06-10-02

The Moonie Times Responds (part three)

Background on this rant: On September 28, 2001, I wrote a rant titled 'The Commies Are Coming! The Commies Are Coming!' in response to a thoroughly puerile article in the Moonie, oops Washington, Times by assistant editor Robert Stacy McCain. Mr. McCain, who apparently felt threatened by my comments, decided to respond...eight months after the fact. Click here to read McCain's first email, and my response (dated 05-28); click here to read the subsequent exchange.

McCain wrote me back yet again, refusing to answer any of the questions I asked and going on at length, yet again, about his skills as an investigative reporter. He also made several petulant comments about the fact that I'd posted his previous emails on my website, which I found rather interesting -- as anyone who's tried to contact me after reading this page knows, my email address is not listed here. It is, instead, listed on Practical Radical's main page, along with the following text: NOTE: if you wish to send hate mail (or any variation thereof), please feel free! But be forewarned that I may post your email on this site. I reserve the right to publish all negative, accusatory, hateful, insulting and/or stupid emails. If your email is threatening and/or excessively abusive, I may also post your email address so that others may respond to your remarks. Those who send supportive and/or friendly emails will of course have their privacy protected. I will never post emails from supporters without permission, nor will I ever share the email address of supporters with any other person or group.

Now, did Mr. McCain think his original email was friendly or supportive? Surely not. And yet he was clearly miffed that I'd had the audacity to do exactly what I said I'd do. Either Mr. McCain assumes that liberals are like right-wingers in this regard (that is, that we rarely do as we say), or Mr. McCain was too lazy to read the text that was just below my email address.

In any case, I was bored with his tireless attempts to continue a debate which was nothing more than a straw-man to begin with, and I never responded. Today, I sent him one last email (I think it'll be my last; we'll see), copied below:

Hi, Robert! My apologies for not replying to your email earlier, but it's been a busy couple of weeks for me. In any case, your last email was mostly a repeat of what you'd written before, and I do so hate repetition. However, I WOULD like an answer to my questions, which you could hardly have missed (since I ignored my dislike of repetition and repeated them several times). Here they are again:

1) Given that you perceive the Commies to be a very real danger to us all, do you feel comfortable knowing that 'Reverend' Sun Myung Moon has donated millions of dollars to Communist North Korea?

2) Do you agree with Mr. Moon that your newspaper, the Moonie, oops Washington, Times, "is responsible to let the American people know about God"?

Those are the two I would most like answers to, so I'll let you wiggle out of the others if you'll be so kind as to answer the two above. I must say, Robert, that if you refuse to answer them it'll look rather bad. That being said, feel free to write back and say something like "I don't answer questions from commie-pinko radicals" (I'm not a communist, but I know how you people love to call names, and wouldn't dream of depriving you) if you don't want to answer. But please don't be so rude as to simply ignore the questions and pretend you didn't see them. That not only gives people the impression that you're a jerk, but it implies as well that you're scared to answer the questions. An excuse, such as "I'm too busy being an assistant editor at the Moonie, oops Washington, Times to answer your silly questions!" or "I don't understand your questions!" is far preferable to a silent acknowledgement of cowardice.