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Corsi Cancels Second 'Political Cesspool' Appearance

Right-wing propagandist Jerome Corsi backed out of his scheduled appearance on the white supremacist radio show, “The Political Cesspool,” last night only five minutes before he was supposed to go on, according to the show’s host James Edwards.

Just before 5 p.m. CST, Edwards came on the air following a commercial break to announce that Corsi had just E-mailed to cancel his scheduled hour-long interview due to “travel plans that changed.”

Edwards sounded skeptical of Corsi’s explanation, and with good reason. Last week Corsi was at the center of a media firestorm concerning the multitude of inaccuracies, distortions and outright lies in his new book The Obama Nation, as well his scheduled appearance on last night’s “Cesspool,” which was first reported by Hatewatch on Aug. 13.

That night, during his appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” Corsi reiterated his past apologies for a series of bigoted and hateful blog posts he wrote in the years spanning 2001-2004.

But if Corsi was trying to salvage his reputation by not appearing on the “Cesspool” last night, he was probably too late. As Hatewatch also first reported last week, Corsi had previously appeared on the racist, anti-Semitic radio show on July 20. His interview was streamed live on the Internet by the white nationalist website Stormfront, which is run by a former Klan leader.

Yesterday’s edition of the “Cesspool” was a rough outing for Edwards. Not only did his marquee guest ditch him at the last minute, but also his warm-up act — United Kingdom Independence Party Chairman Nigel Farage, who didn’t answer the phone when Edwards called.

Edwards was reduced to dialing up emergency back-up interviewee Sam Dickson, a former Klan lawyer, who delivered a meandering soliloquy about Jewish control of American foreign policy for the bulk of the show.

Edwards sounded unusually defensive throughout his most recent broadcast, repeatedly taking issue with the previous week’s widespread characterizations of his show as racist and anti-Semitic. “We’re a mainstream voice for European-Americans,” he said. “We’re the show of record for the paleo-conservative right,” not a bunch of “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals.”

“We don’t malign any racial groups on this program,” he said. “We conduct ourselves as gentlemen.”

But on Aug. 14, the day after the Corsi furor began dragging his show into the harsh spotlight of mainstream media scrutiny for the first time, Edwards had this to say on the topic of models in the fashion industry: “As everyone knows, white women are by far the most beautiful women. And when it comes to looks, black women are at the bottom of the totem pole. It’s simply an undeniable fact.”

How gentlemanly.

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