Just another stunt to sell books, one suspects. From Jeff Bercovici’s blog at Forbes:
Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi have some pretty interesting beliefs. They believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not there’s no proof Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.* They also believe Hearst Corp. and a writer it employs ought to pay them hundreds of millions of dollars for making fun of them for believing that first part.
Farah, the CEO of WorldNetDaily.com, and Corsi, author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President,” have filed suit against Hearst, Esquire magazine and writer Mark Warren over a satirical article that they say defamed them and damaged their business interests. They’re seeking compensatory damages of $100 million and punitive damages of $20 million, plus legal costs. [Update: As a commenter points out, that's only for one of the five counts; the full amount sought totals more than $285 million.]
Warren published the article on May 18, 2011, just after Obama released his long-form birth certificate, answering the doubts of Corsi and other so-called birthers. An Onion-style parody, it was headlined “BREAKING! Jerome Corsi’s Birther Book Pulled From Shelves!”
As often happens with satire on the internet, the article was received my many readers (or non-reading reTweeters) as straight news, forcing Esquire to add an update “for those who didn’t figure it out yet”…
[continues at Forbes]
