Some pretty disturbing information about MUFON and its association with various entities has popped up in recent months among Internet sites. Need I really play C.Y.A. in this blog entry by indicating that some accusations and tidbits should be considered "alleged?"
The latest MUFON denouement (I hesitate to call it a climax, for obvious reasons) is the arrest and speedy dismissal of the organization's latest director, reportedly caught by law enforcement authorities as he engaged in what he thought was an Internet relationship of a sexual nature with an underage girl -- who turned out to be an undercover cop.
First of all, as any ol' expert in proper illicit etiquette would have advised in days gone by, the correct way to go about solicitation of the under-aged is to offer candy to likely passers-by, or to request help in finding your lost puppy who just happened to wander off into a wooded area. But the Internet? Pathetic! What did he expect?! Honestly, shouldn't one anticipate more compassionate thoughtfulness, planning and execution of a sex pursuit from the director of an, um, respectable civilian UFO organization? "Jan Doe," it would appear, gets a big fat zero for creativity.
Also, I suspect that the typical phony under-aged person with whom one communicates on the Internet during so many instances of sex searches, rather than looking in person like an attractive teen, will turn out, nine times out of ten, to resemble Jabba the Hutt, addicted to caffeine and cigarettes, insistent that their catch-a-predator job makes them sick (though, strangely, they continue these official entrapment duties).
Though I subscribed to the MUFON Journal for several years -- I did not consider myself a member per se, just a magazine subscriber -- I never failed to heed the words of APRO's Coral Lorenzen, who readily excoriated MUFON during our phone conversations. She held no love for long-ago director Walt Andrus and wasn't shy about accusing MUFON folk of stealing APRO's membership lists. Among Coral's issues was an allegedly large contingent of teenagers, the "gee-whiz" type holding MUFON together at that time simply because it was cool to belong to something "Star-Trekkie." I know, I know, times change. . .
Of course, with the demise of NICAP and APRO decades ago, plenty of orphaned UFO folk jumped aboard the MUFON bandwagon, oblivious to realizing over time how many blundering horses' asses were actually pulling that wagon as it plodded onward toward a bumpy future, stopping off along the way to take nourishment from a feedbag of UFO social club meetings. Pardon me, I mean conventions, of course.
And here we are.
You know and I know that I don't have much to do with UFOs anymore, though I do at least stay in touch with current events and, more often than not, what turn out to be non-events. The old names are fading and new arrivals are mostly unknown to me, and consequently my sense of interpretation is not what it once was. But this new alleged revelation about MUFON's departed director takes the freakin' cake. Welcome to the new normal.
