Doctoring the facts against Obama
I SPENT the weekend reading "The Obama Nation," the new book by Jerome R. Corsi - and what a revelation it was!
Perhaps I should say Dr. Corsi, for Corsi has a Ph.D.
I know that because it's mentioned on the book cover.
And on the title page.
And in the author bio, where we learn that it's from Harvard.
And in the preface.
Oh, yes, and as a header on every other page throughout the book.
Unfortunately for Corsi's, um, scholarly reputation, the last high-profile work he was involved with didn't withstand independent scrutiny. That was "Unfit for Command," the 2004 torpedo that Corsi and John O'Neill aimed at John Kerry. That book and subsequent efforts by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had the unfortunate effect of making "swift boat" a verb synonymous with "smear."
Nor is it good news when one's co-author in ambush quickly feels compelled to distance himself from you, as O'Neill did after bigoted comments Corsi had made about the Catholic Church and Muslims came to light.
But even great scholars can make the occasional mistake. And Mary Matalin, who has morphed from Republican politico to editor, has assured us that Corsi's latest work is "a piece of scholarship, and a good one at that."
So let's consider a little of the work Corsi has done in his efforts to portray Barack Obama as a crypto-radical. Start with Obama's use of the word "change." Now, in politics, a call for change may seem innocuous enough - until, that is, you apply the shrewd interpretive power of Jerome Corsi, Ph.D.
Corsi notes that Obama was once a community organizer in Chicago, and not just any community organizer, he maintains, but one trained in the tradition of Saul Alinsky, the self-proclaimed radical organizer who died in 1972.
For Alinsky, Corsi asserts, the word change "invoked radical socialism" and was "nothing more than a code word for the typical income redistribution those on the left have sought since the days of Karl Marx."
Perhaps you find it hard to believe that Obama, who declines to call for either a single-payer healthcare system or even an individual mandate for healthcare coverage, is either a radical or a socialist. Well, consider these tidbits Corsi presents about the college days of one of Obama's youthful campaign bloggers: In his Harvard suite, he hung "a Communist Party flag that he and a roommate brought back from Russia." Further, the same future blogger's bookcase "included titles by Karl Marx and Howard Zinn. . ."
And then there's campaign consultant David Axelrod, "born to Jewish parents on New York City's Lower East Side in 1955," whose mother once worked for PM, "a leftist tabloid newspaper" that also employed "communist sympathizers" like I.F. Stone.
In case you're wondering just what that proves, Corsi lays it all out: Axelrod, like Obama himself, has "roots in the leftist political environment of the 1940s, one dominated by literary intellectuals who were comfortable with self-proclaimed communists in their midst."
Students of history may recognize this as in similar vein with the kind of investigatory work once pursued by Senator Joseph McCarthy.
And there's more. Did you know that Obama once stood with hands folded in front of him rather than with his right hand over his heart during "The Star-Spangled Banner"?
But perhaps you still suspect it would be hard for the seemingly mild-mannered Obama to disguise the angry radical socialist who supposedly lurks within. Ah, but you see, Obama is a secret smoker. (A longtime smoker who has struggled successfully to quit, Obama's campaign says, but who believes that? After all, wasn't Karl Marx a smoker too?)
A smoker can't be a new age figure, Corsi explains; thus "the habit is a crack in the wall, a flaw that calls into question whether the persona Axelrod has crafted for Obama is who Obama really is . . ."
"Scholarship" like this fairly takes your breath away. No doubt Corsi will find a following among confirmed Obama-haters, but for fair-minded readers, his latest effort only proves one thing: Doctoral robes aren't enough to disguise a character assassin.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com. 