Why is it so hard to Google the name “Martin Eisenstadt” before going on a Plumber Joe freakfest?
October 17, 2008 by William K. Wolfrum
Here’s a little critical-thinking trick: Use the Google to search for the name “Martin Eisenstadt” then tell me if you think he’s a worthy source to use in a mega-distracting and stupid hunt to discredit “Joe the Plumber,” whose 15 minutes of fame should have died two days ago.
These folks were unable to do that:
Business Week, Crooks & Liars, Bay State Liberal, All Headline News, AOL News, Wizbang Blue, Michelle Malkin, DailyKos (Trinity29), The Burned Over District, Firedoglake (emptywheel), John G. McDaid, Big Dan’s Big Blog, Dallas South, Poor Mojo Newswire, Kudzu, Mon Amour, Muckmakers, Jeff Juliard, Chris Capone, Repeated Expletives, The Moderate Voice, Blog Bites, 23/6, Blue Herald, Neil Rogers, Cogitamus, Talking Points Memo (plebnista), Boulder Blog, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Suzie Q, and others.
Critical thinking. You’re doing it wrong.
-WKW
Will,
I did Google him, and I still got fooled.
I guess that means you’re justified in being an asshole about it.
Or you could have left a comment or sent an email correcting the mistake.
Constructive criticism. You’re doing it wrong.
will,
you are right.
martin eisenstadt — war profiteer, republican tool, blogger, political pundit — was not a worthy source. in this day and age, with all of the mudslinging and misinformation flying around in every direction, fact checking should become a way of life for all of us. thank you for pointing out my mistake. in the future, i will work hard to be a better, more informed blogger. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=M._Thomas_Eisenstadt
stephen suh — the commenter above — was right, too.
constructive criticism requires compassion. you can’t have much of it if you’re this judgemental and condescending. and mean.
Bill:
Gotta agree with steve suh & queen esther here — compassion needs to be at the core of every word you post on this site (and, preferably, at the center of every thought you think about every aforementioned word).
For example, notice how compassionately mr. suh called you an asshole. A non-compassionate person would’ve said you are an unmitigated, gaping asshole; mr. suh, on the other hand, complimented you (quite compassionately, I must add) as a justified asshole. Feel the warmth?
Moving on to Q.E., note how nicely (dare I say, compassionately? yes, I dare) she referred to your being judgmental, condescending, and mean. Compassionate words, compassionately expressed, all for the purpose of gently nudging you toward becoming an even better version of the wonderful writer that they’re sure you already are.
I haven’t felt this much compassion at one time since my last robocall from the McMaverick campaign.
Now quit wasting your time reading this and get back to work, you hairy faced golf-lovin’ google-obsessed terrorist-embracing liberal fuck (and I mean that in the most compassionate manner possible, of course :-).
Yes, that two seconds it took me to find a link on Crooks and Liars was certainly “a mega-distracting and stupid hunt.” What a waste of my time there. The article I wrote wasn’t just about Joe the Plumber – he took up one paragraph. It was mostly about how both the media and politicians use the Average Joe to further their agendas, when I could really care less about those types of people because they don’t represent me. As “liberal” bloggers, our job is to debunk dumb or distracting strategies the GOP uses to gain the votes of Average Joes, so that’s what we were attempting to do by even mentioning this story at all. I’ll freely admit that it was lazy on my part to just assume that my favorite sites had used a credible source, and I’ll certainly be more vigilant in the future, but in the time that it took you to find every one of our sites and individually spank all of us, YOU could have been talking about bigger issues, too.
If you’re looking to bury the Joe the Plumber story, you’re doing it wrong.
Great opinions, folks. None of which led me to have hurt feelings. Except for Hugh’s. But he’s kind of a dick. Not that I’d ever accuse him of dickishness, mind you. Because losing him as a reader would mean I’d lose 33.3% of my total readership.
Cheers,
Bill
“I’m kind of a dick, but be nice to me or you’re screwed.”
Isn’t that John McCain’s campaign slogan?
Bill has really done a lot of work over the last 6 months to a year exposing this guy as a fraud, that I’m sure it is a little aggravating for him that there are still people who are duped into taking Eisenstadt seriously.
At once there was a direct link on the front page of his blog to all the information he has discovered on this Eisenstadt fellow. Maybe time to bring back that link Bill.
Damn, Dgun, you know this place better than I do. Let me tell you, my friend, the WKW Reader of the Year Awards are coming up, and I’d be feeling pretty good about my chances if I were you.
Take that Hugh! lol.
I feel very confident of my chances of placing in the top 3 in the competition for this prestigious award — and once I can convince the mainstream liberal media of looking into the full extent of dgun’s pallin’ around with known terrorist supporter William K. Wolfrum (who I have *never* seen wearing a flag pin, by the way), I’m sure that my “narrow victory” strategery will prove to be successful, dontcha know [wink!].
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go program my robocalling machine …
Hi…
Thanks for the catch; I’ve posted a correction. I screwed up on this one.
Best,
-j
The “POINT” is: the media (corporate owned media) is NOT “liberal”, and they play the GOP’s talking points, one after another after another: Rev. Wright -> Bill Ayers -> ACORN -> Joe the Plumber -> (there will be MORE, much MORE…and ONLY the GOP talking points).
The “POINT” isn’t “Joe the Plumber” nor the person who’s the subject of your post.
Wow, stay classy, William. Going back to one of your earlier posts:
Recently, a blogger named M. Thomas Eisenstadt suckered me into writing a post that he had written titled “Shame on Dennis Hastert for joining tranny lobbyist firm”. The post I wrote on the subject can be found here.
After that post, it became clear that M. Thomas Eisenstadt (who originally started a blog named http://www.michaeleisenstadt.com and was referred to as “Michael”) was a hoax. As was his “think tank” called “The Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy” (which seems to be a joke, being that Warren G. Harding is widely considered to be one of the worst Presidents in U.S. history).
You got suckered by “Eisenstadt.” Now you’re pillorying other people for the same thing. Nice work on the research on him, really (“Harding Institute” is pretty funny). However, obviously not everyone read your debunks, and might miss them even after using Google. In the case of my blogmate’s post, linked above, it wasn’t a blog essay, it was a short, quick post quoting a pretty reliable blogger at a pretty reliable blog. We strive to be accurate and to give proper context, so we’ll post an update, thanks.
In terms of the importance of “Joe the Plumber,” I pretty much agree with Thers’ take. The media blitz on “Joe the Plumber” is more annoying than McCain’s constant mention of him. Blogger attention should be on the real economic issues underneath all this silliness – and for at least some of the blogs linked above, it has been. The Eisenstadt piece was never terribly important to that (although it doesn’t help). I’d say “researching the credibility of a source” is much more accurate here than “critical thinking,” but that’s not nearly as snappy. I’d also say that while you got suckered by “Eisenstadt” earlier, your points about tolerance in that post remain valid. Funny how that works.
What’s interesting is that our site recently faced something similar – someone linked a satire piece one of my blogmates quoted and took it for real. When we found out, we wrote a polite comment in their thread and they posted a correction.
Look, I’ve read your posts occasionally for a couple of years now, and for what it’s worth, I lost some respect for you after this one. I’m sure you’ll get over that, and if you do good work, I imagine I will, too. Your style choices are your own, and there are far more important things to focus on. I’ll try to check in here later, but otherwise, feel free to e-mail me if you want to. Otherwise, moving on…
Sorry, that third paragraph should be italicized.
lol.
This has been an entertaining thread/post.
Some people got rather offended. Others just said “oops, sorry about that”.
Takes all kinds I suppose.