Obama Responds to Jerome Corsi's Book

mykevermin

mykevermin

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http://my.barackobama.com/page/-/email/Fight the Smears - Unfit for Publication.pdf

41 pages of refutation (well, more like 34-35 pages of refutation and 4-5 pages of background on the kind of person Corsi is).

Not that you'd find this useful; either you know Corsi is a bigoted, biased, talentless (pitiful work for a Harvard doctorate) hitman who's doing this to make money (which makes him the political equivalent of "Nickelback"), or you're the kind of person who would use this book to supplement the fact that you already don't like Obama.

But, as Jerome Martin of Politico says succinctly, "Corsi delved into the drug-and-Muslim fever swamps, which, regardless of accuracy, is what many on the right want to believe about Obama.”

So, yeah.
 
I wonder if Corsi can be sued for slander. It's not like you can just write a book about someone else without their permission, right?

~HotShotX
 
There's no chance for a lawsuit here and I doubt a candidate would want to bring the added attention that would come with a circus like that.

What I wonder with hit pieces like this (from both sides) is whether the author's first thought was "damn, I'm going to make a bazillion dollars" or "damn, I'm going to sink this bastard politician".
 
Well, then, you're certainly right there. Hell, even Cliff Schechter and David Brock are in on the game.

None of them will come close to debuting at #1 on the NYT list. Why isn't the liberal media doing their job in helping promote the anti-McCain agenda? Why are they going against their solid liberal judgment and helping hawk a book that goes against their ideals, while ignoring those hitpieces that conform to them? WHY!?!?!?!?

;)
 
[quote name='HotShotX']I wonder if Corsi can be sued for slander. It's not like you can just write a book about someone else without their permission, right?

~HotShotX[/quote]

Won't happen. The legal battle would seriously hurt Obama's chances in November, and its doubtful that Obama would win the lawsuit.
 
[quote name='HotShotX']I wonder if Corsi can be sued for slander. It's not like you can just write a book about someone else without their permission, right?

~HotShotX[/QUOTE]

...What? Why not?
 
[quote name='evanft']And I'm sure that book is exactly like the one written about Obama, right?[/QUOTE]
I can't speak to that directly. I certainly have no intention of reading either one.
 
I didn't bother at first, but then I actually took a look at the Obama camp's response to Corsi's book.

It's astounding. Those of you who passed it -- give it a look.

There's a long list of statements made by Corsi that are the absolute opposite of reality, and don't really seem like attacks in the first place so much as just random lies. Like...

LIE: “Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his mother, or to his father, Barack Senior, or to his Indonesian stepfather. Missing from the dedication are the grandparents who raised him in Hawaii, especially during the years his mother abandoned him to return to Indonesia to be with Lolo.” [p 49]

REALITY: “It is to my family, though -- my mother, my grandparents, my siblings, stretched across oceans and continents -- that I owe the deepest gratitude and to whom I dedicated this book. Without their constant love and support, without their willingness to let me sing their song and their toleration of the occasional wrong note, I could never have hoped to finish. If nothing else, I hope that the love and respect I feel for them shines through on every page.” [Dreams From My Father, p xvii]
Click to expand...

wtf, y'know? "You didn't dedicate your book to your family! OMGZ!" isn't even a damaging statement, and how could it be so blatantly wrong when he specifically says "It is my family ... to whom I dedicated this book"

I'm now under the impression that Corsi intentionally wrote tabloid trash in hopes of getting extra press (any press is good press, no?). I guess it worked, since I probably wouldn't have heard of the book if not for this thread, and this thread wouldn't exist if his claims weren't as ridiculous as they are.
 
Corsi stands by that statement. On MSNBC, they called him out on this and he hemmed and hawed. He eventually settled on parsing words by claiming that he was right because there was no dedication page, and that dedications in the introduction are not typical.

The last part is wholly, wholly untrue. It's akin to saying McDonald's doesn't serve Big Macs. If you've never eaten there, you may not be so confident. When you get drive through every day, you're well aware that Big Macs are on the menu.

The claim falls on its face when this HARVARD fuckING PHD (as he's more than happy to tell you he is) talks about meticulous research and footnotes abound. If you've read more than 5 nonfiction books in your life, you can't get away with claiming that dedications included in introductions are atypical, particularly among scholarly publications. Stephen King uses dedication pages.

