Obama campaign takes on new book

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- Barack Obama's U.S. presidential campaign has released a 41-page rebuttal of a best-selling book by a man the campaign calls "a discredited fringe bigot."

Jerome Corsi's "The Obama Nation" soared to the top spot on The New York Times best-seller list immediately, the newspaper said. In 2004, Corsi wrote "Unfit for Command," a book attacking the Democratic nominee, U.S. Sen. John Kerry.

The file on the Obama campaign's Web site, "Fight The Smears," is titled "Unfit for Publication." It is dressed up to look like a book, with a title page bearing Corsi's picture and a table of contents.

"This is a man who smears the Catholic Church, calls the Pope "senile," and regularly demeans public servants in vile sexual and racial terms," the report said.

The campaign said that Corsi gets even neutral facts wrong, like misstating the year that Obama married his wife, Michelle.

While Republican operative Mary Matalin, who runs the conservative imprint that published Corsi's book, calls it a work of scholarship, most reviewers have describe it as full of half-truths and downright lies, the Obama camp said.