Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

Now I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, especially when it comes to this blogging stuff. But when both the New York Times and Washington Post come out with big scoops about Amy Strozzi, one of Sarah Palin’s makeup artists earning more than Steve Schmidt or Charlie Black, I have to sit back and laugh a little. I’m not sure if they were inspired by, or reported in spite of, the post I made here almost two nights ago suggesting that those inclined to criticize Sarah Palin’s wardrobe expenses might want to take a look at her makeup, too. As I said, one of her “other” makeup artists, Tracy Thorp, owed over $145,000 in back taxes. If the Times and Post want to just sit around and play East Coast elitist gotcha journalism, they may as well do it right. While they’re at it, they should probably have found out just who Ms. Thorp is and why if she’s such a great makeup artist, she doesn’t have any professional credits at all. (unlike Emmy-nominate Amy Strozzi, one of who’s last films was called “Bondage”).

I was a wee bit curious, too, so I talked to a colleague who was in the prep suite in St. Paul with Sarah, and it turns out Tracy was brought in exclusively to apply a spray-on tan to the future Veep. Yup, that’s what Tracy’s specialty is: According to her MySpace page, she runs a company called “tans n lashes by tracy” (that’s Tracy in the picture, and the spray-on tan shot is from her MySpace page, too). Apparently, Sarah had what’s affectionately called an “eskimo tan” when she showed up at the Convention. They needed to brighten her up, and even out her tan for all the new cleavage and leg-baring fashions. And given John’s history with melanoma, he insisted on a spray-on for Sarah. Thorp was paid $900 plus expenses to come into town for the job. How did Tracy get the job? My guess is that she’s pals with Angela Lew, Palin’s hair stylist who lives in Thousand Oaks, California, and works at a salon called The Hair Grove in Westlake Village - all just a few miles or so from where Tracy lives (and literally walking distance from Westlake High School, where according to her MySpace page, Tracy graduated). The Times reports that Cindy McCain gets her hair done at the Hair Grove, too, so maybe Tracy was there to do a touchup on Cindy, too?

In any case, I’ll take dibs on the inevitable puns: Sarah was “Palin’ comparison” before she had the tan.

And while we’re in the makeup department, it’s worth noting that the NYTimes and Wasington Post neglected to notice that Amy Strozzi wasn’t the only one from “Dancing with the Stars” to help Sarah Palin look her best. On the same disclosure Form F that revealed Jeff Larson and Tracy Thorp’s expenditures, you can also see that Heather Cummings charged $3300 for makeup services, too. Who’s Heather Cummings? She shared an Emmy nomination with Amy Strozzi for her work on “Dancing with the Stars.” But no fancy meals for a professional gal on the run like Heather. She needed her pep, and charged the campaign $3.25 for a “meal” from Starbucks.

This ongoing BBC documentary about my day campaigning for John McCain is finally starting to show America (and presumably, Britain) that there are Mexican-Americans who support Senator McCain. Mark my words: this will be the real November surprise, when John McCain sweeps the Southwest by garnering the majority of Latino voters. For months, I’ve been telling Steve Schmidt and others in the campaign that we’ve got to get out of our offices, put on our loafers and start hoofing it with the real voters in America. With this video, there’s now proof positive that this sort of campaigning really does work.

UPDATE: The RNC paid over $1000 to fly in Tracy to do an all-over spray on tan for Sarah. 

With all the hoopla yesterday about Sarah Palin’s clothes, and how the RNC paid Jeff Larson to keep her looking better than Hillary Clinton (note to Hill… maybe if you dressed as nicely as Sarah, you might have won), one name that seems to escaped attention so far is Sarah’s makeup consultant Tracy Thorp. Of course the “gotcha” cops who rode all over Joe “The Plumber” are undoubtedly going to start digging in Tracy “The Makeup Artist’s” trash in Newbury Park, California (a suburb of LA), and they’ll notice that her husband’s company, Wilson Masonry, has a tax lien of $145,718. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Tracy would jump at the chance to work for the McCain/Palin ticket and make a few extra bucks putting lipstick on the Alaska governor. With the economy the way it is, the Thorp/Wilson family needs all the help they can get.

