AP Shreds Corsi, Pretends Obama Didn't Attend 'Radical Black Church'

Associated Press aggressively took after Jerome Corsi's book The Obama Nation in a story touting the Obama camp's attempts at rebuttal. Reporter Nedra Pickler repeated the Obama camp's dismissal of Corsi as a "fringe bigot" and declared "The book is a compilation of all the innuendo and false rumors against Obama." Pickler insisted it was somehow a false rumor or an innuendo that Obama "attended a radical black church." Among her complaints about the book's accuracy: "He accuses Obama of wanting to weaken the military even though Obama's campaign calls for adding 65,000 soldiers and 27,000 Marines." She lamented that "Corsi catalogs various allegations that have haunted Obama on right-wing blogs and anonymous e-mails" and openly mocked the conservative World Net Daily website: "Corsi writes for World Net Daily, a conservative Web site whose lead headline Thursday was ‘Astonishing photo claims: Dead Bigfoot stored on ice.'"

Reporting from a Honolulu dateline, suggesting she's on the Obama vacation beat, Pickler began:

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.

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, attended a radical, black church and secretly has a "black rage" hidden beneath the surface.

In fact, Obama is a Christian who attended Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

Presenting her story as a declaration of the hard facts, Pickler is arguing that somehow Trinity United Church of Christ is not a "radical black church." Did she miss all the news reports on the outrageous sermons coming out of the mouth of Jeremiah Wright? Would she suggest that his statements from the pulpit are about America deserving 9/11 or AIDS being a U.S. government conspiracy are best identified as the marshmallow mainstream?

AP can easily reprint that Obama's camp calls Corsi a "fringe bigot peddling rehashed lies," but doesn't think that would define Reverend Wright. Obama wasn't attending Trinity for binges of "black rage," even though Wright was clearly peddling them.

Corsi is allowed to speak for himself, defensively, for just 21 words, in paragraph 14:

In an interview with The Associated Press, Corsi defended raising the issue of drugs without any evidence.

"I don't need more," he said. "I'm putting this question forward. I'm putting the evidence forward. Voters can make up their own minds."

That was immediately followed by the World Net Daily-mocking sentence.

Pickler protested that Corsi suggests Obama could be using drugs today (a wacky charge) "without a shred of proof," but doesn’t have the time or space to wonder whether the "objective" national media has a consistent record of asking presidential candidates about their drug use – the way that George W. Bush was hammered with cocaine questions in 1999 "without a shred of proof," while Bill Clinton was never asked a cocaine question, despite his friendship and political dealings with cocaine dealer Dan Lasater in Arkansas. More on that here, and here.

By contrast, the Obama campaign spokesman unloaded for 76 words of partisan bile in paragraph five:

"Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. "His is just one of what will likely be many more lie-filled books rushed to print this election cycle, which are cobbled together from debunked Internet sources to make money and advance a partisan agenda. We will respond to these smears forcefully with all means at our disposal."

Pickler even helpfully suggests that the Obama partisans think the book doesn't belong on the nonfiction list: "Corsi's book is off to a swift start and is No. 1 on The New York Times' hardcover nonfiction best-seller list, even though Obama's campaign would argue the book should be listed as fiction."

Please notice this latest of a media pattern: Pickler lets the Obama camp lament all the "lie-filled books," but never mentions David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama.  If that book was also "lie-filled," by AP's definition, why isn't it mentioned in this story? It's not like that book isn't a hot seller. On Amazon this morning, Corsi is number three, and Freddoso is number 12.