Sometimes Corsi Needed A Little Help With His Sources
To help understand the utter contempt in which Jerome “Jerry” Corsi holds his readers, it may be useful to first look at the 1957 film, A Face in the Crowd, starring Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau. It was directed by Elia Kazan and based on Budd Schulbergs’ short story “Your Arkansas Traveler”.
Wiki says:
In late 1950s America, a drunken drifter, Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith), is plucked out of a rural Arkansas jail by Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) to sing on a radio show at station KGRK. His raw voice, folksy humor and personal charm bring about a strong local following, and he lands a television show in Memphis, Tennessee under the stage name “Lonesome” Rhodes, given to him on a whim by Jeffries. With the support of the show’s staff writer Mel Miller (Walter Matthau) and Jeffries, the charismatic Rhodes ad libs his way to Memphis area popularity.
Rhodes ultimately rises to great fame and influence on national television. The sponsor of this show is Vitajex, an energy supplement which he ingeniously pitches as a Viagra-type yellow pill. Rhodes’s fame, influence and ego balloon.
The sponsor’s CEO introduces Rhodes to a senator whose presidential campaign is faltering. Under Rhodes’s tutelage as media coach, the Senator gains the lead in national polls. But Rhodes’s life begins to unravel as his amoral dealings with the people closest to him have placed his career trajectory on a collision course with their festering wounds.
Miller tells Jeffries he’s written an exposé about Rhodes, entitled, “Demagogue in Denim”, and he has just found a publisher. The final blow is delivered by the one who has loved Rhodes the most and been most injured by his selfishness: Marcia Jeffries. At the end of one of Rhodes’s shows, the engineer cuts the microphone and leaves Jeffries alone in the control booth while the show’s credits roll. Millions of viewers watch (in what initially is silence) their hero Rhodes smiling and seeming to chat amiably with the rest of the cast. In truth, he’s on a vitriolic rant about the stupidity of his audience. In the broadcast booth, Jeffries reactivates his microphone, sending his words and laughter over the air live. A sequence of television viewers is shown to react to Rhodes’s description of them all as “idiots, morons, and guinea pigs.“
This complete contempt for one’s audience is what shines through in Corsi’s latest story in World Net Daily. Get a load of these excerpts:
She [Bettina Viviano]claimed, however, that Bill Clinton’s intention to unequivocally state to the public that Obama was ineligible was stopped in its tracks by the murder of a close friend of the Clintons, Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney, just two weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Denver.
Gwatney was killed Aug. 13, 2008, when a 50-year-old man entered Democratic Party headquarters in Little Rock and shot him three times. Police killed the murderer after a chase, and investigators found no motive.
The Clintons said in a statement that they were “stunned and shaken” by the killing of their “cherished friend and confidante.”
Viviano said a campaign staffer who was close to Hillary, whose name she requested be withheld for security reasons, told her Gwatney’s murder was a message to Bill Clinton.
“I was told by this person that that was ‘Shutupsville, or you’re next,’” she said.
The campaign adviser, according to Viviano, said that despite the intimidation and threats, Bill Clinton was prepared to speak out about Obama’s eligibility
“And then,” Viviano said, paraphrasing the staffer, “they went in and said, ‘OK, it’s your daughter, now, we’ll go after.’
“And then Bill never said anything.”
Here is the link to the full story, which is fascinating in its degree of baseless speculation:
Let’s look at some of the the unsubstantiated rumors:
1. Bill Clinton’s intended to unequivocally state to the public that Obama was ineligible.
2. Clinton’s close friend, Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney, was murdered to intimidate Clinton.
3. When this didn’t work, Clinton’s daughter was threatened.
4. That threat worked, and Clinton kept quiet about Obama’s ineligibility.
What is the proof for any of this???
. . . a campaign staffer who was close to Hillary, whose name she requested be withheld for security reasons, told her [Bettina Viviano] Gwatney’s murder was a message to Bill Clinton.
Yes, that is right. To claim that Obama’s campaign had a prominent person murdered, and used the murder to intimidate a former President of the United States, and then added to that by threatening the former President’s daughter, we have some hearsay evidence from an un-named staffer. And, besides the WND audience, who was dumb enough to believe this story??? Why Bettina Viviano, of course, the same person who Corsi relies on for the “Bill Clinton said Obama was ineligible” story.
Isn’t Corsi supposed to be an investigative reporter??? Did he try to do any research at all on any of this??? Did he try to confirm any of this??? Did he report on the murderer, and whether the murderer had any connection to the Obama campaign??? Did he try to talk to the un-named source and see whether or not he or she seemed credible??? Corsi obviously has the ability to focus on small details like these. My goodness, he fell right off into all the details of busted 1980 post office dating stamps.
And it is not like he has to travel across the country, to Arkansas, to ascertain some details about the murderer. It’s right there on the Internet!!! Like the fact that the murderer was having some personal problems:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-14-arkansas-gunman_N.htm
After Johnson was killed in a shootout with police, officers found two guns in his pickup. Court documents show officers searching Johnson’s home found 13 long guns, a pistol and a prescription antidepressant. Police also found a computer there and were going through it, Hastings said.
If something troubled Johnson, his neighbors couldn’t tell. The only hint came the day before the shooting, when Liles’ husband saw a paper target set up in the backyard. They dismissed it as practice for the upcoming bow hunting season in Arkansas.
Johnson was a member of the Cleburne County Shooting Club. Ken Buster, a former club secretary, said Johnson was quiet and that he never heard him talk politics. Buster described Johnson as “average to subaverage” with a gun.
“He would never impress anybody with his shooting skills,” Buster said.
Gee, a 50 year old white guy, who worked the night shift at Target, had 16 guns, belongs to a shooting club, and goes hunting. Sounds like a typical Obama hitman to me. NOT. But the real point is, none of this is in Corsi’s story. And nothing to confirm or even research the alleged Bill Clinton belief that Obama was ineligible. But, you know, something even bigger is missing from Corsi’s story – perspective and common sense.
Look at the date of Bill Gwatney’s murder – August 13, 2008, about 2 weeks before the Democratic National Convention. Remember Hillary Clinton announced she was running for President on January 20, 2007. Obama announced his candidacy on February 10, 2007. Corsi would have you believe that Hillary Clinton went through 18 months of campaigning after Obama announced he was running before the issue of his eligibility was going to come up.
Eighteen months, and over a $100 million in campaign costs??? Eighteen months and a bitter intra-party struggle, and Hillary Clinton didn’t bring up eligibility issues during all that time, but a few weeks before the convention, then – the time was ripe??? Laughable.
Here is what Corsi thinks of his readers:
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
