So Sarah Palin wasn't really a dumba**?

DJPoopypants · Oct 20, 2009

http://washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0911.green.html

For many of us, what erased the last shred of doubt about Palin—what seared in our cerebral cortex the unshakable conviction that Tina Fey was channeling the real person—was a Fox News report in which anonymous McCain staffers revealed that Palin had thought Africa was a country.

Not long afterward, a McCain staffer named Martin Eisenstadt came forward to take responsibility for leaking the Africa stuff.

The only trouble was that Martin Eisenstadt was not a McCain adviser or even a real person. He was a hoax. The Harding Institute didn’t exist, nor did the Eisenstadt Group political consulting firm, though phony evidence of both can be found online. It was all an elaborate ruse that worked to perfection. the hoax was worth savoring because it was funny on so many levels. Not only did it embarrass a facile media—which is not, let’s be honest, like putting a man on the moon—but it slyly mocked American political culture in a way that barely registered. The joke was not that an imposter could infiltrate cable news for as long as Martin Eisenstadt did. It was that our entire system of politics has become so mindlessly rote, and campaigns such stage-managed shams, that it didn’t really matter whether the guy spouting talking points on Hardball was the real deal or a fraud. Both said exactly the same thing.

They’re back—or, rather, Eisenstadt is back—with what purports to be a tell-all memoir of the campaign...I Am Martin Eisenstadt

The book’s driving conceit is that Eisenstadt is a Zelig-like figure who happens to have been at the center of every meaningful political event in the past couple years, usually to the detriment of whomever he was ostensibly trying to help. This affords the opportunity to skewer the major conservative figures and many liberal ones, too. Rudy Giuliani’s abortive campaign, Sarah Palin’s disastrous turn in the spotlight, and John McCain’s landslide loss all trace their descent to Eisenstadt’s cretinous incompetence.
Click to expand...

[Hollywood mogul pitch]
It's Forest Gump meets Inspector Clouseau meets Sarah Palin - I love it! Now who should do the movie version - Clooney, Hanks, Affleck or Jim Carrey?
[/hollywood pitch]