Good gag

• Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief.
• Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Martin Eisenstadt is a senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy and an adviser to the McCain campaign. He is the source of the above news flashes.

Except ... neither Martin Eisenstadt nor the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy exist. They are a year-long hoax, pumping fake news items like the two above into the news media and the blogosphere.

The story is in the New York Times.

You've got to admire a good hoax on the media like this one.

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Addendum 8:24 pm
This is interesting. Steve Benen points out:

An MSNBC report credited Martin Eisenstadt, who doesn't exist, as the original source of the Palin/Africa claim. The hoax, however, is the bogus source validating the story, not the Palin/Africa story itself.

The original reporting on the Palin/Africa story came from Fox News' Carl Cameron, who reported last week on the McCain campaign's apparent frustration with Palin's ignorance. Cameron cited campaign aides as his source. Later, Palin said her comments about Africa had been "taken out of context."

We mustn't credit Palin with more education that she has demonstrated.