Esquire claims best-seller being disavowed by publisher, 'pulled from shelves' A major national publication that endorsed Barack Obama for president in 2008 today published a completely fabricated news story claiming Jerome Corsi's new best-selling "Where's the Birth Certificate," published by WND Books, has been disavowed by the publisher and taken out of stores nationwide, with refunds offered to purchasers. Esquire, established in 1932, alleged on its website today under a "BREAKING" headline that Corsi's book was "pulled from shelves!" Media are calling WND from around the world about the false report. WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah confirmed he never spoke to Esquire. "Never uttered these words or anything remotely resembling them to anyone," he said. "It is a complete fabrication." Farah said, "The book is selling briskly. I am 100 percent behind it. This has all the earmarkings of a White House dirty trick â but, of course, only the Nixon administration was capable of dirty tricks like that, according to our watchdog media." The Esquire "report": http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=300301 :eek:
Dude, it was a joke: "UPDATE, 12:25 p.m., for those who didn't figure it out yet, and the many on Twitter for whom it took a while: We committed satire this morning to point out the problems with selling and marketing a book that has had its core premise and reason to exist gutted by the news cycle, several weeks in advance of publication. Are its author and publisher chastened? Well, no. They double down, and accuse the President of the United States of perpetrating a fraud on the world by having released a forged birth certificate. Not because this claim is in any way based on reality, but to hold their terribly gullible audience captive to their lies, and to sell books. This is despicable, and deserves only ridicule. That's why we committed satire in the matter of the Corsi book. Hell, even the president has a sense of humor about it all. Some more serious reporting from us on this whole "birther" phenomenon here, here, and here." http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/jerome-corsi-birther-book- 5765410#ixzz1MjhkLRcI Seneca
Sounds like they are going to get sued over the story. You can't just print a bunch of lies about someone or their business without making it very clear in the story that you are making it up.
"Friend -- Let me introduce you to Jerome Corsi. This week he released a new book that the publisher says will be a bestseller "of historic proportions." The title is "Where's the Birth Certificate?" -- yes, really. Corsi's work is a greatest-hits reel of delusions, ranging from 9/11 conspiracies to claiming that there is an infinite supply of oil in the Earth's core. In 2008, he published a book about Barack Obama claiming, among other things, that he (a) is a secret Muslim; (b) is secretly anti-military; (c) secretly dealt drugs; and (d) secretly supported terrorist actions when he was eight years old. So many secrets! FactCheck.org called Corsi's work "a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies and outright falsehoods." There's really no way to make this stuff completely go away. The only thing we can do is laugh at it -- and make sure as many other people as possible are in on the joke. So let's just do this -- get your Obama birth certificate mug here: Last year, the President said, "I can't spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." This is about as close as we can get. If the facts can't make these ridiculous smears go away, we can at least have a little fun with it. And then we'll get back to the important work of supporting the President as he tackles real problems like high gas prices, the deficit, and unemployment. Thanks, Julianna Julianna Smoot Deputy Campaign Manager Obama for America P.S. -- Mug not your thing? How about a T-shirt? "
Dear Esquire, Don't feed the trolls. Oth, a lawsuit against Esquire should keep this issue front and center for quite some time.