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Forty One Pages of Whoopass--and HTML Done Correctly.
The closer we get to an election, the more mushy Halperin's brain seems to get. Back when he was writing the Note, as Election Day approached, his knowing, yet utterly incoherent insider's codetalk gibberish would get so opaque that it'd make you damn near make your head explode in sheer annoyance. Since he started "The Page," he at least addresses his comments to the actual readers instead of his imaginary "Gang of 500," but the closer the election gets, the more CW bound his mind becomes.
Nonetheless, I check in on the Page frequently. Doing so had allowed me to free myself completely from the tyranny of the Talking Hairdos. Instead, I can find out what all the cool kids will be blathering about tonight and tomorrow in one, nasty, yet concentrated dose.
So, yes, sometimes, Halperin is a tool himself, but The Page is always a valuable tool for those who've decided they can no longer stomach Tweety and his pals yet still want to know what the MSM is yammering about today.
Which brings me to tonight's post.
For everyone during the primaries who said Obama would crumple when the Swiftboaters came, and for those of you who've been inclinded to fret a bit about whether he was hitting hard enough, I give you tomorrow's MSM consensus, courtesy of our pal Halperin.
And, as an added bonus, also courtesy of my pal Mark, I give you the Obama campaign's 41 page bitchslap of Corsi which led to Halperin's pronouncement.
Okay, I hear you already. Those of you protesting that the people who buy the book will never read it, especially with it only being on the Internet, are rather mising the point. I guarentee you everyone in the campaign MSM patrol has read, or will read it, tonight if only because Halperin says they should. At worst, they come away reporting that Obama's shown he knows how to kick ass when this kind of thing happens. At best, they use it at their primer on how to take this lowlife scumsucking pusbucket apart.
And, if we're really, really lucky, this becomes the beginning of a narrative about how the Republicans are so bereft of ideas, and so utterly morally bankrupt, that all they got left is slinging filth.
Okay, right. Never happen, but one can dream.
Comments (35)
Fresh Whoopass! Get it while it's hot!
Rec'd.
August 14, 2008 9:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Woke up early this morning to read the PDF.
Ahhh...I do love the smell of fresh whoop-ass in the morning. :-)
August 15, 2008 6:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am impressed with the "swift" response by Obama's campaign.
More ass-whupping on the way, November.
August 14, 2008 9:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Waded through some of the PDF; what an onerous slog to have to hunt down all the trivial bullshit and debunk each point. Dirty job, but someone has to...
With Patrick Fitzgerald on the hunt in Chicago it's hard to see how Obama could have escaped getting slimed unless he was actually clean. Ergo...
August 14, 2008 10:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Effin' A. Rec'd
August 14, 2008 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
My favorite part of your second link (the story by AP's Nedra Pickler) is this paragraph:
August 14, 2008 10:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Whoops. Sorry, the link I followed to the Ap story came from Halperin's story:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ANTI_OBAMA_BOOK?SITE=ILROR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
August 14, 2008 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
HAHAHA! And he actually continually cited his work for that website as "journalistic" when he was on Hardball. What a douchebag.
August 15, 2008 11:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
The Obama campaign continues to use the word "lie" and it's derivatives when responding both to these types of attacks and the psuedo-substantive attacks from the McCain campaign.
I love it. I love it. I love it.
August 14, 2008 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I only hope that the Obama campaign is successful in getting their surrogates on every program to shred this piece of trash. It is not enough to debunk this, Corsi and Matalin have to be exposed and completely discredited in the media so harshly as to discourage the next piece of scum from the next smear. If they don't thoroughly expose this and the participants of this for the slime it is, it will simply get less press but be used against them with the underinformed masses that read tabliod crap.
August 14, 2008 10:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, and I intend to email and call the executives at Simon & Schuster tomorrow.
This from wikipedia:
"Simon & Shuster owns the Threshold Editions imprint, which is increasingly controversial for publishing right wing political books including for example Jerome R. Corsi's The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality as well as other books attacking Democratic party politicians. Managed by a Republican Party operative, Mary Matalin, Threshold has a reputation of general indifference to the accuracy of the works it publishes. However, Threshold is believed to be highly profitable."
