By Debbie Schlussel
*** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ***
When I was a teen and worked as a summer intern on Capitol Hill, there was a fellow intern, Eitan Gorlin, who worked for Jack Kemp. An Orthodox Jew, Eitan was an extremely good-looking guy on his way to becoming a rabbi.
Instead, he became a liberal. Eitan lost his looks, his religion, and his principles (assuming he had any in the first place, didn’t know him well, other than “hello” and “good-bye”). He made a disgusting anti-Israel movie–funded by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Gorlin–that had a brief, failed run at arthouse movie theaters.
Since his career as a liberal, self-hating Jewish filmmaker didn’t work out (Hollywood already has so many of those), Eitan re-invented himself as a fake John McCain campaign advisor, Martin Eisenstadt, of the fictional Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy, complete with a sort of legitimate looking fake think tank website.

I was on “Marty,” er . . . Eitan’s e-mail list, and a target of at least one attack on “Marty’s” blog, when he defended Meghan McCain’s keffiyeh fashion accessories. And I responded to “his” e-mails a few times. And though I was sort of convinced of this Eisenstadt fellow, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking he looked and sounded familiar (like Eitan), and something wasn’t right. So I never quoted or linked to him on my site. Other very prominent commentators did, however. And he got quoted on MSNBC and elsewhere.
Although I never posted about “Martin Eisenstadt” on this site, the reason I was kind of convinced by his act was that he was repeatedly quoted and cited as a McCain advisor all over the press, without the McCain campaign ever disputing that he worked for them. That should tell you something about just how bad the McCain campaign was. But I realized he was a fake when he posted a video claiming that Michelle Malkin and John McCain met and got it on in a back room. Puh-leeze.
Good thing, I never got taken in, in published print, by “Marty,” because he was Eitan.
But even though “Martin Eisenstadt” has long been outed as a very clever figment of Eitan Gorlin and a friend of his, TIME Magazine apparently didn’t get the memo. A TIME story on Twitter and the White House Correspondents Association dinner, over the weekend, quotes “Marty Eisenstadt, former McCain Advisor.”

Marty Eisenstadt, former McCain Adviser. (4 pm.):

Ran into Val Kilmer, still on couch at Haddad’s house. We’re splitting cab to #nerdprom when he stands up. Could be a while.

(“#nerdprom” is the Twitter nickname for the White House Correspondents Association dinner, and it’s extremely appropriate.)
The fictional Martin Eisenstadt a/k/a Eitan Gorlin is having fun with this latest faux-journalism. You see, he has a book to promote, as the fictional Marty.

From: martin@hardinginstitute.org
Date: Mon, May 11, 2009 at 8:11 PM
Subject: Martin Eisenstadt named elite Twitterati by Time.com
Dear friends:
I’m not one to gloat, but I just wanted to let you know that Time.com listed me, “former McCain adviser” Martin Eisenstadt as one of “the Twitterati” at the White House Correspondents Dinner, among a list that includes Ashton K, Newt G. and Meghan McC. I’m proud to be in such esteemed company! Some of you may remember me as the “source” of the Palin Africa leak. Does this Time list mean that Twitter jumped the shark, or maybe that I just burst its bubble? Either way, it’s a good a chance as any to say that my new book comes out October 12. Really, it’s already on Amazon.
To see some selected Tweets from “nerdprom” go to http://www.eisenstadtgroup.com , or just http://www.twitter.com/MartyEisenstadt and a pic of me there: http://twitpic.com/4zjkb
The Time.com link is here: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1897138-1,00.html
Thanks!
Martin Eisenstadt
Sr. Fellow, The Harding Institute for Freedom & Democracy

Yup, not that you didn’t need a reminder, but you can’t believe anything you read in TIME. They’re still buying into a fraud that everyone else knew about a half year ago, and which was even exposed in the New York Times.
There is no Marty Eisenstadt. He didn’t work for John McCain. And there is no true reporting or fact-checking at TIME. Just regurgitation by clueless dummies. No wonder the mag is losing subscribers in droves.
But, hey, if a non-existent person named “Brigitte Gabriel”–who is not an expert on anything and whose real name is Hanan Tudor–can get on FOX News’ O’Reilly Factor and Vannity shows without a modicum of background-checking, anyone can get on any news show or any mainstream media source to say anything.
**** UPDATE: Blogger William K. Wolfrum–the first news source to discover and out “Martin Eisenstadt” as a fraud–notes that TIME Magazine already reported on this hoax at the end of 2008 and criticized other mainstream media outlets for falling for it. I guess they don’t read their own pages at TIME. No shocker there. Nobody else reads them either.