[Marxism] A fake fake

[Louis Proyect]

Counterpunch Weekend Edition
November 14 / 16, 2008
A Real Life Example of a "Fake Fake"
The Eisenstadt Hoax

By SHELDON RAMPTON

There is a minor controversy bouncing around right now on the internet, 
and I'd like to do what I can to set the story straight. The controversy 
involves two incidents:

    1. The day after the U.S. presidential election, Fox News reporter 
Carl Cameron gave an interview with Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly. 
During the interview, Cameron said that McCain's advisors had told him 
about their unhappiness with Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential running 
mate. Citing anonymous sources within the McCain campaign, Cameron 
recited a litany of complaints, including their claim that Palin was so 
ignorant she didn't know Africa was a continent.

    2. A blogger who calls himself "Martin Eisenstadt" stated a few days 
ago that he was the anonymous source for Cameron's story. Earlier today, 
however, the New York Times reported that "Martin Eisenstadt doesn't 
exist. His blog does, but it's a put-on. The think tank where he is a 
senior fellow -- the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy -- is 
just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes. And the claim 
of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, 
who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for 
months."

Dumber than Plumber

As the New York Times noted near the bottom of its story exposing Martin 
Eisenstadt, we were among the first people to label Eisenstadt a hoax 
several months ago, in our SourceWatch article about him. The main 
credit for exposing the hoax, however, properly belongs to blogger 
William K. Wolfum, who became incensed after discovering that he had 
been duped in one of Eisenstadt's earlier ruses and doggedly set about 
investigating and dissecting the network of online pseudonyms and 
websites through which Eisenstadt created his false identity. It was 
Wolfum who first called the hoax to our attention, for which we are 
grateful.

Last month, I exposed one of Eisenstadt's previous hoaxes, in which he 
attempted to promote a smear aimed at Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher ("Joe the 
plumber"), whose verbal confrontation with Barack Obama had become the 
centerpiece of the McCain campaign's effort to paint Obama as a 
socialist who wants to raise everyone's taxes. Eisenstadt falsely 
claimed that Wurzelbacher had hidden connections to both the McCain 
campaign and to "Charles Keating of the Keating 5 scandal." Some liberal 
bloggers actually fell for this fabrication and repeated it for a day or 
two before realizing they had been snookered. In exposing the hoax, I 
stated then that, "In all likelihood, 'Martin Eisenstadt' is some kind 
of leftist prankster who sees his hoax as a satire."

The New York Times story revealed that the Eisenstadt hoax is the work 
of two people, filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin. After the Times 
story appeared, they have given interviews to Variety magazine, 
MediaBistro.com and BBC, in which they confirmed that their intent was 
social satire and discussed the details of their fabrication. Mirvish 
explained that Carl Cameron's story about Sarah Palin and Africa "was 
kind of put out there a few days after the election. ... We had 
established this ... hoax character of Martin Eisenstadt as a McCain 
advisor, specifically on foreign policy issues. Well, it was like a 
giant volleyball that had been just tossed up for us to play. So we just 
said, well okay, we'll take credit for it. Yeah, sure, we were the ones 
who told Fox News that Sarah didn't know where Africa was."

"Can I just clarify?" the interviewer asked. "So, your hoax blogger, 
Martin Eisenstadt and this supposed McCain policy advisor, he wasn't 
responsible for this story. As in, the story exists, it may well be 
entirely genuine."

"Exactly," Mirvish replied. "Yes. It's completely absurd, but it may 
actually be true."

The Fake Fake

Having watched the Eisenstadt hoax unfold, I have to say that I think 
the hoaxsters have been profoundly unethical. I don't lack a sense of 
humor, and I see the point that they are trying to make about the 
media's willingness to report (and the public's willingness to believe) 
unverified falsehoods. In the past, there have been a few satirical 
hoaxes that I actually found genuinely entertaining. American prankster 
Joey Skaggs, for example, has perpetrated a number of clever pranks on 
the media. In one memorable prank, he got ABC to run with a story on an 
a supposed dog brothel that he advertised as a "cathouse for dogs." In 
another, conducted during the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995, Skaggs 
got a number of reporters to bite when he posed as a computer scientist 
with a program that could analyze video footage of accused criminals and 
determine whether they were guilty.

Critical differences, however, distinguish Skaggs and his light-hearted 
spoofs from the hoax perpetrated by Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin. In the 
end, Skaggs has made sure to let everyone in on his jokes. This has not 
been the case with the Eisenstadt hoax. It continues even now on its 
website, even after it has been exposed in the pages of the New York 
Times. The Eisenstadt hoax has been ongoing now for more than six months 
and has injected a significant amount of noise and confusion into 
American political discourse -- confusion that is obvious in the number 
of people who still misunderstood basic facts about the hoax, even after 
it has been repeatedly exposed.

Some people -- conservative bloggers in particular -- have seemed 
especially quick to jump on the hoax as proof that Sarah Palin is an 
unfairly maligned victim, writing opinion pieces complaining about 
"Journalistic Recklessness." A few, more traditional news outlets, have 
reached similar mistaken conclusions. The Chicago Tribune's Frank James, 
for example, responded to the the Times story by writing that "Sarah 
Palin deserves an apology. To his credit, James later retracted his 
statement, writing that "Cameron ... and Fox apparently deserve an 
apology from me for what I wrote earlier."

Even some reviewers at NewsTrust, a website devoted to evaluating the 
quality of news stories, seem to have gotten confused. NewsTrust 
reviewer Michael Bugeja is a director of the Greenlee School of 
Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University of Science and 
Technology who says he has "researched media hoaxes for 20 years." He 
responded to the New York Times expos&eacute of the Eisenstadt hoax by 
writing, "The Palin/Africa tidbit and its symbolism about 
President-Elect Obama's heritage is a prime example of what the online 
society will believe in a platform that will affirm any belief, however 
ridiculous."

Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick is reported to have coined the 
concept of a "fake fake" -- an authentic object that has been made to 
look as though it is in fact non-genuine. The Eisenstadt hoax has 
actually turned Carl Cameron's story about Sarah Palin into a real-world 
"fake fake." In the process, it has created a great deal of empty, 
pointless noise and confusion.

It may well be true, as the Columbia Journalism Review observed 
recently, that "the press still seems ridiculously preoccupied with 
Palin (and ridiculously not preoccupied with vice-president-elect 
Biden). ... Palin's current news value is largely based on her 
entertainment value" rather than because of "anything that's very 
politically relevant." Carl Cameron's report about her alleged problem 
with Africa is certainly an example of this -- a story that barely 
matters with regard to any important issue of the day. However, there is 
still something disturbing at seeing how easily the Eisenstadt hoax has 
succeeded in attaching itself to the story and unfairly calling its 
accuracy into question.
For anyone who has not yet figured this out yet, here's the story in a 
nutshell:

The hoax in this case is Eisenstadt's claim that he was the source for 
Carl Cameron's report on Fox News. Cameron never spoke to Eisenstadt and 
did not use Eisenstadt as the basis for his reporting.
Got it? If you're still confused, read the above paragraph a second 
time, or a third time if you need it. If you still have any doubts, read 
the New York Times story carefully. Its wording is a little less clear 
than it ought to be, but it also makes the point I just emphasized. Carl 
Cameron is standing by his story, and apparently Sarah Palin really was 
confused about Africa.

Sheldon Rampton is a reseracher at the Center for Media and Democracy 
(where this essay originally appeared) and co-author of two books about 
the war: Iraq: Weapons of Mass Deception and The Best War Ever.