Jerome Corsi's "Obama Nation" and the Root of Language Crime

Slime-merchant Jerome Corsi's latest psychotic episode in print, The Obama Nation, is published by Simon & Schuster's Threshold Editions, whose editor, Mary Matalin (yeah, that one) calls the book "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that."

I ran across Ms. Matalin's literary appraisal-cum-Elmer Gantry salesmanship in Joe Klein's Time magazine column. Mr. Klein, however, had experienced a somewhat less agreeable encounter with the book; in fact, he called it "trash," "poisonous crap" and "swill."

No, Mary, I haven't read the book, nor do I feel compelled to do so before echoing the universally denunciatory opinions of those plucky souls who have. After all, I didn't personally live under Hitler's Nazi regime, either, but I feel reasonably confident in judging that such an existence would have been a most unpleasant one -- as would, I'm sure, any close encounter with the Goebbelslike Obama Nation.

Besides, more than a few mainstream media outlets have already sufficiently summarized the book's neurotic flights of fancy. For example I pieced together this synopsis of Corsi's "findings" from yesterday's Washington Post:

The son of an "alcoholic polygamist," Obama deals with his abandonment issues and "black rage" by experimenting with drugs and radical thought. He makes a calculated entrance into politics despite having accomplished little and having developed some "anti-American" sentiments. Once in office, he regularly manipulates the political machine and becomes a liberal who will "divide America"….

[Corsi] implies that … Muslim faith plays a significant role in [Obama's] ideology, even though he is a practicing Christian. He portrays the senator from Illinois as a savvy opportunist who manipulated Chicago politics and then consistently voted like an "extreme" liberal…. Corsi writes that Obama's mother chose "men of color" from the "third world" to be her "mates," and that Obama identifies more with his "African blood" than his American roots.

Had enough? If not, and you'd care to revel farther into the "swill" of the book's falsehoods, just go to MediaMatters.org, which is somehow suffering through and counting and correcting them -- you know, like, oh, I don't know, say, a Simon & Schuster editor should have done?

Nevertheless, Corsi's book is about to debut as No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list, a phenomenon achieved principally by right-wing organizations and book clubs buying the bound detritus in bulk. Corsi, however, according to the Post, said he plans "to expand beyond that audience by aggressively marketing to independent voters and those who supported the presidential bid of Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton."

For now, though, we wait for the fallout. Some scholars of biography claim it won't be as bad as we expect. Said, for instance, Tom Smith, one such scholar at Pennsylvania State University, "Readers aren't as gullible as they used to be." Well, we'll see, but in the meantime I return to Joe Klein's column: "I heard about Jerome Corsi's book a few weeks ago from my mother, who said that her great fear -- that Barack Obama has covert Islamic associations -- had been confirmed by a new book."

So what's Obama to do? Refreshingly, his front-line joint chiefs of staff have launched a retaliatory campaign with some warlike punch, unlike John Kerry's initially AWOL campaign against Corsi's little crew of operationally effective Swift boaters. It's called "Unfit for Publication: An Investigative Report on the Lies in Jerome Corsi's 'Obama Nation,'" and this 41-page pushback is available online as a pdf file.

Yet there is one other pushback -- a very, very elementary one -- whose idleness I have long puzzled over. To explain …

In the days and weeks to come, we will witness one GOP representative after another join in debate over Corsi's book with Democratic Party representatives on countless political talk shows. And each and every one of these GOPers will refer to Obama's "Democrat Party" as further representative of Obama's "alien" views.

At that point -- each and every time -- the Democratic Party rep should say: I'm sorry, but you don't even know the name of Obama's party. And that's pathetically uninformed. It's the Democrat-ic Party, and until you comprehend at least that much I don't see how we can possibly intelligently discuss books.

Sure, the pushback tactic sounds immature; but remember, the GOP's propaganda machine is that which has operated on a profound and even psychotic immaturity itself (such as Corsi's book) for a number of decades. And it's time to start nipping it in the bud. The effort would be much like the NYPD's "broken window" rule that successfully reduced crime in the city: in the policing of smaller offenses, the foundation of larger ones shrank perforce.

Plus, it would be just plain good fun to watch the GOPers stutter and stammer over and resist the required enunciation of "Democratic" -- required, that is, before attempting their bigger linguistic crimes.