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?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.