Following up on yesterday’s item, Jerome Corsi, best known for the discredited “Unfit for Command” hatchet-job against John Kerry four years ago, is back with yet another smear/book against Barack Obama, called “The Obama Nation.”
Unlike four years ago, Corsi’s malicious distortions are being met with immediate resistance. Last night on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Media Matters’ Paul Waldman did a great job challenging Corsi and made painfully clear why Corsi’s work is not to be taken seriously.
And while Media Matters has clearly taken a leading role in discrediting Corsi’s latest hatchet-job
, the group isn’t alone. As it happens, Corsi’s last target isn’t willing to sit back and watch the sequel: “Senator John F. Kerry yesterday rejoined the battle with one of his fiercest antagonists from his 2004 presidential bid, launching a website to combat a new book highly critical of Barack Obama, his party’s presumptive nominee this year.”
“The liars are back,” Kerry told supporters yesterday, in an email launching TruthFightsBack.com. “Time to finish them off.”
And as long as Corsi is renewing his disgusting efforts, his own credibility is, unlike four years ago, getting some attention. The Politico’s Kenneth Vogel noted that Corsi has “a trail of wild theories, vitriol and dogma that have called into question his credibility.”
Jerome Corsi, who rose to prominence as the co-author of a book attacking 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, penned another tome asserting oil is a nearly infinite resource that continues to generate naturally, and posted a series of online comments through 2004, including suggestions that Hillary Rodham Clinton is a lesbian and Muslims worship Satan.
In an interview with Politico, Corsi pointed out that he’s apologized for Internet postings ripping Muslims and Catholics, and said they don’t undermine the integrity of his new book.
“I wrote those to be provocative and I said I would not use that kind of politically incorrect language again, and I don’t believe I have,” he said. […]
But his outrageous assertions and fringe theories — which include allegations that President Bush worked to eliminate the borders with Mexico and Canada and the assertion that Kerry is a Communist — have hurt his credibility on the right, as well.
Corsi’s co-author on the Kerry attack book, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spokesman John O’Neill, downplayed Corsi’s role after the left-leaning press watchdog group Media Matters exposed Corsi’s venomous postings in the conservative blogosphere.
On the blog FreeRepublic.com, Corsi wrote that pedophilia “is OK with the Pope as long as it isn’t reported by the liberal press,” that “RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters” and that Kerry is “Anti-Christian, Anti-American.”
Last year, Corsi released a book charging President Bush was secretly plotting to create a North American Union by merging the U.S. with Canada and Mexico.
The idea that there is a secretive plan for a North American Union is a favorite bogeyman for small-government conservatives but has been derided as baseless by mainstream thinkers and officials.
In blasting Corsi and the theory, a columnist at the influential conservative blog Human Events wrote, “I don’t think Corsi is any more worthy of being taken seriously than those who think Jews rule the world or the ‘Truthers’ who think President Bush is responsible for 9/11.”
Those who read right-wing trash are like those who read tabloids: they want to be lied to, and there are always those ready to meet that demand.