The extreme-right way to make a buck

Jerome Corsi, author of a pitiful new slam on Obama, is the product of a publishing industry that feeds off extremism.
Tim Rutten
LATimes

August 16, 2008

The fact that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson's famous friendship recovered from the acrimonious presidential campaigns of 1796 and 1800 is a monument to 18th century detachment and the mysterious power of genuine human fellowship.

From those first two contested general elections to the current presidential campaign, American politics have been a blood sport, and what we now call "negative advertising" always has been a weapon of choice. As any honest political consultant will tell you, there's a reason for that: Negative advertising works; it always has.

Even so, Jerome R. Corsi's controversial new book, "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality," occupies a class of its own. Corsi, you may recall, was the coauthor of "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry," the campaign diatribe that slimed the decorated Vietnam War veteran and then-Democratic presidential candidate's war record.

Corsi is frank about his motives for writing "The Obama Nation." As he told the New York Times this week: "The goal is to defeat Obama. I don't want Obama to be in office."

(Continued here.)