Unfit For Publication
Jerome Corsi, who did a hit book (ie a “swift boat”) on John Kerry, is doing the same thing to Obama. He claimed his book is “fair and balanced”, in spite of his one-sided source material and stated intent to use the book to stop Obama from becomming president, and in spite of his inability to say one positive thing about his candidacy.
COLMES: All right, Dr. Corsi, we’re very limited on time here. Still some ground I want to cover.
Tell me two good things about Obama.
CORSI: He reads a good speech off a teleprompter. That’s number one. And I do admire his suits. He dresses extremely well.
COLMES: So on the surface he can read off a teleprompter.
CORSI: He does very well. One of the best I’ve seen.
COLMES: In terms of the depth – does he have any good policy positions?
CORSI: He’s a radical, as I say. And he’s good.
COLMES: No, no. Does he have any good policy positions? Name one thing you agree with him on.
CORSI: One thing I agree with him on. Let’s see. How much time do I have?
COLMES: You can’t think of one thing?
CORSI: I can think of nothing that comes to mind immediately.
COLMES: Not one thing that you agree. He’s a radical.
CORSI: He’s a radical in his policies.
COLMES: He shouldn’t be president. He’s going to ruin the country, and we should all be scared that he can speak fluent Arabic.
CORSI: You’re taking it to the extreme.
COLMES: Yes, I’m taking it to the extreme here.
CORSI: You’re trying to say.
COLMES: That’s exactly what I’m doing.
CORSI: What I’m saying is, Alan.
HANNITY: He’s an extremist.
COLMES: I’m taking it to the extreme. That’s exactly what I’m doing.
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: He can speak fluent Arabic,
CORSI: OK,
COLMES: And he knows people like Odinga.
CORSI: My whole point is.
COLMES: . and we’ve got to be really scared about him, right?
CORSI: . let’s get the truth about him on the record. When he says he has never had Islamic instruction, that’s not true. When he says he doesn’t know what, you know, Minister Wright.
COLMES: No, he said he’s not – he’s not Muslim. That’s not true.
CORSI: OK, well he says never was a Muslim. He was registered with his stepfather as a Muslim in Indonesia.
COLMES: If he was born to a father who happened to be Muslim that’s not as a child making a decision to be a Muslim.
CORSI: Well, in six to 10, I mean he was – let’s get the record straight. Let’s have him say yes, I was Islamic at that time.
COLMES: And so what if you’re a Muslim? Is that supposed to scare people?
CORSI: No, but I want the truth told.
COLMES: But is that supposed to scare people that oh my god he’s a Muslim?
CORSI: No, I didn’t say.
COLMES: He knows Arabic, he knew Odinga.
CORSI: I want the truth told.
COLMES: We’re supposed to be scared, right?
CORSI: Alan, you’re, again, trying to take it right back to the – you set me up. I’m trying to scare everybody.
COLMES: Yes.
CORSI: I’m trying to tell people the truth. People from there can make their own judgment.
COLMES: All your.
CORSI: That’s what the book was about.
COLMES: Your quote mostly right wing sources.
(CROSSTALK)
COLMES: You (INAUDIBLE) Andy Martin who takes credit.
CORSI: Alan.
COLMES: . who’s spreading that he’s a Muslim.
CORSI: I’ve got 680 footnotes in there.
HANNITY: The “New York Times”.
CORSI: Over a hundred books cited in here. This book – I go to the Kenyan newspapers, the Indonesian newspapers. I go to primary sources.
COLMES: You go to “World Net Daily” from whom you work, you go to Andy Martin, you go to mostly conservative.
CORSI: It was 680 sources in there.
COLMES: And mostly anti-Obama sources.
CORSI: Look, there – the sources that are primarily are primary sources. They’re sources – the books, for instance, Reverend Wright says go to James Cone.
COLMES: You don’t claim it’s a fair and balance quote, right?
CORSI: I go to James Cone. No, I think it is a fair and balance.
COLMES: Really?
CORSI: And I’ll support it as a fair and balance book. And I’ll yet to debate.
COLMES: So give me the – you didn’t give me one positive thing where you agree with Obama if it’s fair and balance.
CORSI: Why do I have to agree with Obama on any particular point?
(CROSSTALK)
CORSI: Once I analyze where radical income distribution, taxing, as the policy positions, and much weaker.
COLMES: That’s an opinion.
CORSI: Well, those are the points I’m arguing in those speeches and presentations.
Wednesday’s New York Times has a page one story on the book.
