This sounds pretty funny (via Josh Green at the Washington Monthly):
Not long afterward, a McCain staffer named Martin Eisenstadt came forward to take responsibility for leaking the Africa stuff. At first blush, Eisenstadt seemed exactly the sort you’d expect to cruelly betray his candidate: a vaguely familiar, middle-tier neocon hack affiliated with an outfit called the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy—a guy whose natural place in the universe is on the third block of Hardball, his command of the latest GOP talking points and lapel-pin flag both obnoxiously on display. That was enough for MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times, and a host of other media outlets to run with the story that the culprit had been found.
The only trouble was that Martin Eisenstadt was not a McCain adviser or even a real person. He was a hoax perpetrated by two filmmakers, Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin (who played Eisenstadt on television). The Harding Institute didn’t exist, nor did the Eisenstadt Group political consulting firm, though phony evidence of both can be found online. It was all an elaborate ruse that worked to perfection. The media made the obligatory hiccup of remorse and hurried on. But the hoax was worth savoring because it was funny on so many levels. Not only did it embarrass a facile media—which is not, let’s be honest, like putting a man on the moon—but it slyly mocked American political culture in a way that barely registered. The joke was not that an imposter could infiltrate cable news for as long as Martin Eisenstadt did. It was that our entire system of politics has become so mindlessly rote, and campaigns such stage-managed shams, that it didn’t really matter whether the guy spouting talking points on Hardball was the real deal or a fraud. Both said exactly the same thing.
[….]I Am Martin Eisenstadt is an odd mixture of high and low comedy that, on balance, is pitched at about the level of a Judd Apatow movie. If you don’t find the idea of Dennis Hastert oil-wrestling the Turkish foreign minister to be inherently funny, this probably isn’t your book. On the other hand, the authors know Washington so well that if you’re a creature of the Beltway you can’t help but admire their curator’s appreciation for the tiniest details. Anyone can milk humor from the idea that Republicans are greedy and corrupt. Only connoisseurs of conservative excess would think to parody the warped machismo of the Reagan years that led members of the preppy youth group Young Americans for Freedom (including Grover Norquist) to visit Angola on behalf of the UNITA rebels and style themselves “freedom fighters,” which mainly seems to have entailed being photographed with an AK-47. Martin Eisenstadt’s machine-gun-brandishing picture appears on page 15.
They also did a multi-part YouTube documentary about the guy.
dr. bloor
This would be merely funny if it was the latest Christopher Guest project. The fact that the people getting pantsed by Mirvish and Gorlin are the real media, who ostensibly play an important role in protecting the republic, is fairly terrifying.
DougJ
The fact that the people getting pantsed by Mirvish and Gorlin are the real media, who ostensibly play an important role in protecting the republic, is fairly terrifying.
That’s part of what makes it so funny.
The Grand Panjandrum
This is still my favorite highlight from the general election campaign, although McCain “suspending” his campaign was quite delicious.
This entire notion of young GOP’ers as “freedom fighters” is alive and well today. It is endemic in the nature of machismo and other superficial desires to be a “real” man as many of the wingnuts see themselves. Real men know who they are, and they don’t need a picture of themselves photographed with an AK-47. Quite frankly, if that is where we set the bar for being a “freedom fighter” or a “real” man then just call me a sissy because I want no part of that sort of nonsense.
kth
They named their “institute” after a consensus worst-ever President, and no one in the msm raised an eyebrow.
The Sheriff Is A Ni-
@kth: It gets better than that, Harding was very much pro-neutrality. Google the Washington Naval Treaty for starters.
Anon
Ha, good stuff.
Check out last yes men movie, too
henqiguai
Okay, vigilante grammarian (that even a word ?) strike. Shouldn’t that be “Have any of you read this book ?”
I got nothin’ else; just brought up the Juice and saw this title. And I’m still feeling too lethargic to pull down my Elements of Grammar to check.
Incertus
We reviewed it The Rumpus–I say “we” when I really mean Rachel Weiner. Her review is pretty meh–funny parts, but Eisenstadt is funnier in action than in recollection.
inkadu
The sad thing is any conservative idiot can get on TV provided he wears a suit and has a Washington-based Institute to Launder Money for Weapons Manufacturers behind him, but people with different views and more expertise are consistently shut out.
The Republic of Stupidity
Weeeeeeelll… then…
***thoughtful pause…***
Wouldn’t it have been named the ‘Teh Bush Institute’???
