The AP does it again, serving as Obama’s water carrier.  Here’s the set up:  Jerome Corsi’s book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, instantly shot to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Panic ensued.  First, the New York Times attacked it, pointing to three minor errors, along with ominous hints that there were other mistakes in the book.  Now the AP has gotten into the act, taking as verbatim truth the Obama campaign’s own challenges to the book.  The only problem is that the facts that the AP attacks on Obama’s behalf are true.  Here’s a bit of a fisking:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama hit back Thursday with a 40-page rebuttal to the best-selling book “The Obama Nation,” arguing the author is a fringe bigot peddling rehashed lies.  [Have you noticed that anyone who challenges Obama is a racist?  Today's Best of the Web, in the "Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar" section, has some great examples of the way in which Obama's water carrier's sexualize political attacks against him on the grounds that they carrier some bizarre racial subtext.]

Jerome Corsi’s anti-Obama book, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” claims the Illinois senator is a dangerous, radical candidate for president. The book is a compilation of all the innuendo and false rumors against Obama — that he was raised a Muslim [Obama was enrolled at an Indonesian school as a Muslim and received instruction in Islam which, in my mind, counts as "raised Muslim."  It doesn't mean he was or is a practicing or believing Muslim, and I really don't care about his religious instruction when he was 9, but it's not a falsehood], attended a radical, black church [which part of Rev. Wright and black liberation theology doesn't the AP understand?] and secretly has a “black rage” hidden beneath the surface [If Ann Coulter's skewering of Obama's book is accurate, there's nothing very hidden about it].

In fact, Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  [That introductory clause at the beginning of the sentence ("In fact") implies that the AP is going to set the record straight and explain the truth behind the alleged lies.  Being familiar with the actual facts behind that throat-clearing, though, I can only say, "Objection, your honor, non-responsive."  As you'll note above, Corsi said Obama was "raised a Muslim," which is true for a part of his life.  That he is now a professed Christian has nothing to do with the truth about his upbringing.  Additionally, please note how the AP names the Church with a certain reverence, as if its very name puts the lie to statements about the church's radicalism or Obama's black rage.  Both his church's radicalism and Obama's rage however, are well documented, often from Wright's and Obama's own mouths.]

[snip]

Obama’s campaign says the book is full of factual inaccuracies that include the wrong date for the Obamas’ marriage. [To which I say BFD.  That is not a substantive error and would matter only if it was part of some salacious argument that Obama's oldest child was conceived out of wedlock which is obviously untrue, not to mention irrelevant.]  Corsi also writes that Obama left much of his family background out of his autobiographies — his father’s polygamy and alcoholism, his sister’s birth in Indonesia and that his then-fiance Michelle accompanied him on a visit to Kenya — but the campaign points out page numbers from “Dreams From My Father” where Obama discussed all those things.  [As to this, I have no facts, although I can't help wondering whether Obama referenced these facts in romantic or oblique terms.]

In “The Obama Nation” — the title is a twist on the word abomination [Wow!  I would never have figured that out without AP's help, so I must be -- or AP must perceive me as being -- really stupid] — Corsi catalogs various allegations that have haunted Obama on right-wing blogs and anonymous e-mails.  [Well, so far, the three major allegations alleged are . . . wait for this . . . true!]

Corsi suggests, without a shred of proof, that Obama may be using drugs today. Obama has acknowledged using marijuana and cocaine as a teenager but says he quit when he went to college and hasn’t used drugs since.

Corsi makes an issue of the fact that, before he quit smoking cigarettes, Obama didn’t want it widely known that he smoked. “If Obama takes pains to hide his smoking from us, what else does he take pains to hide?” Corsi asks in the book.  [That's an excellent point about Obama's penchent for hiding things that are not so nice about himself.  It's a lack of openness and honesty that makes one desire corroboration from sources other than Obama himself.  I still think it's a weak point on Corsi's part, but having been burned with Clinton's repeated assurances of sexual fidelity, it's a bit hard to take someone's word on embarassing subjects, such as sex and drug use.]

Corsi also dwells on Obama’s mother marrying Obama’s African father and later marrying someone from Indonesia — whom Corsi describes as “a second man of color to be her mate.”   The Obama campaign says the description is one of many examples of Corsi’s “offensive language” in the book.  [Is the problem "man of color" or "mate?"  I thought "man of color" was the PC term.  "Mate"?  I don't know.  Is this just poor writing in lieu of the word husband or is Corsi trying to imply something animalistic?  Frankly, I read it as poor writing (a cigar is just a cigar), but I have no doubt that in Obama's world it's being viewed as tantamount to saying "woman marries ape."]

He claims Obama received extensive Islamic religious education as a boy in Indonesia, education that was only offered to the truly faithful. Actually, Obama is a Christian and as a boy he attended both Catholic school and Indonesian public schools where some basic study of the Koran was offered.  [As I pointed out, above, it's irrelevant that Obama is a Christian today.  Corsi is right that, as a child, Obama was registered as a Muslim at his school, and that he received regular instruction in Islam as part of the school curriculum.  It's very Left to point to the present and try to use it to disprove the facts of the past, isn't it?]

There’s more, but I’m not going to fisk it.  The above shows quite clearly just how stupid the AP thinks we are.

