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My sister called me the other day and told me about a new book she read, Obama Nation by Jerome R. Corsi. She said it is well researched with lots of footnotes and it filled in a lot of the blanks for her, it confirmed doubts she had about Barack Obama. She knew I was a Barack Obama supporter and she wanted to know what I thought.
I love my sister for asking me this way. She genuinely wanted to know my opinion and was willing to listen instead of just telling me I'm an idiot, which is how political debate goes with the pundits and on blogs these days. I looked into it and my sister and I emailed about it back and forth. I told my sister I think this book is a classic smear campaign book. I pointed out a few smear campaign tactics used by Corsi...
1. Claim to be an objective investigative journalist at the same time you say there is a specific political purpose for the book, like keeping Barack Obama from becoming president.
2. Use footnotes and references to add credibility and objectivity, even if you are referencing sources that aren't objective like right-wing blogs and interviews with a selected sub-set of the people involved.
3. Start with the truth, a fragment of something that happened that can be verified, then add your own interpretations, like Barack Obama attending a public Muslim school in Indonesia as a boy means he is a closet Muslim now.
3. Present suggestive questions. These are easy because you don't have to prove anything, since you are only asking a question, like "Did Barack Obama do drugs in the Senate?"
This kind of list got me to thinking that using these tactics, no one is safe. You could make a pretty good case that I am a a schizophrenic, a wanna-be-polygomist, a bad parent and a baby-killer from reading my blog posts alone. So, what would it look like if Corsi took his tactics and applied them to someone we think is untouchable? What if he wrote about Mother Teresa? I think it would look something like this...
Let me begin by saying that I am an objective investigative journalist who is presenting the facts, with many references and footnotes, which is proof in itself of this story’s deep and lasting truth(1). I don’t need to defend each individual claim, because I am merely stating the facts as suggestions and possibilities for the American people to make up their own mind. Yes, I have said that the purpose of this book is to keep Mother Teresa from ever gaining Sainthood, a calamity of monstrous proportions that would destroy America, but let me reassure the reader that this in no way affected my objective investigative journalism.
Let’s begin with Mother Teresa’s supposed Christianity. Mother Teresa expert and extensive researcher Tayna Rice, author of "The Life and Times of Mother Teresa", writes that as a sister, Sister Teresa requested secularization not once, but twice, first from Mother General of Lorento in Dublin (2) and a second time from Rome (3). Why would a woman who claims to be Christian ask in formal documents to religious leaders to become secularized, when secular means to be a person with no religious or spiritual basis (4)? She could claim to be Christian (5), which would help with her own personal agenda of helping the poor (6), but this claim can hardly be trusted.
A second key component of Mother Teresa’s own personal agenda is her liberal and radical activism focused on perusing awards for herself as evidenced by her Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian honor) in 1980, (7), her Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 (8) and her Beautification by Pope John Paul II in 2007(9)(10). She continually fought for redistribution of wealth, taking money from people who had earned it to give to people who didn’t work or even get out of bed on a regular basis (11). This type of “community organizing” is a direct affront to capitalism and a serious threat to democracy.
In addition to her lack of faith and her relentless pursuit of her own agenda, Mother Teresa can’t be trusted. What is most interesting in the books about Mother Teresa is what has been left out. For example, she never stated whether or not she did drugs, either as a young girl, as a nun or even as a leader of the Missionaries of Charity. I have interviewed many people
