The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg Calls Out Simon & Schuster on Corsi
Last week, Media Mob wondered whether Simon & Schuster Inc. would be taken to task for allowing Threshold Editions, its conservative imprint, to publish The Obama Nation, Jerome Corsi's bestselling hit job on the presumptive Democratic nominee.
In the front of this week's New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg does exactly that. "On a foundation of small, medium-sized, and extra-large falsehoods," Mr. Hertzberg writes, "'The Obama Nation' erects a superstructure of innuendo, guilt by (often nonexistent) association, baseless speculation, and sinister-sounding but irrelevant digression."
He goes on to say that Mr. Corsi's last book—Unfit for Command, re: John Kerry—was published by Regnery, a publisher whose "sole raison d’être... is the promulgation of hard-right politics," while this new one, he notes, comes from the much more mainstream Simon & Schuster. Something about this does not add up, Mr. Hertzberg suggests:
Corsi is, or ought to be, a marginal figure, but Mary Matalin, the editor-in-chief of Threshold Editions, is not a marginal Republican. She is a former chief of staff of the Republican National Committee, and she served in the current Administration as an Assistant to the President, the White House staff’s shiniest title. Nor is Simon & Schuster—which, seventeen years ago, gave a book contract to a young man who had been elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review—a marginal publisher. But its standards have evidently slipped now that, along with CBS, MTV, and Paramount, it is part of Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements, Inc.
Mr. Hertzberg stops just short of saying S&S should have prevented Obama Nation from coming out, but it seems pretty clear that he believes the company should be required to stand behind its contents. Unclear whether he thinks this is a controversial opinion or a totally intuitive one, but the fact is, it's a thing people in the publishing industry are pretty sharply divided on and there's no totally easy answer. More on that in the print edition of this week's Observer if things go as planned.
With all due respect to Mr. Hertzberg's long list of titles, relationships and articles he really says nothing about specifics regarding the alledged falsehoods that Corsi is being accused of. It is obviously a partisan book supporting the Conservative point-of-view. I have not read the book nor am privy to the details that Corsi lists, however, I have read pro and con comments and the best I can discern is that Corsi may have included some 15% of the book to some questionable remarks, even though he provides extensive footnotes, etc. Let's address the 85% of the book that is a lock. You've got to list the lies you claim he wrote. The Dim-o-crats simply can't take any criticism. It is time for them to growup and join the adult world. You can't always have it by your rules. There is an opposite point-of-view, and it could be the truth even though you don't want to believe. I think Hertzberg and all those he represents should go back and hide under the rock they came from. They are a disgrace to America.
Well just because trolls like holy blitzer are convinced of something doesn't make it true. Mental illness, hatred, and racism are so rampant in the nut-o-sphere of GOP politics. They embrace people like Corsi, Mark Foley And Larry Craig no matter what they do. There are so many pedophiles, rapists and adullterers in the GOP, but their followers will still back them, because of their hatred of Democrats. IOKIYAR, MF'ers, IOKIYAR!