I’m starting to see a pattern of things that I say and do being taken out of context by a wiley reporter with a sultry British accent. After our interview, she got in touch with Danny and he - very generously I think - shared some footage we had at the Institute of me in Iraq. But does she show the shots of me meeting with Paul Bremmer or President Maliki as we helped to build the Iraqi democracy? No, she takes some inconsequential tape of me - quite legitimately - working to establish a telecommunications infrastructure in the country as part of a project with AID, and makes it look like I’m some sort of Crazy Eddie pitchman for cellphones. Well, you can see for yourself:

When I mentioned the other day that Barack Obama would be appearing on the last episode of Saturday Night Live before the election (possibly related to Lorne Michael’s donation to his campaign), there were some naysayers who suggested it was rank speculation based on a drunken comment from Seth Meyers at last week’s afterparty. But yesterday’s Los Angeles Times confirmed it:

And asked about possible candidate appearances on the two “SNLs” before election day, [Lorne Michaels] replied, “Yes, but … until they’re in the building, I’m not going to talk about it.”

The story was also confirmed directly by Seth Meyers when he appeared on public radio’s show “Fresh Air”:

Seth Meyers, head writer of SNL was interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air earlier today. Meyers said that originally Obama was going to be on last week, but this was cancelled due to his visit to his grandmother in Hawaii. Meyers said that both Obama and McCain have an open invitation to appear but that nothing is known for this weekend.

In the meantime, I’m happy to say that our original story was picked up far and wide: Defamer, VH1’s Best Week Ever, HuffingtonPost, The Weekly Standard, The New York Observer, nsideNewYork, Nerve.com, Mollygood, EvilBeet, ArtistDogBoy, TheVelvetHottub, BlogDance, SarahPalinUpdates, nsideLosAngeles, Jossip, Showhype, Stereohyped, Examiner, ThePajamaPundit, TVSquad, Meaningful Distraction, Extra!TV

When I read the AP report that Sarah Palin had charged the state of Alaska for travel expenses, I thought - wow! this is great news for the McCain-Palin ticket! Just two weeks before the election, the left-wing media at NBC and CNN are going to get all high and mighty about Sarah bringing the brood to such things as the National Governor’s Association. As expected, there was pretty-boy Anderson Cooper bloviating tonight about the “breaking news.” He could barely contain himself (ironic, since as a three-year old kid, Cooper appeared on The Tonight Show, when his mother Gloria Vanderbilt was Johnny Carson’s guest… that’s little Anderson on the left….)

The point is that this is a sucker’s bet for the left. From what I heard from Charlie Black today, the campaign did some quick testing with women, and this story comes out a winner for the McCain campaign. What working mom wouldn’t want to take her daughters to New York’s Central Park South Essex House or Philadelphia’s Ritz-Carlton for a weekend away from dad and the boys? And I think it was far more educational for Bristol to go with her mom to meet with Goldman Sachs executives and go to the New York Stock Exchange than stay in Alaska for the week with Levi. If anything it beefs up Sarah’s economics credentials, and should get Bristol lined up for a nice internship at the Treasury Department. All in all, this story will be a plus for all those Hillary Clinton women still sitting on the fence about McCain/Palin.

The real question is how Sarah negotiated a room rate of $215.46 a night at the Ritz-Carlton in Philly for the girls, when their quoted rate is $399 a night. In my book, that shows sound fiscal responsibility and the kind of tough negotiating skills Sarah will need to deal with Wall Street bailouts and Kim Jong-Il. The people of Alaska should be thanking her.

But the left should be happy, too. Despite Sarah’s explicit pro-life views, nowhere in the AP report does it appear that Sarah charged the state of Alaska for travel expenses for either her own or her daughter’s unborn children.

