Obama's Presidential Campaign Fights Back Against 'The Obama Nation' with Rebuttal Book and Web Site, But Swift-Boat Author's Principal Claims Are So Patently False That Obama Likely Has Grounds to Take Him to Court
(Revised and updated 6:45 PM EDT Tuesday, August 19, 2008)
OEN Editor's note: An earlier version of this article made statements about Larry Sinclair regarding drug, charges, arrests and imprisonment. These were uncorroborated an proved to be incorrect. OEN apologizes to Mr. Sinclair for the error. The current article accurately states Mr. Sinclair's record.
By Skeeter Sanders
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama -- already making history as the first African American presidential nominee of a major American political party -- may make history again in a way he'd rather not like to make it: As the first presidential candidate to take an author to court, The 'Skeeter Bites Report has learned.
Jerome Corsi's newly-published book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, is filled with accusations and innuendo against the Illinois senator that were long ago proven false -- constituting a "reckless disregard for the truth" and grounds for the Illinois senator to sue Corsi for libel and defamation, according to a source close to the Obama campaign.
Corsi -- who made a name for himself four years ago when he co-authored an innuendo-filled book against 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's military service -- candidly admits he wrote his newest tome with the explicit aim of ensuring Obama's defeat in November.
The Obama Nation -- the title is an obvious play on the word "abomination" -- already has rocketed to the top of The New York Times' best-seller list for hardcover non-fiction. But the Obama campaign says the volume is nothing but pure fiction -- and malicious fiction, at that.
Chief among Corsi's accusations: That Obama was raised -- and is still -- a Muslim and has ties to radical Islamic extremists; that he still secretly uses illegal drugs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary; and that by attending a "radical black church" in Chicago, he secretly has a "black rage" against white people.
In fact, Obama is a Christian, who has been a member of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago -- a predominantly black congregation in a mainline Christian denomination -- for more than 20 years. And the only thing even remotely "radical" about his church is its controversial, now-retired pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Corsi's claim that Obama has ties to Islamic extremists is belied by the fact that Obama is a staunch defender of Israel -- and has even been resoundingly denounced by al-Qaida and its supporters as being, among other things, "an 'Iranian agent' secretly sent to take over the United States and fight a war against Sunni Muslims," according to Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News terrorism analyst who operates an anti-terrorism Web site.
Corsi Claim of Obama Drug Abuse Based on Discredited Source
Corsi even goes so far as to claim -- without a single scintilla of proof -- that Obama is currently an abuser of illegal drugs. In an interview with the AP, Corsi defended raising the issue of Obama's alleged drug use. "I don't need more [proof]," he said. "I'm putting this question forward. I'm putting the evidence forward. Voters can make up their own minds."
But it's a claim based on allegations made by a Minnesota man published in the supermarket tabloid Globe and its sister tabloid National Enquirer in March -- allegations that have since been discredited by this blogger and by others -- that he had a gay sexual encounter with the Illinois senator in 1999 and that Obama "smoked crack cocaine in front of him."
The man who made the allegations, Larry Sinclair -- a convicted felon who's spent time in prison in Florida and Colorado for credit card theft, forgery and check fraud, according to court records -- did not produce any evidence to back up his claims and twice flunked a lie-detector test.
Sinclair was even arrested by Washington, D.C. police in June on an outstanding warrant in Colorado after he held a bizarre press conference with reporters at the National Press Club to air his accusations against Obama.
Obama acknowledged in his autobiography -- and again this past Saturday during a candidates' forum on politics and faith in California hosted by Rick Warren, a prominent evangelical minister -- that he used marijuana and cocaine while he was a teenager living in his native Hawaii ("It was the greatest moral failing of my life," he admitted), but quit using illicit drugs completely when he started college in 1979 and hasn't touched them since.
Unlike Kerry in 'o4, Obama Campaign Fires Back Fast -- and Hard
In sharp contrast to Kerry's failure to respond to Corsi's previous book, Unfit for Command, in which he attacked the Massachusetts senator's military service record in Vietnam, the Obama campaign struck back swiftly last week with a hard-hitting, 40-page rebuttal book -- aptly titled Unfit for Publication -- and with a blistering counterattack posted on a special Web site it established specifically to fight off rumors and innuendo against the candidate.
