But are the people who need to be reached going to read it?

There's no denying that the netroots and blogs have had an effect on the political system in this country. Hillary Clinton knows that better than anyone. But I think we overestimate the power of the Web at our peril, because most Americans still get their news from newspapers, magazines, and television news, not from Web sites or bloggers.

It's admirable and commendable that Truth Fights Back exists, but how many people who receive copies of Jerome Corsi's book from their wingnut friends, or hear about it at the hair salon, or get e-mail excerpts from those same wingnut friends, are going to bother to find out if the claims are true?

"It's got footnotes!", their friend will say. "I read it in a book...that was written...by a guy who writes books." (h/t)

Well, as Eric Burns noted last night on Countdown, most of who Corsi cites is, well, Corsi:

But do you think that's going to matter one bit to people who are looking for any reason to NOT vote for Obama so that they don't have to admit it's about "Can't you see that that man is a ni--"?

It's all well and good for the Obama campaign to issue a 40-page rebuttal, but do you honestly think that people whose brains are so simple that they think Obama isn't a patriot because he used to not wear a cheap Chinese-made flag pin are going to plow through 40 pages of "Oh no he di'int!"?

I don't know what the answer is. I don't know how you fight back when there appears to be a loose conspiracy among the media companies in this country to do whatever is necessary to damage Barack Obama while givng John McCain a free pass. But to think that posting a 40-page rebuttal on a web site is going to somehow counteract the combined muscle of Viacom, General Electric, Disney, Time-Warner, and News Corporation is hopelessly naïve.