Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

Some people have asked me if I was in any way involved with the Rod Blagojevich scandal in Illinois. Upon advice of counsel, I probably shouldn’t say anything. But… am I one of the people who suggested that Jesse Jackson, Jr. was the logical choice to succeed Barack Obama? Of course. But was I the mysterious emissary for Candidate #5? Again, I’ll defer to counsel’s advice. But I will point you to to this new video:

The Jonas Brothers, Jesse Jackson, Jr. (and his Blagojevich-enabled wish for the Illinois Senate seat), and I all share the bandwidth in this strange new mash-up of footage from the Harding Institute to the tune of “This is Real” by Demi Lovato and Joe Jonas from the “Camp Rock” soundtrack.

Why, you ask? It seems that one of my most popular blog posts that is especially controversial among European teenage girls was my assertion that the Jonas Brothers showed poor taste in wearing keffiyehs. So since my associate, Danny Sadler’s last edited video hardly got any hits (sorry, Danny), Poppy Cartwright (aided by our interns Rebecca and Talia) decided to sneak onto Danny’s computer one night and try something a little more hip. It occurred to Poppy that my quote, “this is real, this is me” is virtually the same as the eponymous song from the “Camp Rock” soundtrack. So, with apologies to Demi, the JoBros, their fans (and especially the Disney Corporation), Poppy and the girls present their mixed homage to my continued existence and the renewed purpose of the Harding Institute in this new Obama era. The election is over, and it’s time to embrace the now. So all is forgiven, Jonas Brothers: Obama is in. Cuba and the UN are in. Even scarves are in again.

BTW, in reviewing for this post, I stumbled onto a little noticed post I made on August 4 - nearly a full month before Sarah Palin was announced as John McCain’s running mate. For all you doubters and haters, read the full post here - but here’s the critical conclusion I warned about:

So to my colleagues on the McCain campaign, the take home lesson is don’t count on getting any of those Hillary women to cross over to the GOP (even with a Carly Fiorina or Gov. Sarah Palin in the veep spot). At the end of the day, they’ll vote with their hearts not their heads. And they’ll vote for the cute boy. Barack Obama’s not a celebrity for nothing.

And people wondered why I wasn’t crazy about Palin.

I’ve been in the new adjunct office of the Harding Institute in New York for the last week or two, and it’s been a crazy time. My mother, Connie Bean Eisenstadt, has always told me, “All press is good press, Marty…just so long as the words ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ don’t precede your name.” (You can tell this was a Washington woman who knew her Haldeman’s from her Ehrlichman’s.) So being in the New York Times, and all the media that’s come from that, should be a time for celebration, and in a strange way, it may all wind up being for the better. But for now, let me just expose a little bit of my frustration…

Just today, I headed over to the Gray Lady herself in an futile effort to demand some sort of retraction (turns out they’re more mad than me about the Yes Men hoax), but on my way out, I bumped into my old frenemies Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman, so we grabbed a coffee together. I congratulated Paul on his Nobel this year, and commiserated with Tom that neither of us had won ours yet. (Tom’s not a bad photographer, either.)
They tried cheering me up about the recent rumors of my non-existence. Paul recounted the story of the attractive young woman who came up to him recently and said how much she loved reading him in the Times. He was flattered, but when she added that “The World Is Flat” is her favorite book, he realized she’d mistaken him for the Fried-ster. So much for the legendary “Nobel Booty Bounce.”

Now, I’m hardly ideological bedfellows with the boys, but we all go back years, and in starting to come to grips with the new Obamocracy that we’re in, it’s clearly in my best interest to reach out to the new regime. Tom, in particular, had some good suggestions on ways to reinvigorate myself and the mission of the Harding Institute in these times. As I was leaving, he even gave me the cell number for his book publisher. So who knows?