicans even gave Moon use of a room in the Senate Dirksen Office Building so he could be crowned the "King of Peace" in a ceremony that Moon's followers hailed as proof the U.S. government was bowing down to this new Messiah. [See John Gorenfeld's Bad Moon Rising.]
Yet, even though Moon has gained influence by funneling huge sums of mysterious money into the U.S. political process and to the Bush Family he has avoided the intense scrutiny that has fallen on Rev. Wright, who until recently was a little-known black preacher from Chicago's South Side.
While the YouTube snippets of several Wright outbursts have become daily fare on U.S. news programs, Moon's influence on the American Right and his largesse toward the Bush Family have remained virtual non-stories. That's been the case even though Moon may represent a key nexus between international crime and the U.S. political elite.
When Moon is discussed, he's usually presented as simply the wacky Unification Church cult leader who somehow parlayed carnation sales by his followers into a vast global fortune.
What is almost never referenced are his long-standing ties to organized crime and international drug smuggling, including the Japanese yakuza gangs and South American cocaine traffickers. Even first-hand accounts of Moon's money-laundering from insiders like his former daughter-in-law Nansook Hong draw no U.S. media attention.
