As the junkies may remember, in the days just after the defeat of the McCain-Palin ticket a man named Martin Eisenstadt turned up and claimed to have been an advisor to the campaign and the anonymous source of Fox’s Carl Cameron’s reporting that Palin did not know the signatories to NAFTA, nor that Africa was a country, and not a continent.
And then it was revealed that Eisenstadt was not the source of the claims, because he was actually the creation of two filmmakers engaged in a long running and pretty elaborate hoax. (Cameron and FOX never retracted their original reporting, which he said he learned before the close of the campaign, presumably from sources who actually existed. Palin friend Bill Kristol later confirmed that the assertions had some basis in fact, though he offered much more benign context than Cameron–or his sources–did.)
Now, about one year later, this non-person is releasing “I Am Martin Eisenstadt” a winking campaign memoir. I can’t vouch for the comedic value of the book, but I assure you the accompanying promotional video is very, very, clever and well worth the watch.
Clint Hendler is the managing editor of Mother Jones, and a former deputy editor of CJR.