Corsi's publisher unscathed

Largely staying out of the controversy around Jerome Corsi's book has been his publisher, Simon & Schuster, whose Threshold imprint is run by GOP operative Mary Matalin . The house doesn't seem to have suffered any collateral damage, or provoked public complaints from any of its prominent liberal authors -- largely because the Obama campaign has chosen to drive the outrage toward Corsi himself and, when possible, toward McCain.

A series of Simon & Schuster authors -- including Michael Moore and Alexandra Pelosi-- didn't respond to questions about Corsi's book yesterday.

A couple, however, did, including Senator Hillary Clinton.

"Threshold has absolutely nothing to do with the people at Simon & Schuster who have published her books," said Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines. "As for the book itself, I guess if at first you don't succeed, lie lie again."

Paul Begala, who also has a book coming out from a different unit of Simon & Schuster, emailed:

Mr. Corsi deserves a thorough de-lousing. His lies about John Kerry, his smears of Pope John Paul the Great and his sleazy attacks on Barack Obama are the unholy trinity of slime. I can assure you the folks at Threshold have had nothing to do with my upcoming book on John McCain, which, unlike Mr. Corsi's work, is 100% factual.

In a similar situation in 2005, Al Franken vocally criticized his publisher, Penguin, for publishing Ed Klein's "The Truth About Hillary."

CORRECTION: I'd initially written that Begala didn't respond to a question about Simon & Schuster. In fact, I initially managed to mis-send the email to him. His response is above.

UPDATE: A reader points out that Reines isn't, strictly speaking, correct: According to the company's press release, Threshold is managed by David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster and Clinton's publisher.