MSNBC is currently running a NY Times piece which reports that Jerome Corsi, the "author who launched Swift Boat attacks in '04" is prepared to swiftboat Obama through unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate accusations. These are found in Corsi's book, recently published, entitled The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.
It turns out, too, that Corsi's hatchet job are the lies of a chickenhawk and opportunist (as well as active Freeper.)
Corsi, as some will remember was co-author (with John O'Neill), of Unfit for Command, a book written in cooperation with Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and provided the blueprints for swiftboating John Kerry - i.e., to smearingly and inaccurately challenge the legitimacy of each of Kerry's combat medals and to decontextually criticize Kerry's later antiwar actions.
Incidentally, Corsi's editor is right wing harpy turned editor, Mary Matalin.
Some of the further comments on this smear campaign:
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 Mr. Obama’s word was not to be trusted because "self-reporting, by people who have used drugs, as to when they stopped is inherently unreliable."
This, of course, coming from the same right wing that expressed not an ounce of curiosity about allegations of Bush cocaine use.
There is also mention of Rev. Wright, Tony Resko, and Bill Ayers - i.e., all of the dirt that failed to stick to Obama after being thrown at him earlier by the Clinton campaign, with help from right wing outlets like Fox and Rush Limbaugh. So in effect, Corsi's hatchet job is more of the same.
And there is also the painting of Obama as a "stealth radical liberal who has tried to cover up `extensive connections to Islam.'" Of course, Corsi (and his bigoted, ill informed audience, for that matter) appears to have a problem with Islam itself (see below).
As far as the response by the Obama campaign:
Mr. Obama’s campaign has yet to weigh in heavily on Mr. Corsi’s accusations. It appears to face the classic decision between the risk of publicizing the claims by addressing them and the risk of letting them sink into the public debate with no response.
"This book is nothing but a series of lies that were long ago discredited, written by an individual who was discredited after he wrote a similar book to help George Bush and Dick Cheney get re-elected four years ago," said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Mr. Obama. "The reality is that there are many lie-filled books like this in the works cobbled together from the Internet to make money off of a presidential campaign."
This hatchet job of a book - which Corsi is promoting via such usual echo chambers as Sean Hannity's and G. Gordon Liddy's radio shows - has been roundly panned for its blatant dishonesty. For example, Media Matters notes a whole host of falsehoods.
http://mediamatters.org/...
http://mediamatters.org/...
Media Matters also has this profile of Corsi that gets at his bigoted, radical right wing views, with quotes such as these.
Corsi on Islam: "a worthless, dangerous Satanic religion"
Corsi on Catholicism: "Boy buggering in both Islam and Catholicism is okay with the Pope as long as it isn't reported by the liberal press"
Corsi on Muslims: "RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters -- it all goes together"
Corsi on "John F*ing Commie Kerry": "After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judiasm? He also has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"
Corsi on Senator "FAT HOG" Clinton: "Anybody ask why HELLary couldn't keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?"
I wonder if McCain will be reading and taking cues from The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. Why do I think that the answer to both questions is yes?