Several of the bookÂ’s accusations, in fact, are unsubstantiated, misleading or inaccurate.
- For instance, Mr. Corsi writes that Mr. Obama had “yet to answer” whether he “stopped using marijuana and cocaine completely in college, or whether his drug usage extended to his law school days or beyond.” “How about in the
U.S. Senate?” Mr. Corsi asks.
But Mr. Obama, who admitted to occasional marijuana and cocaine use in his high school and early college years, wrote in his memoir that he had “stopped getting high” when he moved to New York in the early 1980s. And in 2003 The State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill., quoted him responding to a question of his drug use by saying, “I haven’t done anything since I was 20 years old.”
- In exploring Mr. ObamaÂ’s denials that he had been present for the more incendiary sermons of his former pastor, the
Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., Mr. Corsi cites a report on the conservative Web site
NewsMax.com that Mr. Obama had attended a sermon on July 22, 2007, in which Mr. Wright blamed “the ‘white arrogance’ of America’s Caucasian majority for the world’s suffering, especially the oppression of blacks.”
Mr. Obama, however, was giving a speech in Florida that afternoon, and his campaign reported he had not attended Mr. WrightÂ’s church that day.
- Mr. Corsi described most of the critiques of his book as “nitpicking,” like a contradiction of his claim that Mr. Obama had failed to dedicate his book “Dreams of My Father” to his family; Mr. Obama dedicated the book to several family members, in the introduction.