I doubt that Corsi’s book is very good scholarship, I’m sure he’s made careless errors, and there’s no doubt that it’s an attack book aimed at bringing Obama down. The problem is that the actual errors called to our attention are minor (marriage dates, for example), the so-called corrections Obama/the AP make are often false (he was raised as a Muslim; he did belong to a black rage church), and the bottom line is true: Obama is a political radical. As I’ve often said, he’s not black, he’s Red.

Trial lawyers are taught and repeatedly reminded that no case is perfect and that the smartest thing to do when you know your client has problems is to acknowledge those problems immediately and explain them (or apologize them) away.  This straightforward approach invariably makes it look as if the problems aren’t a big deal at all and it allows you to control the discussion, not your opponent.  Denying these same problems just makes you look stupid, makes you look as if you think the judge and the jury are stupid, shows you up to be a liar and, worst of all, highlights things you’d rather downplay.  The AP’s weak efforts here perfectly illustrate just how sound that legal advice is.

UPDATE:  Peter Wehner points out that there are definite problems with both Corsi and his book.  I don’t doubt that this is true, as I already noted in the second to last paragraph of the post, above.  I also haven’t read Corsi’s book, Obama’s defense, or even Obama’s own books.  The only thing I have read was the AP story and this post criticizes it for its prima facie flaws and biases.

UPDATE II:  More lousy — indeed, creepy — stuff about Corsi, which still doesn’t detract from my point, which is that AP, on Obama’s behalf, mounted a lousy and dishonest attack against Corsi’s arguments.

I find amusing, in a bitter kind of way, the first sentence in a New York Times article about Jerome Corsi’s book on Obama, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (which is, by the way, one of Amazon’s top sellers and will debut this week as No. 1 on the Times‘ own best-seller list).  In the very first clause of the article, there’s an attack on Prof. Corsi:

In the summer of 2004 the conservative gadfly Jerome R. Corsi shot to the top of the best-seller lists as co-author of “Unfit for Command,” the book attacking Senator John Kerry’s record on a Vietnam War Swift boat that began the larger damaging campaign against Mr. Kerry’s war credentials as he sought the presidency.  (Emphasis mine.)

For those unfamiliar with this slightly old-fashioned insult, a “gadfly” is defined as “A persistent irritating critic; a nuisance,” or “a person who persistently annoys or provokes others with criticism, schemes, ideas, demands, requests, etc.”   In other words, a gadfly isn’t necessarily a liar — he may indeed be absolutely right — but he’s so annoyingly persistent that this fact alone negates his message.

The rest of the article points out three factual errors in the book (whether Obama truly stopped using drugs when he said he did; whether he attended a particularly inflammatory Wright sermon; and whether he dedicated a book to his family), along with the implication that there are others.  It does not acknowledge whether the bulk of the book, aside from these three errors is true.  The article’s main point is that this is just another nasty attack, a la the attack on John Kerry (a book that also had mistakes), and that (nudge, nudge, hint, hint) Times‘ readers would do well to avoid sullying their minds by reading the book.

It was interesting to read the article, which complains about fairly small errors while assiduously avoiding larger substance, within minutes of having read Bruce Walker’s John Edwards and the Truth Scandal.  Walker makes a point many of us have seen in the last few days, but he makes it exceptionally well:  namely, that the Edwards’ scandal isn’t about whether he cheated on his wife, but it is about the fact that he lied repeatedly to the American people as he was running for President, and that the media was both complicit in this lie and unwilling to report on its unraveling.

Walker points out that we really shouldn’t be surprised, either that Silky Pony was really a sneaky little stallion, or that the media tried to create its own version of the truth.  (And here’s an update on the lies, and more lies, infecting that story.)  After all, the Left has always considered the truth to be the story that’s expedient at a given point.  Orwell understood this 60 years ago, but we keep being surprised all over again.

And that’s why I get hung up on that word “gadfly” in the opening clause of a New York Times article sneeringly attack a book that, in turn, attacks Obama.  Whether the book is true or not, whether it has big truths and small mistakes, or small truths and big mistakes, is entirely irrelevant.  What matters is that Corsi has distinguished himself by irritating the Left.  He is to be swatted down, not because of any substantive material he advances (and I strongly agree with swatting down people who advance big lies), but because he’s getting in the way of the Leftist juggernaut.  It’s that — not his factual errors — that make him anathema to the Left.  That is why the Times writes a snide article about Corsi, rather than writing a careful analysis of the actual charges in the book itself.

Given this approach to “journalism,” is it any surprise that the New York Times‘ stocks are reaching junk bond status?  Readers aren’t turning away from the Times because of competition from new media.  They’re turning away from the Times because they recognize that the product has become worthless.

In the 1930s, when Walter Duranty was peddling his garbage from the Soviet Union, people had no alternative sources by which to judge those lies, and competition was limited anyway.  The Times therefore could get away with this kind of shoddy Leftist journalism.  Nowadays, however, with the ability instantly to expose errors and bias, and with thousands of alternative media out there, a newspaper no longer can survive based on a sort of monopolistic cachet.  In order to distinguish itself, it needs to have quality writing (that always matters) and scrupulously honest reporting.  Since the Times is unwilling to deliver the latter, people in this fluid marketplace will always look for a better product.