Outside the Beltway

Just When You Thought Birtherism was Dead…

Steven L. Taylor · Tuesday, May 31, 2011 · 5 comments

A new book, now number six on the New York Times’ Best Sellers list, is putting the so-called "birther" issue back on the national stage.

"Where’s the Birth Certificate?" by Jerome Corsi, which debuted on the listout Sunday, argues President Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen and therefore cannot be president.
"Corsi demonstrates conclusively that no legal authority has ever verified Obama’s legal eligibility to be president," the book reads.

I get the notion that once you’ve written the book, you are going to release it regardless of the fact that the answer to the title question is: it has now been released twice in two different formats.

That anyone takes Corsi seriously is quite the mystery to me (although I know we have resident commenters who do).

FILED UNDER: US Politics, CNN, New York, New York Times

About Steven L. Taylor

Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

Doug Mataconis says:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 10:48

Keep in mind that these political books often end up on bestsellers lists because someone somewhere has been buying in bulk
Kit says:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 11:01

IRT to Doug: Or lots of someones. NYT Best Seller list counts both retail and wholesale sales of books, as opposed to Amazon who only does retail sales. The book’s numbers are a lot less impressive when you take out groups like WND and other sites of similar political persuasions buying 20,000 books at substantially less than retail and then reselling at substantially less than retail over the course of a year or four. If that many people had gone out to their local book store and bought copies of the book, I’d be both impressed and dismayed by its popularity.
Steven L. Taylor says:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 11:03

Granted, it isn’t in the top 25 at Amazon, but at the moment it is at #131, which ain’t bad.
Kit says:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 11:26

Steven, that would explain why I couldn’t find it… I gave up after 100. For a new release political book, I can’t say I’m surprised by 131, but even that isn’t particularly impressive – he’s being beaten by Preschool Basics and is still being outsold by The Girl Who Played With Fire, which has been on the list for well over a year and ought to be reaching some market saturation already.
Neil Hudelson says:

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 at 15:11

Thankfully at OTB it seems most of the birther commentors have largely disappeared.