By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist
Jerome Corsi's attempt to discredit Barack Obama has been found to be thinly researched and rife with errors. But it's at the top of the New York Times non-fiction best-seller list, so it must have some literary merit, right?
Uh, not necessarily.
The conservative network has a well-oiled machine designed to vault works such as The Obama Nation to the top of the list.
It works like this: Book is published by a conservative imprint of a major publishing house. Conservative book clubs place advance orders in bulk. Conservative talk hosts and bloggers promote the work as a must-read.
The book probably won't last long at the pinnacle of publishing. But the early buzz was the goal all along.
I like the way Slate writer Timothy Noah concludes a piece on Corsi and Mary Matalin, who runs the imprint that published The Obama Nation.
Simon & Schuster and the other big publishing houses have started conservative imprints, at arms' length and with noses held, because they recognize them to be a gold mine. The Obama Nation, the Times reports, will debut on its best-seller list this Sunday at No. 1.
But part of the deal, clearly, is that conservative imprints aren't required to adhere to the same standards of truth as the grown-up divisions. If an Erwin Glikes or even an Adam Bellow is available to edit your conservative fall list, fine. But in a pinch, a Mary Matalin will do.
It's what George W. Bush memorably dubbed the soft bigotry of low expectations. The conservative movement has won the publishing houses' attention but not their respect. Does it even care?
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You just dare not
Say one word against the Messiah! The moon bats will scream like a stake has pierced their hearts!
What a hoot....
Rouge
same goes for you:
"You have no positive agenda to promote, and you have no strong argument against Obama, so you have to try to sling mud, but all you succeed in doing is making yourself look filthy.
Pathetic."
That's really funny
That’s really funny, Interface. You criticizing Rouge and myself for a lack of a positive agenda when all you do in any of your posts is call names and hurl insults. I looked back at your posts and could find very few where you didn’t do that.
As for the Obama and Selma fiasco; I’ll just let Obama’s words speak for themselves. I got them from his own web site so nobody can claim they are tainted. They say what they say. The fact that you don’t like it doesn’t change it. Neither does calling me and others names. It’s just further proof that all of the hate and name calling does come from the left. I thought you guys were supposed to be all peace and love and diversity and let’s get along. I guess that’s only if I agree with your point of view, huh?
Ross Balano Midwest Voices 2008
Amusing
Yep, you have absolutely nothing to offer but lies and innuendo, and I'm not at all embarrassed to call you out on it.
I confess I've been embarrassed for you at times, but I've no compunction about exposing your tactics or giving you the lack of respect you deserve.
Lies?
Lies and innuendo? What lies? I got it right off of Obama’s own web site. There’s even a video clip of him saying it on the same site.
Don’t be embarrassed for me, worry about yourself. Since trying to have an intelligent debate with you is like having a gunfight with an unarmed man, one who's too cowardly even to use his real name, I’m going to quit wasting my time trying. I’ve got better things to do like take out the trash.
Ross Balano Midwest Voices 2008
Pathetic
Each time I think to myself, "only an idiot would..." you go and make my point for me.
Sorry, man, but it's utterly silly (and smacks of desperation) for you to pounce on Obama's metaphorical linkage between the civil rights movement in Selma and his biracial heritage as evidence that Obama's a liar.
Man, if this is the best that right-wing yahoos such as yourself can come up with, you look truly pathetic.
I don't believe I've seen a single column where you've chosen to promote your candidate, John McCain in positive fashion, without making up stuff or glossing over inconvenient facts, and that fact in itself is revealing.
You have no positive agenda to promote, and you have no strong argument against Obama, so you have to try to sling mud, but all you succeed in doing is making yourself look filthy.
Pathetic.
H. CLINTON
THE HILLARY POWERHOUSE
There is an undeniable force that shouldn’t be discounted and should be appreciated.
Hillary Clinton knows her game, and her experience is paying off.
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/08/obamas-negotiating-weak-or-inept.html
Balano actually does something right
Thanks, Ross for helping make my point that TopAssistant clearly didn't read any quotes from either of Obama's books.
The quote in question came, as Balano points out, from a speech that Obama gave, in which he spoke in Selma about the importance of the civil rights movement and how the forces that gave birth to events in Selma were also forces that allowed him, as the son of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Africa, to be conceived.
I suppose an uncharitable reader with a political axe to grind could try to misread Obama's metaphorical connection between his parents' union and the events at Selma as a lie, as TopAssistant does in his half-literate way, but in context, it seems a particularly silly claim. But then, politics is the silly season, after all.
In any event, it seems like TopAssistant should "read be book" himself before he casts stones at Shelly.
The point is...
The point is, regardless of where it came from, that Obama claimed he was only concieved by virtue of Selma.
He says in the speech, "This young man named Barack Obama(Sr.) got one of those tickets and came over to this country. He met this woman (Obama's mother) whose great great-great-great-grandfather had owned slaves; but she had a good idea there was some craziness going on because they looked at each other and they decided that we know that the world as it has been it might not be possible for us to get together and have a child. There was something stirring across the country because of what happened in Selma, Alabama, because some folks are willing to march across a bridge. So they got together and Barack Obama Jr. was born. So don't tell me I don't have a claim on Selma, Alabama. Don't tell me I'm not coming home to Selma, Alabama.
I'm here because somebody marched. I'm here because you all sacrificed for me."
Clearly Obama is saying that his parents only got together because the Selma bridge march gave them the idea that it was now okay for them to do.
He says this even though he had already been born three years before Selma.
The point isn't where the quote came from but rather the fact that Obama is either a liar or just stupid.
Ross Balano Midwest Voices 2008
Did you read it yourself?
Barb Shelly, Did you read be book for yourself and do some research to prove or disprove what he wrote?. He makes specific quotes from Obama’s book and what I have found thus far, Corsi is correct. For example, in Obama's book he talks about Selma, AL and how he was conceived from this event. The problem is that he was three years old when the march happened. This makes Obama a damn liar. Do you want someone with no credibility as president?
TopAssistant
Can you tell us where in Obama's book he made that claim -- which book and page #?
Thanks.
Obama's own web site
That quote is printed right on Obama's own web site. In case you don't know it by heart it is: http://www.barackobama.com/2007/03/04/selma_voting_rights_march_comm.php
You can see, hear and read it there.
Ross Balano Midwest Voices 2008
Jerome Corsi of Swiftboat fame: His over $150,000 in judgments,
Jerome Corsi of Swiftboat fame: His over $150,000 in judgments, his corporations and more
www.webofdeception.com