One other bit of wikipedia trivia: S&S is owned by CBS, which in turn in owned by the National Amusements theater chain, which is owned by Sumner Redstone. He was born Sumner Murray Rothstein on May 27, 1923, and was ranked by Forbes last year as the 86th richest man in the world, with a net worth of $9 billion.
Not sure if anyone at S&S will care, but I'm going to ask them to pull Corsi's damn screed anyway.
How can Carville claim to be a Democrat and still fuck that evil corpse he calls his wife?
August 14, 2008 11:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
"How can Carville claim to be a Democrat and still fuck that evil corpse he calls his wife?"
DUDE! Seriously, some of us are trying to read posts without having to throw up!
August 15, 2008 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seconded. A little image control there would be a good thing.
August 15, 2008 11:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
What got to you, the corpse-fucking or the part about Carville claiming to be a democrat?
August 15, 2008 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
"tyranny of the Talking Hairdos" - that sounds like a great title for the next piece.
August 15, 2008 12:21 AM | Reply | Permalink
Between the pillar and the post = between Mushbrain Halperin and the Talking Hairdos.
I cannot wait to see the 41 page of whoopass take effect. Loudly.
Excellent, NCSteve.
August 15, 2008 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, I'm about 1/2 way through and my brain aches...
I can hardly believe anyone has to defend themselves against this kinda crap, but there you have it. Welcome to America in 2008. No wonder so few people of substance want to run for public office...
I'm stillidealistic, (deep breath)I'm stillidealistic, (deep breath) I'm stillidealistic...
August 15, 2008 2:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Be strong.
August 15, 2008 1:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd
August 15, 2008 9:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
From The NY Times Non-FICTION Section:
1) THE OBAMA NATION, by Jerome R. Corsi. (Threshold, $28.) The Democratic candidate as an extreme leftist, from the co-author of “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry.” (†)
First off, what the hell is this book doing in the non-FICTION section, after Barack's campaign slammed every facet of the book as lies?
Second, note the emblem at the end of the description - which means some group bought a ton of this book and most of them could be sitting in boxes in some storage room - UNread!!!
Top of NY Times "bestseller" list, my ass!!
August 15, 2008 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I wouldn't ordinarily invest the time in reading the whole 41 pages, but that was well worth it. Conclusion - Corsi's a douchebag and Matalin's an idiot to tie herself in any way to this nutjob.
Happy that the Obama camp took the time to carefully lay out what trash this piece is. Now, I hope to see them to hit the networks quick, hard, decisively, and then, in the words of Clinton speech writer, David Kusnet (page 29 of 41), "Next scandal, please." :)
August 15, 2008 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Matalin's an idiot to tie herself in any way to this nutjob.
Are you serious?
1 -- Matalin is tied much more closely to a different nutjob.
2 -- Associating with nutjobs and promoting them or getting them elected is what she's paid -- immensely well -- to do, and she earns every nickle of it.
3 -- She is the opposite of an idiot.
4 -- She and Corsi will each earn more on this one book than you and I and all our progeny to the end of time will even hear hear rumors of.
5 -- As the result of #4, the lunatic Right will have still more resources to employ in promoting more filthy, dishonest screed in the future.
August 15, 2008 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I started to go into some of the finer points of that statement and decided not to. I find both Matalin and her husband to be extremely distasteful. I don't think what she does represents her well or suggests that she's particularly intelligent - I stand by my conclusion that she is an idiot to associate with this dude.
August 15, 2008 2:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, she's intelligent all right, and is extremely good at applying that intelligence to accomplish her mission. The same is true of her husband. But I agree that both of them are pretty slimy.
August 15, 2008 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd post and kudos to the Obama campaign for the quick and thorough response. Nothing takes the wind out of a zealot's sails more than encountering detailed, dry, proveable facts!!
------ And I heard on TV that Mary Matalin called the Corsi book "scholarship"?? She's stepped WAY over the line on this one, and I hope Carville was as "blunt" to her as he can be, and is!, to others. She's really gotten into the hog-wallow this time.
August 15, 2008 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not a legal scholar here, but dont we still have libel laws in this country? and isn't libel printing as fact, that which is not true?
It seems to me that the best way to stop this nonsense is to sue Corsi and the publisher for libel. It would set the precedent that if you want to attack someone, better use facts.
August 15, 2008 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's probably a tort, but I doubt acting on it would help politically. A libel suit would take ages to wind its way through the courts, and the right wing would cast it as an attempt to muzzle free speech.
