BlogHer - Mary Matalin and that Obama book - Comments

Scholarship? Integrity? Bwah Bwah Ha Ha...

Gena Haskett — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:39:52 -0500

Lemme see, election year, check.
Strong democratic contender, check.
Able to speak across party affiliations, check
Looks good in a suit and can engage a crowd just by standing before it, double check.

Money and power talk and writing ethics walk. Folks are scrambling to dig up or create dirt and they don't have much more time to do it.

This isn't wacko conservatives that produced this book. These are seasoned party insiders. Matalin knew better, the Publishers have witness other books vilified after it was discovered that the facts were juiced.

But it doesn't really matter because that book is selling and will continue to sell to those folks who need to believe the lies that Fox and Talk radio lay down every day.

Gena - Out On The Stoop

Fair enough

Suzanne Reisman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:18:26 -0500

I've never respected her because I felt that even though she was not directly involved in the slimier aspects of the campaigns she worked for, she didn't object to them, either. The Swiftboat thing was utterly vile. Period.
Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Oth

Up until now, what you saw was what you got with her

Kim Pearson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 22:11:15 -0500

Hi Suzanne,

Even if you don't like Mary Matalin's politics, there was never any confusion about where she stood and what her agenda was until now. I would never have figured her to be someone who would sign her name to a project and then not stand behind it. It's pretty surprising. And I don't understand how Simon and Schuster can still distribute the book now that it has been so thoroughly debunked.

Kim
BlogHer Contributing Editor|Professor Kim|

Her reputation was already damaged

Suzanne Reisman — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:24:41 -0500

I think Matalin's reputation was already sunk by her active role in both Bush campaigns and administrations. Or at least that's how I see it. On another note, I'll never understand how that Matalin/Carville marriage works, but I guess it does demonstrate that love conquers all. I suppose that should give me hope.

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Oth

Mary Matalin and that Obama book

Kim Pearson — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:08:33 -0500

Republican pundit Mary Matalin is taking a lot of heat for her role in the publication of Jerome Corsi's widely-discredited bestselling book, The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality According to Matalin's website, she "runs" Threshold Editions, the Simon and Schuster imprint that published Obama Nation. Reportedly she told the New York Times that the book was a "work of scholarship -- and a good one at that." However. as a wide range of critics detail the book's inaccuracies and distortions, Matalin reportedly says that she had no role in the book's editing and production, and can not say whether corrections will be made in subsequent print runs. Matalin's response and Simon and Schuster's apparent silence raise serious ethical questions.

Corsi is best known as the author of Unfit for Command, another popular but controversial book that questioned 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry's military record and patriotism. "Unfit" is credited with helping to sink Kerry's presidential campaign. As the New York Times noted in an August 12 article, Corsi hopes that his current book will help Obama suffer a similar fate.

That may not happen if enough people read the fact-checking done by Corsi's critics. (Here's a 41-page detailed brief on the book. --.pdf file) Perhaps the most damaging and easily discredited claim is Corsi's charge that Obama never disclosed when or whether he "stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely..." In fact Obama said in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, that he stopped using illegal drugs in college in the early 1980s.

Matalin is best known a high-ranking political operative, television personality and wife of Democratic political strategist James Carville. She is also a former member of the campaigns and administrations of both Presidents Bush. According to the New York Times, she has been Threshold Editions' publisher for three years, building a catalogue of works by conservative authors that includes former Bush chief of staff Karl Rove. Critics say that Matalin has damaged her credibility and reputation by being associated with Corsi's book.

Here's Hillary Rosen at Huffington Post:

As the publisher you are responsible for the work and even more so when
you defend it as a "work of scholarship..." and pretend ignorance when
informed of the author's intention to use his profits in a smear
campaign against Barack Obama.

Also at HuffPo, Mayhill Fowler took issue with the facts reported about her in the book and expressed disappointment with Matalin in an open letter:

...Mary, you have let me down. How could you? Jerome Corsi? Having chosen Corsi's Obama Nation,
at least you could have done a decent job with the editing. You're old
enough to know that choices have inexorable consequences....

Digby says it doesn't matter whether Matalin was deeply involved in vetting Corsi's work -- she clearly shares his agenda:

Regardless of her official job description, that quote in the NY Times shows that she enthusiastically in the effort to put Corsi's lies into the mainstream.

Also, BlogHer community member Graceful Parenting took a satirical look at the dubious sourcing and rhetorical technique in Corsi's book.

Writing in Slate, Timothy Noah questioned whether Simon and Schuster had lower editorial standards for the books it marketed to conservative readers:

What the hell is Mary Matalin doing running a publishing imprint
in the first place? She is a professional propagandist, a political
operative who learned her craft at the feet not of Maxwell Perkins but
of Lee Atwater. Truth is not what she's about; campaigns are, and for
Matalin, The Obama Nation would appear to be just another campaign.

Regardless what one think of Matalin's suitability as a publisher, there is a real question about publishing ethics. In 1999, St. Martin's Press pulled a book that alleged that then-candidate George W. Bush had been arrested for cocaine possession after evidence surfaced that the book's author was a convicted felon who lied about his professional experience. That was the right thing to do, regardless of what one thinks of Pres. Bush. It is difficult for me to understand why Corsi's book would not merit the same treatment, given the evidence that has emerged to debunk it.

I sent an email to Matalin via the contact information on her website asking for comment about the controversy surrounding the book and her role in it. If I receive a response, I will post it.