CHEAT SHEET
TOP 10 RIGHT NOW
When MSNBC reported Monday that the anonymous McCain aide who said Palin didn’t know Africa was a continent had outed himself, a number of bloggers rushed to post the news. Juicy stuff, except Martin Eisenstadt didn’t work for McCain—he isn’t even a real person, The New York Times reports. The man, his blog, and his think tank, the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy, are all fakes dreamed up by Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish, two obscure filmmakers. The pair said they created the hoax to help them sell a TV show based on Eisenstadt, who “was no more of a joke,” they argued, “than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.”