The Martin Eisenstadt hoax is an elaborate scheme of filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin that involved the creation of a fictional "talking head", Martin Eisenstadt, who was quoted by numerous major news outlets (such as the Los Angeles Times and MSNBC[1]), as well as countless blogs, all of which failed to verify his actual existence.
[2] Mirvish and Gorlin have since written a satirical novel called I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man's (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans for Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN 978-0-86547-914-2.
[6] The first appearance of Martin Eisenstadt was in a video of a phony interview, purportedly on Al Iraqiya, describing his plan to build casinos in the Green Zone.
[7] The report was accepted at face value and blogged by Jonathan Stein of Mother Jones,[8] but correctly and tentatively identified as satire by the Monthly Review.
[2] After election day, 2008, it was widely reported that a senior McCain advisor had stated that Palin was unaware that Africa was a continent rather than a country.
[10] After the story broke, Mirvish and Gorlin released a video where Eisenstadt, reportedly a McCain policy adviser, made that statement.
[14] In May 2009, Time reported that Eisenstadt was one of the "elite Twitterati" who attended the White House Correspondents Dinner, along with Meghan McCain, Ashton Kutcher, and Newt Gingrich.
[16] Mirvish and Gorlin wrote the book I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man's (wildly inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans which was published in November, 2009, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
The duo shot seven more similar shorts and posted them anonymously on YouTube as faux Rudolph Giuliani ads during early primary season for the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign.