By now, many of you have already heard about Jerome Corsi's anti-Obama propaganda piece "The Obama Nation", and it's mixed bag of lies, rehashed old news, and religious smears. It's a sad day in this country when a "book" like this makes it easily to the top of the NY Times Bestseller list. But it's far worse when the author shows no hesitation about promoting this trash on white supremacist radio.
Corsi doesn't just belong to the right's conspiratorial wing, he belongs to its racist, white-supremacist fringe. Over the last couple of years, he's written disparagingly about Muslims, Catholics and Jews, not to mention gays and lesbians. Muslims are "ragheads," the pope is "senile" and tolerates "boy bumping," and Jews ... well, you can imagine.
Corsi looked beleaguered but respectable this week when he appeared on CNN's "Larry King Live," but it would be far more instructive if his prospective readers could hear him Sunday, when he's scheduled to appear on "The Political Cesspool," a "pro-white" radio program that endorses the so-called neo-Confederate movement's belief that secession is the right of every American state, promotes the notion that "the United States is a Christian nation" and "opposes all efforts to mix the races of mankind."
It's also pretty nauseating to see that Mary Matalin, former Bush I chief strategist, assistant to Dick Cheney, fixture on Meet The Press, and wife to legendary Democratic strategist James Carville, is responsible for having gotten this "book" published in the first place.
The book is published by Threshold Editions, Mary Matalin's imprint at Simon & Schuster. It "was not designed to be, and does not set out to be, a political book," Matalin sniffed to Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman of the New York Times. "Rather, it is "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that."
I know I'm not supposed to have any remaining shock for how low these people will sink, but count me just a bit chagrined. Matalin, contrary to her image as a bare-knuckled GOP brawler in the Lee Atwater tradition, is actually a pretty moderate Republican whom I have heard speak eloquently on the rights of gay and lesbian men and women. I understood she's on the other team, and that she's going to all she can to help elect John McCain in November.
My question, though, is why that makes it OK for her to market this product to a white supremacist audience? I mean, it's already a massive bestseller. Did she and Corsi really need to squeeze a few bucks out of the Klan, while they were at it? And more importantly, why is a mainstream publishing powerhouse like Simon & Schuster signing off on this type of promotion?