The only way to respond to this is, well, to respond to it: debunk, debunk, and debunk again.
August 15, 2008 2:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
...or you could write a book about the pictures you took of McCain with those barbary apes and how the CIA broke into your home and stole them while you were on assignment uncovering Cindy's association with the Phoenix mafia.
August 15, 2008 2:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
dont we still have libel laws in this country? and isn't libel printing as fact, that which is not true?
The short answer is "Yes, but they don't apply to politicians in the real world."
In order to win the case, the politician has to prove that a statement was false, that the writer knew it was false, that the writer caused harm to the politician, and that the writer intended to do so. This is a tough nut to crack.
But suppose the politician decided to pursue the case anyway. First, the writer gets additional publicity when it does him the most good. Second, the case doesn't get tried until years after the election. Third -- and most importantly -- in a civil case, there is a process known as discovery, wherein attorneys on each side get the opportunity to depose their antagonists under oath. They can ask almost any question they want to ask; for example, about any behavior in which the subject might have engaged at any point in his life -- drug use, sexual behavior, relationships with shady characters -- pretty much anything. We have seen what happens to the politician who answers just one of these questions artfully. If the politician refuses to answer any question, he or she endangers his or her case, but more importantly he gives his political opponents wonderful ammunition to use against him. And many of the questions are likely to be of the "Did you ever give up your habit of blowing five-day-dead dogs?" variety.
Of course, the writer undergoes the same kind of questioning, but nobody cares about his fondness for necrophilic bestiality.
And if the politician wins, so what? The election is long over, the writer pays the politician and writes another book about the court case, telling lies about the politician's duplicity and character all along the way.
August 15, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agree with everything you say, including the political analysis, which is spot on with one nit-pick. The New York Times v. Sullivan standard for defamation where the plaintiff is a public figure or the statements relate to a matter of public concern is "actual malice," i.e. you have to prove that the defendant either had actual knowledge of the statement's falsity or that the statement was made in reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Ordinarily, when you're trying to prove it in court, knowledge and recklessness amount to the same thing as a practical matter. Recklessness is a much more culpable state of mind in the law than the term's lay usage would suggest--it amounts to willful blindness.
However, today, I think a strong case could be made that citing right-wing blogs as sources for defamatory statements amounts to recklessness. It would be a bitch to lay a foundation to show that those people just make shit up as a matter of course, but a skillful attorney could probably squeeze some damaging admissions out of Corsi to that effect in his deposition.
The interesting thing, though, is the the Obama campaign flat out called Corsi a serial liar, a bigot and a crackpot kook. That's defamation per se unless you can prove its true, but, even at that, by injecting himself into the public eye on a matter of public concern Corsi has willingly brought himself under the same heightened "actual malice" standard of proof that Obama would have to overcome in the hypothetical lawsuit.
August 15, 2008 3:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
The interesting thing, though, is the the Obama campaign flat out called Corsi a serial liar, a bigot and a crackpot kook.
Well, everything except "liar" is clearly opinion, so he can't go after them for those. And the liar part is manifest in his book, so the campaign has nothing to fear.
August 15, 2008 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
HTML--Steve, did you forget? I saw the title and hoped you'd give a hint on links. I'm too lazy to figure it out myself...
I'm looking forward to the talking heads and shout-fests this weekend. Obama's message-controlled and forceful (but not raving) surrogates talking over idiotic lying liars...I may even listen to some of it while I'm cleaning, though I'll keep the vacuum nearby to drown out the TV when I start getting pissed off.
We're seeing a preview of the true GE campaign that'll start directly after the Dems fan out from Denver. Obama's hitting where it hurts, pissing the press off by not feeding them his attack ads: From NBC's first read:
(rubbing my hands with glee)
August 15, 2008 1:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, that's from NBC's First Read:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/15/1268145.aspx
August 15, 2008 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the first one, I used .html tags as if I was in the comments, rather than clicking the handy htmlizing buttons that sometimes appear at the top of the text box on the blogging page.
August 15, 2008 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know I can tell the Obama campaign response is working? During the whole Swift-boat ugliness, I didn't hear the name "Corsi" once. Now, that schmuck--and his lunatic-fringe reputation--is the whole story. Which is a very good thing.
August 15, 2008 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
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