Significant parts of the book, whose subtitle is “Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” have already been challenged as misleading or false in the days since its debut on Aug. 1. Nonetheless, it is to make its first appearance on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcovers this Sunday – at No. 1….
The goal is to defeat Obama,” Mr. Corsi said in a telephone interview. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.”
He said he was planning to aid several conservative groups that intend to run advertisements against Mr. Obama this fall, though he would not name them.
Mary Matalin, the former Cheney advisor who runs the imprint that put out this book, claims the book is not political, and even more astoundingly, says the book is “a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that.”
Oh yeah?
Several of the book’s accusations, in fact, are unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate.
For instance, Mr. Corsi writes that Mr. Obama had “yet to answer” whether he “stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended to his law school days or beyond.” “How about in the U.S. Senate?” Mr. Corsi asks.
But Mr. Obama, who admitted to occasional marijuana and cocaine use in his high school and early college years, wrote in his memoir that he had “stopped getting high” when he moved to New York in the early 1980s. And in 2003 The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., quoted him responding to a question of his drug use by saying, “I haven’t done anything since I was 20 years old.”
In an interview, Mr. Corsi said “self-reporting, by people who have used drugs, as to when they stopped is inherently unreliable.”
But we can believe the “self-reporting” of Jerome Corsi. Right?
EXCELLENT SHOW last night Colmes
i dont usually compliment you because most of the time you are so weak, but you stood up against the swiftboating of Obama with the writer of the obama nation and you even stood up against Hannity on McCain cheating on his wife!
EXCELLENT WORK COLMES!
August 13th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Nice job standing up on air, but how about standing up to your producers or whoever it is that is in charge of booking H&C. This is the second time he’s been on? Why did he need to come on again? Obviously because Hannity and the right wing people that run your show wanted to get more Anti-Obama propaganda out there.
August 13th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Well, Alan, you’re under a lot of pressure now, huh?
August 13th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Republican pollster Frank Luntz said, “A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.”
This is why I haven’t watched TV news since Sept. 04.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Of course Alan wouldn’t use one-sided source material on his show and blog now would he? Hahahahahahaha Noooo, not at all.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Threshold is an imprint of Simon & Schuster, and if you’d like to comment on Corsi’s book you could use the link here:
http://www.simonsays.com/content/consumer.cfm?sid=33&app=feedback
August 13th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I LOVE this part by Corsi: “Alan, you’re, again, trying to take it right back to the – you set me up. I’m trying to scare everybody.”
A flicker of honesty:
“Well, of course I’m trying to scare everybo– Hey, wait a minute! Alan, you big meanie! You set me up! Waaaaah! What is this crap? Fox is supposed to be my friend! Hannity, quit texting Hal Turner and Bob Grant, Colmes is being mean to me! Agh, who let in all this light! I’m melting, I’m melting! Hanniteeeeeeeee! Heeeeeelp meeeeee!
August 13th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
“A compelling story, even if factually inaccurate, can be more emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth.”
Yes, it’s called “fiction.”
Isn’t Luntz the slimeball who went to jail?
August 13th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
If I run against Joe Blow for dog catcher, and my surrogate says, “JOE BLOW KILLS AND EATS ADORABLE LITTLE PUPPIES!!”…..
“Fair and Balanced” means that we give equal time to my guy to spew his deplorable lies, and to Joe Blow to say, “No I don’t.”, even there is NO evidence that Joe Blow kills and eats adorable puppies.
I only REALLY need a few of the more easily manipulated, so called “low information voters” to think, “Well…SOMETHING must be wrong.”, and I’ve done the desired damage to Joe Blow.
If we actually had news, these smears wouldn’t get ink or airtime.
We are NOT served well by this mudslinging, although it DOES show how very little substance the right actually has.
August 13th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Corsi has a Phd. from Harvard, W has an MBA from Harvard…doesn’t make Harvard grad schools look too good.
August 13th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Shooting today at “Democratic” party headquarters in Little Rock Ark. Cliton lover Gwatney shot. Die Cliton lover!!!! Die!!
August 13th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
OldLefty, can you show me examples of mudslinging as you see them?
August 13th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Oh so very nice suntan! I guess you approve of this kind of ‘behavior’? Suppose someone bombed the Republican Convention, would that be acceptable?
August 13th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
~ EVERYTHING that this Corsi guy says.
~ 2000 primaries push polling :
John Mccain has an illegitimate black baby.
John Mccain is emotionally unstable, and can not
be in the same room with an Oriental
John McCain is the Manchurian candidate.
~ John Kerry only served for 3 months
~ John Kerry didn’t deserve his metals
~ Max Cleland’s injuries were self inflicted.
