Posted 7:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Hey, Wait a Minute. What about Mary Matalin's Racism?
There has been a lot of talk in the news about author Jerome Corsi's bigoted statements about various groups (largely thanks to the tireless work of Media Matters for America).

Nobody has mentioned the racism of Mary Matalin, the chief editor of Corsi's publisher, Threshold Editions. During the aftermath in Florida following election day 2000, Republicans sent operatives to riot in order to stop the recount. At the same time, Jesse Jackson held entirely peaceful demonstrations of mostly African Americans, some of whom had been disenfranchised due to being falsely accused of being felons. Matalin referred to these people as "rent-a-rioters."

UPDATE: Not This Time. Eric Boehlert on why the Fox News/Swift-boating attempts are not working this time around:

But there were also key marketplace changes within the cable news industry that affected the Corsi coverage, I think. Because remember that in 2004, Fox News drove the Swift Boat saga; it was practically a co-sponsor of the anti-Kerry crusade, devoting endless hours to promoting the Vietnam-era allegations. By sheer force of repetition, Fox News, then the dominant player in cable news, forced its competitors to not only acknowledge the Swift Boat story, but to go all in as well. And soon all the cable news outlets were treating the Swift Boat saga with Fox News-like breathlessness. (CNN aired nearly 300 segments referencing the topic.)

And just like Fox, they weren't asking the tough questions. Instead, they gave the Swift Boat accusers the same free ride that Fox News did. They became media enablers, too.

Not this time around. With Fox News no longer the dominant cable news king -- and with Fox News no longer driving the campaign narratives -- its competitors opted for a much different approach to covering Corsi. And I think the coverage from the competitors sent a subtle, yet simple, message: We no longer take our cues from Fox News' lead, because they no longer dictate campaign coverage. Instead, we're going to exult in our role as a counterbalance, as a fact-checker, to the Fox News-produced Corsi attack campaign. In fact, we're gonna help pull the curtain back on Corsi.