I was just watching CNN coverage of the death of my former client Moammar Gaddafi when I nearly choked on my bowl of Ben’s chili. Who do I see delivering a blackberry with the news of Momo’s death to Hillary Clinton, but none other than my old pal Anthony Weiner’s baby momma, his wife Huma Abedin - baby bump and all! Now that’s what we in the publicity business call “headline poaching.” Well done, Anthony (and Huma)! On the biggest news moment of the month, you managed to stick your “Weiner” brand name back into the cultural zeitgeist. Brilliant! If I have anything to do with it, you should be getting that guest host gig on MSNBC any day now.
As news breaks that Moammar Kaddafi has been killed fighting defiantly to the end, I turn on CNN to see that the world is rejoicing, and there is dancing in the streets from the shores of Tripoli, to the halls of the West Wing, to Carla Bruni’s birthing room in Paris. (Mind you, I also turned on the Today Show for more details, and learned all about a fat waitress who got jilted on a tip.)
But if there’s one person left on earth shedding a tear for the so-called former dictator of Libya, it might be me. Not because I was such great pals with Kaddafi, or because I laughed at his off-color knock-knock jokes, or because I found his entourage of Swedish nurses so fiendishly attractive. No, rather it is a sad day in the offices of the Eisenstadt Group because we have lost one of our most lucrative public-relations clients. And by lucrative, let me just say that we had been billing Kaddafi in the high six figures since the uprising began last spring (remember this blogpost I ran a few months ago?). But as everyone on K Street knows all too well, just because one “sends” a bill, does not mean one necessarily gets “paid” the bill. (Just ask Kissinger and Associates about the great Ceausescu Accounting Scandal of ‘91 - still a case study at the Kennedy School’s Intro to International Influence class where I’ve guest lectured from time to time.)
The upside of working with international pariahs as clients is that they tend to have a lot of money and there isn’t much competition banging down their doors. Also, try as you might, if you still can’t get them any real tangible benefits (like placing an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, getting a Greta Van Susteren interview on Fox, or getting the CIA to stop sending drone attacks), you can generally be forgiven for trying to paddle upstream against the torrent of international zeitgeist. The down side though is that these despots tend to blame international sanctions and frozen bank accounts for their inability to pay their bills in a timely fashion. And as I found today, they get the ultimate excuse when they’re suddenly and personally made “unavailable” - as Kaddafi’s six-foot-one, blonde Latvian accountant told me today via Skype from Zurich.
For anyone who’s read my critically-acclaimedbook, you’ll know that this isn’t the first time Marty Eisenstadt hasn’t gotten paid for services rendered (yes, McCain/Palin Victory Fund 2008, I’m talking to you!). But as a man of honor, I don’t whine or complain or wallow in self-pity about it. I simply pick myself up by my bootstraps, hire more unpaid interns, and start looking towards Embassy Row for the next client. Hmm, I hear the Syrian embassy on Wyoming Ave. is in need of an “image burnishment consultation” (as we call it in the trades). Oh, taxi!
I was saddened to read in my frenemy Arianna Huffington’s little blog that my old protege James O’Keefe has been outed on his latest sting. It turns out his latest “investigation” involved calling liberal think tanks and trying to goad them into accepting hedge fund money in order to pay for self-serving liberal policy papers. Aside from the fact that it just isn’t as sexy as posing as a hooker who walks into an ACORN office, or trying to seduce an NPR executive, James’ tactics were just too obvious and blundering. Sorry to say, but his latest efforts have backfired.
Now, my loyal readers will remember that James is a former intern of mine and that I essentially taught him everything he knows about the so-called “dark arts” of political and media tomfoolery. (It was just last March, in fact, that I wrote about how James’ takedown of NPR’s Vivian Schiller was in reality a personal favor to me.) Trusted readers will also remember that James played for my beloved Harding Institute team in Washington’s Think Tank Softball league that I detailed in my book (as well as mentioned in my denial of an alleged Elena Kagan sextape). In fact, it was in our season-ending 9-1 loss against the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) team that I muttered something to James about revenge for when EPI president/pitcher Lawrence Mishel struck paydirt with a low-inside brushback (thankfully, though, I was wearing my Harding-branded plastic cup - as is my habit on Fridays).