~ Obama didn’t take time for the troops.
~ Obama is a Muslim
~ Obama Refuses to say the pledge
~ Michelle Obama Says “Whitey” On a Tape
~ terrorist fist jab
~ Michelle Obama is Barack’s “baby momma”
~ The Clintons killed Vince Foster
~ Troopergate
~ Bill Clinton is a rapist
The last brought to us by the vast right wing conspiracy, sponsered by millionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
“The last brought to us by the vast right wing conspiracy, sponsered by millionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife.”
Which doesn’t even come close to billionaire George Soros and his funding of the vast left wing conspiracy. Don’t forget that Soros funded Moveon.org OWNS the Dem party.
August 13th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
“Moveon.org OWNS the Dem party.”
……………….
Scaife and Coors fund the Heritage Foundation which OWNS the GOP.
Soros comes nowhere near Scaife, who started the Arkanas project ( that people called the ‘Scam Scaife Project’…..say something negative about Clinton, and he will give you a few thousand bucks).
The lies went from Scaife’s paid people to his paper, the American Spectator to EVERY right wing radio and TV show where it was repeated them ad nauseum so that EVERY listener believed it because Rush said it.
Soros offers a balance to the Hertiage Foundation funded by Joseph Coors,, Scaife Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, to name a few, and the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research funded in part by:
Amoco, the Kraft Foundation, and the Procter & Gamble ,Philip Morris ExxonMobil.
Freedom’s Watch, funded by The Republican Jewish Coalition, Howard Leach , Mel Sembler (Sembler and Leach both donated to the legal defense fund of I. Lewis Scooter Libby) and Ari Fleischer
Just a little balance, for a change!
August 13th, 2008 at 5:24 pm
I can’t say how pleased I am to see someone stand up to shun sannity and the wingnut propaganda organ that is fux noise.I see no difference in the circumstances except that mcinane married his rich former rodeo queen.
One would hope that this will cause the SCLM to take a closer look at the critter mcinane has become since he shed his “maverick” skin. If I’m correct mcinane was still a commissioned officer at the time of his dalliance with the once and future Buffalo Chip Queen, and I believe the UCMJ has something to say about adultery.What we’re basically seeing here is the wingnut willingness to invoke “moral equivalence” when it works for their side.Anyway thanks Alan for getting this into public view.
August 13th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
I think the reason that we see more and more Republicans leave the party, is that they are embarrassed by the company they were keeping.
It’s hard for “old money” republicans to share the stage with gun-toting racists and “christian” fundamentalists that use the party to spread their hatred.
I would be especially embarrassed if I were a Republican if came here and read some of the nonsense posted…If I had to turn on my radio and hear the likes of Hannity spout the same drivel over and over again…we can’t win on the issues so we’ll make them up where we can…
Fortunatley for McCain he doesn’t know how to go online and read what his party supporters are writing…
August 13th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
To all Jerome Corsi fans. Try these articles written by your hero.
Group tied to al-Qaida backs McCain for prez
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57678
McCain fortune traced to organized crime
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=57354
George Soros brains behind McCain-Feingold
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=56745
John McCain funded by Soros since 2001
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=56177
McCain aide touts ‘Mexico first’ policy
http://worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=45737
August 14th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
I say again:
Whatever the weakness of Corsi’s arguments, the NY Times certainly never deployed aggressive fact-checking to all of the anti-Bush books. The paper has tended to greet them with open arms and blessed them with favorable notices.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Whatever the weakness of Corsi’s arguments, the NY Times certainly never deployed aggressive fact-checking to Cheney’s office all of the BUSH/CHENEY WMD Charges. The paper has tended to greet them with open arms and blessed them with favorable notices.
They simply published EVERYTHING that Judith Miller was told by Cheney’s office without revealing that Cheney’s office was the source.
By the way they also never engaged in aggressive fact-checking with the trashing of Al Gore:
From
Vanity Fair Going After Gore
THE MEDIA
by Evgenia Peretz October 2007
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/gore200710?currentPage=1
The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes (”I invented the Internet”), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush.
As with all campaigns, the coverage of the 2000 election would be driven by a small number of beat reporters. In this case, two women at the most influential newspapers in the country: Seelye from The New York Times and Ceci Connolly from The Washington Post.
A prominent Washington journalist describes them as “edgy, competitive, wanting to make their mark,” and adds that they “reinforced each other’s prejudices.”
I guess bias is in the eye of the beholder.
August 14th, 2008 at 5:25 pm