From Eugene Robinson's column in the Washington Post:

Here come the goons, right on schedule.

The "author," and I use the term loosely, whose vicious lies damaged John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign has crawled back out from under his rock to spew vicious lies about Barack Obama. Right-wing radio talk-show hosts are dutifully transmitting this concocted venom. This presidential campaign has officially gotten ugly.


Mr. Robinson finds himself livid at the prospect of right-wing hoodlums coarsening the political discourse in America and, presumably, contributing to the decline of civility in campaign polemics.

Of course, along the way Robinson describes Jerome Corsi, author of the 2004 attack on John Kerry, Unfit to Command, and the recently published Obama Nation, as a "paranoid and delusional" right-wing blogger, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim, cog in the "right-wing smear machine."

So much for measured tones.

If Mr. Robinson's point was that we should be more judicious in the way we talk to one another, the lesson seems lost somehow in translation. Actually, the thrust of the Robinson piece is clear: lay off my anointed candidate, Barack "say his middle name and you're a racist" Obama.

Granted, Eugene Robinson is not the most incisive thinker of his generation--but his breathless screed against screeds is actually fairly emblematic of the recent spate of angry rejoinders from the prObama political pundits.

The general refrain against Corsi is Al Franken-esque: "lies and the lying liar who tells them."

I do not write in defense of Jerome Corsi. I do not know Jerome Corsi. I have never read a book by Jerome Corsi (nor do I intend to start with this one). However, I keep reading these articles asserting that Corsi traffics in inaccuracies and innuendos, waiting for the specifics--but, ironically, they never seem to arrive.

Beneath all the sound and fury, Robinson (like many others I have read) objects to two main Obama Nation assertions.

Robinson (1):

Corsi's new volume of vitriol...seeks to smear Obama as a "leftist" and add fuel to the false and discredited rumor that he is secretly a radical Muslim, or at least has "extensive connections to Islam."

Note: I am not counting "leftist." Robinson throws that label (in quotes) out there and abandons it as a line of argument. Dictionary.com defines leftist as "a member of the political Left or a person sympathetic to its views." Sure, at one time, "leftist" clearly meant socialist. On the other hand, I am not sure that under the evolving definition of leftist, even Obama would disagree with the characterization.

If Corsi actually accuses Obama of being "secretly a radical Muslim," I cannot find that phrase in any of the articles taking him to task. The closest construction seems to be the line Robinson quotes: "extensive connections to Islam."

Barack Obama was born Muslim (to a Muslim father). He briefly attended an Islamic school as a youth. He then tried desperately to find himself within the context of his African-Muslim family.

Technically speaking, those connections to Islam are arguably quite extensive.

Does that mean Obama is a Muslim Manchurian Candidate? I personally am convinced that he is not. I am personally 100 percent convinced that Barack Obama came to Christ and is a practicing Christian, just as he claims to be.

However, does that mean his "extensive connections to Islam" are off limits to voters, reporters, and political opponents? That sounds pretty restrictive.

Robinson (2):

Corsi repeats the charge, thoroughly disproved, that Obama was in church for one of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's most incendiary sermons.

Thoroughly disproved by whom? But, more importantly, so what? Obama worshipped at Trinity under the pastoral care of Reverend Wright for twenty years. Implying that Obama missed the service where Wright offered some specifically egregiously offensive and somehow out of character statement strains our credulity. Is Robinson really positing that Obama was somehow ignorant of the real Jeremiah Wright?

This line of argument is much more disingenuous than the "insinuations" to which Robinson objects.

I can find the calumny and the overheated righteous indignation in these condemnations of Corsi, but where are the purported lies?