Now, in the end, this is a, as Corsi would say, a nitpicky little thing. But ultimately the fact that he refuses to budge on this, tiny, nitpicky thing which isn't even good enough to be classified "semantic pissing" is what undoes his entire book. He puffs his chest on Larry King and claims that he and John O'Neill (coauthors of the anti-Kerry mythological piece, "Unfit for Command") never had to retract one utterance from that book.

Sounds like a solid piece of research, right? Of course, when confronted on your face by a person so unwilling to admit that they were even incidentally wrong, then any claim that "I never had to take anything back" is just silly and laughable. Of course nothing was taken back; you're unwilling to admit you're wrong when it's right in front of your face!

But the dedication gaffe is also symbolic of Corsi's sloppiness. Would you trust the words of someone willing to be (1) dead wrong about something so trivial, (2) so easily refuted that it's not even refutable; Corsi should have SEEN AND READ THE DEDICATION WHEN READING OBAMA'S BOOK (that is, were he as meticulous and scholarly as he claims) - it shouldn't be up to the readers and critics to bear the burden of proof, but, rather, the person putting forth these arguments and making millions off of them.

Of course, it isn't, and even when confronted with the burden of truth others took up, he unrepentantly stands behind his claims.

Scholarly my ass.

Though he's clearly getting even richer.
 
[quote name='Liquid 2']...What? Why not?[/QUOTE]

Yep, you don't have to have one's permission to write a biography.

You can get sued for slander if you make up stuff to defame them. But you don't need any legal permission to write a biography.
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Do books qualify for libel?[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure, but I wouldn't see why not. It's been too long since I had my Journalism Ethics class as an undergrad, but I don't recall any discussion of books being subject to any different libel laws than newspapers or magazines. Print is print I'd think. But don't quote me on it as I'm not sure.
 
Even TV/Radio journalism is subject to libel/slander laws in pretty much the manner.

You just don't see many cases as it's hard to prove (same in print media).

Libel/slander has to be:

1. Presented as fact.

2. Be able to prove that it was done maliciously and knowingly. They knew it was false and knowingly went through with it in a malicious attempt to defame the subject.

So the first one defends opinion columns and the talking head shows. You can bash the hell out of someone was long as you're clearly being opinionated. And the second one gives an easy out for people as they can claim they didn't know it was false at the time they wrote it. It's very hard to prove the knowing/malice part in court as people can just argue that they didn't know, or that it wasn't malicious but just sloppy research etc.
 
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[quote name='mykevermin']Corsi stands by that statement. On MSNBC, they called him out on this and he hemmed and hawed. He eventually settled on parsing words by claiming that he was right because there was no dedication page, and that dedications in the introduction are not typical.[/QUOTE]

That's no defense at all... the excerpt from his book is quoted as.

Obama did not dedicate Dreams from My Father to his mother, or to his father, Barack Senior, or to his Indonesian stepfather. Missing from the dedication are the grandparents who raised him in Hawaii
Click to expand...

Saying "missing from the dedication..." shows that he acknowledges a dedication, but he specifies that it doesn't include his mother or grandparents, when it explicitly includes them.

It isn't possible that he overlooked the issue, it isn't possible that he thought people would believe him, it's hardly even possible that he thought the statement would hurt Obama (which is the supposed goal of his book). IMO, this scumbag's a genius. This supposed attack piece is intentionally controversial to sell. That's it. The absolute only explanation in existence for comments like he made about the dedication are because he wants to make easily refuted lies in order to cause controversy. He wants us talking about it, calling him a liar. He wants CNN talking about it, calling him a liar. He wants to be #1 on Amazon.com and he wants Obama Nation to be a #1 NYT Bestseller... and we're giving this scumbag everything he wants.
 
[quote name='Koggit']It isn't possible that he overlooked the issue, it isn't possible that he thought people would believe him, it's hardly even possible that he thought the statement would hurt Obama (which is the supposed goal of his book). IMO, this scumbag's a genius. This supposed attack piece is intentionally controversial to sell. That's it. The absolute only explanation in existence for comments like he made about the dedication are because he wants to make easily refuted lies in order to cause controversy. He wants us talking about it, calling him a liar. He wants CNN talking about it, calling him a liar. He wants to be #1 on Amazon.com and he wants Obama Nation to be a #1 NYT Bestseller... and we're giving this scumbag everything he wants.[/quote]

He's hardly "a genius", he's just a sociopath with above average intelligence.

Can we pay for the book in Ameros?
 
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