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| Criticizing the Author and Not the Candidate - |
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Phantom
 Posted:
Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:09 pm |
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Criticizing the Author and Not the Candidate
Criticizing the Author and Not the Candidate
If you read the criticism of the Jerome Corsi book that is picking up speed in the liberal media, you will find much similarity and overlap. The Obama campaign's effort to feed talking points to the media is having some effect. However, it is also feeding curiosity about the author and the book, thereby helping to maintain strong sales.
It's too bad the same media that are so concerned about Corsi's background have been so reticent to do their own homework on Obama. After all, Corsi wrote a book, Obama seeks the presidency. The liberal media were slow to acknowledge the existence of Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, and did so only after talk radio and bloggers would not let Obama escape his close relationship with both. The Chicago media did most of the heavy lifting respecting Obama's relationship with Tony Rezko. And there are many other miscreants and radicals who have played large roles in Obama's personal and professional life. But the liberal media are not interested in looking into most of it, have begrudgingly and superficially addressed it usually after the new media pressed it, and then downplayed it as "guilt by association" — with few exceptions. Not so with their reporting on Corsi. They want to know about anything he has ever said or written and his associations. In his case, they are determinative. And if he got a date wrong here and there in his book, or was otherwise mistaken in some minor way, the entirety of his book is discredited. We are "learning" more about Corsi than we learned about Obama prior to the all important Super Tuesday primaries.
It is not surprising that the media have chosen sides, but it remains frustrating. And this was a frustration of the Clinton campaign and will be for the McCain campaign. Meanwhile, the New York Times had no second thoughts about smearing John McCain on its front page with the thinnest of accusations inferring an affair and unethical lobbying activity. I think it can be said with some confidence that Corsi's standards are superior to those of the Times.
I think Roger Kimball has it about right here. And it should be emphasized that David Freddoso's excellent book on Obama has been all but ignored by the liberal media, but is well worth purchasing.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzE2ZWI4ZmY0YjhlM2ViMjk5Njk0ZjUwNDdmMTU3MjM=
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Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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Location: My only friend, the end
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| Phantom
Posted:
Fri Aug 15, 2008 4:12 pm |
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NY Times tries to torpedo anti-Obama book; succeeds in spreading its message
Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear. Jerome Corsi, author of the bestselling Unfit for Command in 2004, a book that turned the phrase “swift boat” into a verb and helped defeat John “Reporting for Duty” Kerry, has written a new book about Barack Hussein Obama (yes, I know I am not supposed to mention his middle name, but I am going to anyway) called The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality. It’s officially published only today (you can order it from Amazon here), but already it is # 1 on The New York Times bestseller list with 475,000 copies in print so far. The Times, naturally, is in a swivet lest Corsi’s book undermine The Messiah’s planned advent in November and they have wheeled into print with a longish dismissal masquerading as a review today. “Significant parts of the book,” the authors write (the Times requires two reviewers when a serious demolition job is commissioned), “have already been challenged as misleading or false in the days since its debut on Aug. 1.”
“Challenged”? Who would doubt it? Anything can be challenged: “Who goes there?” But have those “significant parts” been shown to be false? And more to the point, notwithstanding any local errors–when exactly did Obama stop taking cocaine? When exactly did he repudiate the loathsome views of Rev. Jeremiah Wright?–the real question is whether the book’s overall thesis is correct. And that thesis is? The Times puts it well: that Obama is “a stealth radical liberal” who would be a disaster as president. Whether Mr. Corsi is also right that Obama maintains but has “tried to cover up ‘extensive connections to Islam’ ” is an interesting question very much worth looking into–Mr. Corsi has begun but certainly has not finished with that task–but Barack Hussein Obama’s possible connections with Islam is only one of the mysteries that the public deserves to learn more about. Hillary Clinton, asked whether Obama was a Muslim, said “not that I know of.” That’s the right answer: the fact is, there is a tremendous amount we do not know about Obama. He “lost” his college thesis, and so, mirabile dictu, has Columbia. Obama has apparently also lost his birth certificate: what embarrassing fact does that document chronicle, I wonder? Stanley Kurtz, as I mentioned a few days ago, has been doing yeoman’s service piecing together a picture of what Obama said, wrote, and in did in his early years as a political activist in Chicago. Thanks to Andrew McCarthy, we know that Obama is pals with Bill Ayres (”an unapologetic terrorist with a savage past”) and Bernadine Dohrn, with Rashid Khalidi, the Palestinian sympathizer and professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. As McCarthy notes, the question naturally arises: “Why is Barack Obama so comfortable around people who so despise America and its allies?”
That’s one of many questions the public should be asking about Barack Hussein Obama. Today’s piece in the Times veritably weeps with anxiety. Corsi’s book has dwarfed a similar effort to discredit John McCain (35,000 in print): is there no justice in the world? The Times was in a tough spot with this book. The paper’s usual procedure with books it dislikes is to ignore them. Someone must have made the calculation that it was better to try to head off Corsi’s book at the pass, to strangle it in the crib as it were. I think they will rue the decision. Most people who read the Times would probably have been only dimly aware of The Obama Nation had the Times not brought it to their attention. Now they have had it rubbed in their faces. The paper did its best to dismiss the book, but questions and doubts will linger–not so much about Jerome Corsi but about Barack Hussein Obama. Who is he? Who are his friends? What does he believe? Is he the sort of person the American public wants leading the country? Is he a “stealth radical liberal”?
http://pajamasmedia.com/rogerkimball/2008/08/13/ny-times-tries-to-torpedo-anti-obama-book-succeeds-in-spreading-its-message/
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Joined: 05 Jun 2006
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Location: My only friend, the end
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| Phantom
Posted:
Sat Aug 16, 2008 6:50 am |
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Now it's 'swift-boating'?
So what do you call it when the Democrats sling mud?
It's only dirty pool if you lose.
That's the apparent Democratic approach to presidential politics. In 2004, Democrats tried to use film, in the form of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 , to discredit and bring down President Bush in his re-election effort. CBS even got into the fray, using obviously forged documents to try to tarnish Bush's National Guard service. It led to news anchor Dan Rather's retirement.
Yet, four years after a group of veterans from Democratic nominee John Kerry's "swift boat" days in Vietnam hit the news media with their concerns about his war record, it was considered by Democrats and their lackey media to be dirty pool. For the mainstream media now, "swift-boating" has become a verb that describes underhanded politics.
What was underhanded about it? Didn't the veterans opposed to Kerry have an absolute right to express their reservations, and to share their own recollections of Kerry's actual war experience?
Now, Democrats want to cry "swift-boating" because of new books that explore Democratic nominee-in-waiting Barack Obama's past and his record.
They want to paint the books -- particularly The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality -- as smear jobs. As "swift-boating."
Well, first of all, we've never regarded the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth as underhanded. They opposed Kerry forthrightly and said why. We think it's a smear job, on the other hand, to use "swift-boating" as a term for dirty politics. But the mainstream media accept it as gospel.
Secondly, the mainstream media have had no taste for exploring Obama's background whatsoever. They are in the tank for Obama, and don't want anything to come out that might lessen his chances of winning. So their objections to others who investigate Obama ring hollow. The book authors are doing what the network news divisions should have done.
And, oh by the way, Obama Nation is No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller List. So it's not as if the news media can claim the public isn't dying to learn more about Obama. They seem determined not to deliver it -- or to let anyone else deliver it.
Kerry himself has launched a Web site called "Truth Fights Back" to try to discredit claims in the Obama Nation book. Great! This is a debate that needed to happen. Let the facts fall where they may. But at least get them out there.
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/081608/edi_469683.shtml
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