So I’m quite grateful that James once again picked his target as a personal vendetta on my behalf. I can’t fault James for his loyalty, but unfortunately the apprentice still has tactical lessons to learn from the master. How did poor James stumble this time? Allegedly, he made calls to EPI and other left-leaning, softball-dominant think tanks from a “hedge fund” with ties to an Ohio teacher’s union called “Ohio Education Association” representing 130,000 “so-called” teachers. Only one problem: the email domain used by the caller - “ohioedassoc.org” - was registered to Shane Cory - one of James’ underlings at his new company Project Veritas. Oops.
Anyone who’s read my book knows that it’s a perfectly simple thing to register a domain name anonymously. It’s a tactic I’ve “consulted” on many times, and not doing so is what tripped up Mitt Romney’s hamfisted negative campaign against Fred Thompson in the 2008 presidential election. True students of the dark arts will remember that a website named “PhonyFred.org” was registered to a known Romney campaign consultant. The site was up for barely a day before internet sleuths discovered the ruse. Compare this to my successful “Abrad2345” Giuliani stealth campaign that withstood the scrutiny of an ABC investigative report, New York Times digging, and countless other attempts to solve its mysterious origins. It wasn’t until a full two years later that I finally revealed myself as the true source of this campaign as one of many revelations in my critically-acclaimed book, “I Am Martin Eiesenstadt: One Man’s (wildly inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans.”
And for those doubters who think that this is the first time young James has taken a chip off the old Marty, then I direct you to this YouTube video wherein I show that even his masterful ACORN takedown was an homage to my own work. James, I love you. But next time, seek the master’s advice.
As someone who helped Scott Brown get elected to the Senate (yes, it was I who leaked his nude Cosmo photos, thus clinching his win), I feel it is incumbent on me to come to his defense now. Sen. Brown stands accused of having plagiarized Elizabeth Dole for a short passage on his website. Instead of simply blaming an “intern” for the “technical oversight” of not completely rewriting Dole’s website, I would suggest to Sen. Brown that he own up to the accusation, and embrace it. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then I can think of no greater homage to Liddy Dole than to plagiarize her.
With all the mainstream media accounts of this story, very few have bothered to read the words in question. Part of Dole’s quote was “I was raised to believe that there are no limits to individual achievement and no excuses to justify indifference.” Exactly. To prove the point that there are “no limits to individual achievement,” one has to embrace the collective wisdom of one’s forebears (specifically, Liddy Dole’s wisdom). And to further her thought, there are “no excuses” to be indifferent to this policy. Which is to say that if he firmly believed in Dole’s view of achievement, then he doesn’t owe us any excuse for her phrasing at all. In fact, to attribute the quote with superfluous so-called “quotation marks,” would lessen Brown’s own individual achievement, and therefor render the quote meaningless. Ergo, Dole’s own words practically beg for it to be plagiarized. To do any less, would be an insult to Dole herself.
Now, in full disclosure, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to come to the defense of plagiarism. Three years ago, I wrote a widely read Op-Ed in reaction to the swift firing of Bush Administration aide Tim Goeglein, who was accused of plagiarizing a Dartmouth history professor in op-eds Goeglein was writing for the Fort Wayne News Sentinel. My investigation into the story led to one revelation after another: The history professor who was allegedly plagiarized was himself a disgraced former Nixon speechwriter with a dubious attitude towards Jews. It turned out the passage in question had also been appropriated by a Bush-era Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, who had been fraternity pals with Jordan’s King Abdullah.
All of which is to say that it’s probably not surprising to hear that Elizabeth Dole has taken the high road and forgiven Scott Brown. Chances are, she didn’t write the quote in question either (that’s what campaign speechwriters are for). She definitely repurposed it, using the quote multiple times - inspeeches, in a video launching her campaign and on her website. It was that good. And apparently, it still is.
My only question is that with all the smart MIT and Harvard grads floating around Boston, why couldn’t the Brown camp have hired an intern who knew how to build a website from scratch? Oh well, next time!