Well, the second episode of that BBC documentary called “The Last Republican” has apparently been posted on the YouTube. In this one, I visit John McCain’s Southern California headquarters, and unfortunately there was some sort of mixup when we got there. My assistant, Danny - a terrific guy, BTW, who’s been spearheading our web efforts of late - couldn’t get through on the phones in advance. Probably because volunteers were clogging up the lines with outgoing campaign calls. The young woman in the office was just doing her job, and by the time we got back to D.C., she had sent me a nice letter of apology. No worries. It’s not easy running the LA office.

Also, for the record, I should point out that when I suggest in the video that the McCain campaign is outsourcing our calling to India, that was obviously a joke. It appears to have been taken out of context for this film. With all these attacks about our robocalling, what do you expect from the media?

How come there has been no NBC or New York Times investigation into Joe Biden?  For God’s sake, he is the Senator from Delaware.  Which means he used to work for the Duponts and now he works for the banks and credit card companies.   And yet, something as silly as firing a brother-in-law, when it comes to Sarah Palin, is seen as a huge news story.   Go figure.

Let’s be clear about this.  Barack Obama is the choice of the establishment.  McCain is the choice of the little guy.  For those of you who believe in a hidden hand determining our politics, that hidden hand has already anointed Obama as the next President.  The same network NBC, owned by General Electric, that sold you on the Iraq war is now selling you on Obama.      

What does it mean that a man goes from being a community organizer to being President of the United States in only a handful of years?  None of us really knows what Obama believes in or stands for.  His answers in the debates are all dodges, rote discourses that mean and say nothing.  Most people that I know who support Obama do so out of respect for their African-American neighbors though in fact when Obama first ran for office in Chicago he was seen by the other black politicians as a white man in brown skin. 

So go ahead you simpleton masses.  Believe Bush when he said we invaded Iraq because they had WMD’s and now go believe that Obama is an agent of change when, in truth, he is completely beholden to Wall Street and Big Business.  Where are these hundreds of millions of dollars coming from that every day flow into his campaign?  That’s a lot of ten dollar donations on line!  I thought we were in a recession.    All I’m saying is buyer beware.  You the public has been fooled before.  Don’t be surprised when you are fooled again. 

In the wake of Sarah Palin’s star-confirming appearance on SNL, it may come as a surprise to learn that Lorne Michaels recently contributed $4600 to Barack Obama’s campaign, and NBC CEO Jeffrey Immelt contributed $10,000 to Joe Biden’s Delaware Democratic State Committee.

Of course, some of you loyal readers will say, “But Marty, you told us that Lorne Michaels was in the tank for McCain.” And indeed, you may remember that I pointed out on my post on Sept. 10, that Lorne Michaels and NBC CEO Jeffrey Immelt were early John McCain supporters. But apparently they read my post, too, because the Obama/Biden contributions were posted shortly after the summer FEC reporting period. Maybe Michaels just knew that McCain and whoever he picked as veep would be easier to mock than Mitt Romney?

I heard from one of Sarah’s aides this morning that at the obligatory SNL after party, a slightly affected Seth Meyers blurted out something to the effect of “…yeah, but just wait til you see what we have cooked up for Obama’s appearance right before the election.” You may remember that Obama “canceled” his appearance on the show on opening night because of Hurricane Ike. But sources now say that it could have been a ploy cooked up by Lorne Michaels and David Axelrod to save Obama for the November 1st show… right before the election.

From having worked with Rudy Giuliani, I learned that being mocked on SNL is the best thing that can happen to a politician, and appearing on the show is even better. There’s a reason Sarah’s been enjoying the consistently best attended rallies of this election cycle. SNL and Tina Fey have kept the focus on her. Believe me: Image consultants who weighed in when the Senator was picking his VP choice said that Sarah should ditch the Tina Fey glasses and drop the beehive do. But one call to his supposed friend Lorne Michaels and John was convinced that the bigger the comparison between the two women, the better it would be for both the campaign and SNL in the long run. I’m told that in his trademark dry wit, Michaels even suggested to Tina Fey that she get a breast job, just so she’d look more like Governor Palin. Short of that, the comparison is still uncanny.