My Amazon.com review of the just-released Birther Book "Where's the Birth Certificate?"

[scoobiedavis]

It's under the one-star reviews. The birthers are giving it a lot of negative feedback so if you have an Amazon.com account, don't hesitate to give it a thumbs-up or add a comment. Here's the review if you don't feel like clicking on the link:

Not This Time

Jerome Corsi’s book “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” published by WorldNetDaily (WND) Books, is the epitome of reptilian-brain politics—i.e., the manipulation of the primitive, fear-inducing parts of peoples’ brains by unprincipled ideologues. The book’s discredited birtherism embodies the fringe conspiratorial worldview that historian Richard Hofstadter called “the paranoid style.” This April, The Drudge Report heavily promoted Corsi’s book, leading to a number one Amazon.com sales rank weeks before its May 17 release date. The title of the book sneeringly asks about the location of President Obama’s birth certificate, suggesting that President Obama isn’t a natural-born American citizen. As luck would have it, a few days after the book hit number one, President Obama produced the document. Talk about hitting it out of the park! Corsi quickly became a national laughingstock and sales of his book plummeted. Anyone part of the Drudge-inspired wave of pre-release book-buying must feel like someone stuck with an Edsel in the 1950’s.

Despite the irrefutable evidence that President Obama was born in Hawaii, instead of scrapping Corsi’s debunked book, WorldNetDaily Books released it. This is not surprising considering that the WorldNetDaily (WND) web site and its founder previously promoted the Clinton Body Count, the crackpot theory that then-president Clinton had dozens of people murdered. Journalist Trudy Lieberman of the Columbia Journalism Review named WorldNetDaily’s founder as one of the architects of the “Vince Foster Factory,” the dirty tricks campaign by prominent right-wingers to pin Foster’s death on Bill Clinton. It’s ironic that a fundamentalist outfit like WND Books, by publishing Corsi’s paranoid conspiracy theories, unwittingly validated evolutionary psychology because of the book’s appeals to the reptilian sections of its readers’ brains.

The motives behind Corsi’s book are twofold: 1) It’s a cynical effort to scare and mobilize the Republican base by portraying the Obama presidency as illegitimate; and 2) Undiluted greed. Sales of Corsi’s book and birther merchandise have made millions for Corsi and WND. Similarly, the Clinton Body Count operation was a cash cow for WND operatives (e.g., WND columnist Jerry Falwell had a lucrative cottage industry selling VHS tapes implicating the Clintons in murder to his gullible flock at $40 a pop). To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, these pitiful episodes illustrate that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the GOP base. Corsi doesn’t seem to be concerned that the people fleeced by buying his discredited book are his fellow conservatives. Unfortunately, the people Corsi and other professional birthers played for chumps weren’t just exploited financially: Terrence Lakin, a U.S. Army doctor, was court-marshaled and imprisoned because he took birtherism seriously and refused deployment orders. Perhaps Corsi and WorldNetDaily Books could use the proceeds from their book sales to help Lakin’s impoverished family. I’m not holding my breath.

Finally, what is particularly noxious about Corsi’s book and WND’s birther crusade is the contempt these people have for democracy and for the intelligence of the American people. Rather than debate the issues, Corsi and WorldNetDaily exploit peoples’ fears and ignorance, manufacturing asinine pseudo-scandal campaigns against political opponents. In the past, despite the absurdity of their arguments, both Corsi and WorldNetDaily successfully manipulated American public opinion (with the help of the usual suspects: talk radio, Drudge, Fox News, and the Moonie-owned Washington Times). Not this time. The debunking of birtherism has led to the well-deserved marginalization of Corsi and WorldNetDaily.