They Exist On The Left And The Right

If their is a difference is that the wingnuts on the right are a little more creative than those wingnuts on the left and their outrageous comments are original rather than being pap fed from the leftwing party handbook.......

Yoni Goldstein on Jerome Corsi's lie-packed biography of Barack Obama

Posted: August 13, 2008, 11:40 AM by Yoni Goldstein

Before I crack open a new book, I like to know what I'm getting myself in to. If we're talking fiction, I want a gripping plot-line; and for non-fiction, I want a reputable author, defending a sane thesis, backed by plausible proof.

This is why I won't be reading The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality by Jerome Corsi. Mr. Corsi, you may remember, published Unfit for Command, an attack on John Kerry that included the grist that would later become the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign. No doubt, Unfit hurt Kerry's presidential campaign, even though many of the purported facts Mr. Corsi cited were misleading or, in some cases, fully incorrect.

The real facts about Kerry didn't matter much to Corsi. And it seems he's taken the same stance when it comes to his Obama book. According to a story in today's New York Times, much of the information contained in The Obama Nation is, in fact, simple lies. To cite one example: Corsi maintains that Obama was at a July, 2007, sermon during which Jeremiah Wright blamed “the ‘white arrogance’ of America’s Caucasian majority for the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.” That claim is apparently false — Obama was in Florida on the day of the sermon. To make matters worse, the Times' William Kristol, who cited the same story in a column last year, has since acknowledged that Obama did not attend the sermon and apologized publicly for claiming he had.

Of course, none of this will bother Corsi. He is notoriously anti-Liberal, at the core, a Republican activist hell-bent on doing what he can to make sure the Democrats don't run America.

The Obama Nation, is nothing but hardcore-right propaganda. What's worse, its author has admitted as much — yet the book is already a New York Times bestseller, which means that lots of people out there are buying a pack of lies, and perhaps even worse, Jerome Corsi will be getting tons of airtime to further spread his untruths.

Somehow, to me it seems much worse when a writer lies than when a politician does. I expect deception and fiction from politicians — writers are suppossed to uncover the truth, not further falsehood.

ygoldstein@nationalpost.com