SubscribeAnd the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by EisenstadtThe anecdote is true, or came from a real source - this guy claiming credit for it was the hoax. Right?
“A former campaign adviser to John McCain named Martin Eisenstadt has outed himself as the proud source of the ‘Sarah Palin doesn't know Africa is a continent’ story. The New Republic and MSNBC have picked up the Eisenstadt scoop.
But it's not at all clear that Eisenstadt exists. William K. Wolfrum of Shakespeare's Sister, who was suckered by Eisenstadt during the campaign, did some digging and concluded, ‘There is no M. Thomas Eisenstadt. There is no Eisenstadt Group. There is no Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. M. Thomas Eisenstadt is a hoax.’
To be clear, none of this means the Africa story is false -- just that it didn't come from this source. Huffington Post has been told on background that Martin Eisenstadt was not one of Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron's sources.
Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones writes of being tricked by Eisenstadt on another scandal:‘A few hours ago, we (okay, I) posted a blog about a man claiming to be a McCain adviser who made ridiculous comments on Iraqi television about building a casino in the Baghdad Green Zone. In addition to the inherent absurdity of it, there was a lot of arrogance, cultural insensitivity, and racism thrown in. Other blogs had posted on the guy, and when I checked him out before posting I found his blog and a foreign policy institute claiming his employ. Turns out the blog and institute, like the adviser, were an elaborate hoax. It didn't help that the guy, in creating his fictional foreign policy expert, closely mimicked the name of a real foreign policy expert.Even if he did exist, Eisenstadt doesn't appear to have been high up enough in the McCain campaign to be privy to Sarah Palin's private utterances. According to his own bio, his role in the campaign was ‘offering advice and liaising with the Jewish community in particular.’
Here's why I got taken: I received an emailed press release reporting that the supposed McCain adviser had apologized for his comments about the casino. You're welcome to disagree with me, but I had no reason to believe that someone would invent a persona, a blog, a foreign policy institution, a video with a fake Iraqi television station, a press release, and an organization or email entity to send out said press release.
But frankly, there was enough info on the web that I should have sussed this thing out. This is a long way of saying I apologize and that I'm more than a little ashamed. I've taken the post down. Kudos to the inventor of this whole thing. My only consolation is that if I had as much time on my hands as he clearly does, I probably would have figured this out and saved myself a fair amount of embarrassment.’
The New Republic has retracted its blog post; MSNBC's David Shuster very quickly admitted that ‘there may be some indications’ the story was made up.
In fairness, it should be noted that Huffington Post writers have also fallen for Eisenstadt's tricks on a couple occasions.”
That's not the correct question. Let's try the right question: What if these guys had tried a similar hoax which made Obama look bad instead of making Palin looking bad. Think that the media would have accepted it as readily, and spread it as far and fast, as they did this one?Something about an Indonesian Madrassa comes to mind...
These guys just come off as dicks to me. What was the point of this Hoax, none of it is really funny. The prank call to Palin was different because it was so over the top and actually had good jokes in it. Plus they admitted it was a Prank right away.Yeah because joking about having just watched a porno based on the life of the person you're speaking to is such a classy thing to do.
To repeat for emphasis: That an anonymous McCain campaign person said that Palin didn't even know Africa was a continent is not a hoax.My, how meta.
It IS credible. It's TRUE. Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country. It is NOT a hoax. More specifically, she thought South Africa was just part of a country, not it's own separate country.No, what's true is that someone in the McCain campaign made a claim like that. We don't know exactly what was said, or even have any idea what was said, so we can't be sure what she knew or didn't know. My guess is that she just thought South Africa was a region in Africa, like North Africa is a region in Africa.
Prime Minister of New Zealand trampled by angry sheep?Oh, please let that one be true!
Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name [Matin Eisenstadt] because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”I know, Martin Luther, Martin Niemöller and all that (and Martin Luther King), but "Martin" has always seemed kinda Jewey: Martin Buber.
“If there are allegations based on questions or comments I made in debate prep about Nafta — about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there — then those were taken out of context. And that’s cruel, it’s mean-spirited, it’s immature, it’s unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away with it taking things out of context, then tried to spread something on national news,” Ms. Palin said.Her line "The continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there" makes it pretty clear to me that Eisenstadt didn't so much make up things from whole cloth as guess lucky. And that, even worse, she still doesn't know or care.
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posted by awfurby at 6:48 PM on November 12, 2008 [3 favorites]