Bad Moon Rising

Yes, it finally happened: Cult leader and publisher of the Washington Times, Sun Myung Moon, 92, has died. He had suffered from pneumonia recently.

Since he considered himself a Messiah on earth, nobody is certain where he's headed.

Although greeted as a Korean Billy Graham when he arrived in the United States four decades ago, Moon gradually emerged as a religious figure with quite different beliefs, whose movement was labeled a cult and whose followers were mocked as "Moonies." At the height of his popularity, he claimed 5 million members worldwide, a figure that ex-members and other observers have called inflated. Those numbers are believed to have fallen into the thousands today.

Moon offered an unorthodox message that blended calls for world peace with an unusual interpretation of Christianity, strains of Confucianism and a strident anti-communism. He was famous for presiding over mass marriage ceremonies that highlighted Unification's emphasis on traditional morality.

After widespread criticism over his cult tactics, he became somewhat low-key, preferring I guess to wield power behind the scenes.

In addition to the Washington Times, which I don't believe EVER made any money, Moon owned the once-reputable United Press International.

Moon was married to his first wife and they divorced in 1957. He had a child with her and with some shack-up he was involved with in the fifties. Then, all of a sudden, he met a young follower of his cult named Han. They got married and had a slew of children, some 14 in all. Ten of those survived, along with 40 grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are too numerous to count.

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In other obits: Hal David, the other half of the famous Bacharach-David or David-Bacharach songwriting team of the sixties and seventies, has passed away at the age of 91. Bacharach-David songs were all over the place if you were around then:

If Mr. David and Mr. Bacharach’s oeuvre was more cosmopolitan and less hip than that of the Beatles or Bob Dylan, their ruminations on love and heartbreak have nonetheless proved as viable and enduring — after all, not everyone went to Woodstock. Their alternate ’60s was populated on one hand by the turtleneck-and-martini set, embodied by the likes of Tom Jones (who had a hit with “What’s New, Pussycat?”) or the debonair Mr. Bacharach himself, and on the other hand by the everywoman just breaking in her first pair of workplace shoes, like the protagonist of “I Say a Little Prayer,” who runs “for the bus, dear” and while riding thinks “of us, dear.”

“I Say a Little Prayer,” a No. 4 hit in 1967, was the most successful of the three dozen or so singles Mr. David and Mr. Bacharach wrote and produced for Ms. Warwick, whom they met in 1961 when they were journeymen on the New York music-publishing scene and she was a 20-year-old backup singer.

Bacharach, who I mistakenly thought died, is still around. He is 84 years old.