Seriously… this is scary, and sad, and hysterically funny all at once.
Now… if only Norquist would back up his claims of being a ‘freedom fighter’ by doing something spectacular, like trying to blow up an airliner by setting his crotch on fire… I might finally have a smidgen of respect for the guy.
SiubhanDuinne
@henqiguai
Nope, DougJ got it right. “Any” is singular and takes the singular verb. You would be correct if he had simply written “Have you read this book?”
And of course in casual discourse, “Have any of you?” or “Do any of you?” would be acceptable. But DougJ gets the grammarians’ approval.
Neddie Jingo
@henqiguai:
Is a word.
Well, shake off your lethargy, ‘cos “Has any of you…?” is the correct construction. Put the implied word “one” after “any” and you’ll see why.
Steeplejack
@SiubhanDuinne:
Respectfully disagree. Any as a pronoun is “singular or plural in construction,” according to all three of the dictionaries I can easily reach. If DougJ were using any as a substitute for anyone then the singular verb would be correct. “Has anyone read this book?” But “any of you” clearly indicates a group of several people and so should get the plural verb. To construe the question as “Has any [one] of you read this book?” is to take fustiness to a level that gives schoolmarms a bad name.
Laura W
@Steeplejack: This is gonna turn into the bestest BJ flame war EVER!
I have something for you. While this is not one of my favorite S&G songs (just for sheer overuse and overexposure through the years), I can not imagine they have ever done a more moving, powerful and “seamless” (h/t John) version. Wow.
Osceola
I can haz cheezburger? Is this rite?
Preznit give me turkee. I know this is wright.
If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow. Right?
Write?
dr. bloor
@kth:
We live in an alternative reality where Ronald Reagan is commonly understood to be one of our Greatest Preznits Evah. That the talking hairdos and their legions of C-student bookers and handlers (a) didn’t know that Harding was a disaster, and (b) still couldn’t arrive at that conclusion given relevant information about his presidency is completely unsurprising.
Demo Woman
All I know is that I tried to edit a previous post because of tense and the edit function would not allow me to.
Does any(one) know why the edit function blocked me?
jeffreyw
Are hashbrowns sufficient for breakfast, or merely necessary?
John Cole
This was the jackass (and I say that affectionately) who, if I remember correctly, had a bunch of liberal blogs claiming that Joe the Plumber was related to Keating.
Neddie Jingo
@Steeplejack:
Respectfully, this is arrant nonsense. “Any,” referring to individuated objects, such as (in this case) people, means (according to the eleventy-hundred dictionaries I can easily reach, but quoting from the nearest, Webster’s New World) “One, no matter which, of more than two: [Any pupil may answer.]” (Note singular “pupil,” not plural.)
Please to inform me, is there some other way to construe it?
(And points for “fustiness.”)
Neddie Jingo
Put it another way: “Any criticism [are? is?] unwarranted.”
Make sense?
henqiguai
@SiubhanDuinne (#11):
Thanks; it’s a construction that always gives me pause (and yes, in both my writings and attempts at conversation, I obsess on such stuff).
Now; how the heck does one correctly pronounce your handle (yep, been obsessing on that too, ’cause I don’t really know the Gaelic alphabet).
ETA – And reading further after #11 I see there are other grammarians lurking in the weeds. Maybe today will be better than I thought, after all.
SiubhanDuinne
@Neddie Jingo:
You are my new hero.
Hell, you’re the wind beneath my wings.
Steeplejack
@Laura W:
Thanks for that. I agree: there are certain songs, I don’t care how good they are, I heard them so many times over a concentrated period of time that I almost never want to hear them again. Cf. “Hey, Jude,” “Maggie Mae.” “Bride over Troubled Water” is right in there too. But this is a damn good version.
I have been catching the R&R Hall of Fame concert on HBO in bits and pieces, so I don’t have a sense of the continuity. Some of the pairings are inspired, some, uh, less so. The only one I can think of right now is Bruce Springsteen and John Fogerty doing a surprisingly good version of “Oh, Pretty Woman.”
Steeplejack
@Neddie Jingo:
@Neddie Jingo:
In both of your examples, any is an adjective modifying singular nouns, pupil and criticism, which of course take singular verbs.
Unfortunately, we were talking about any as a pronoun.
SiubhanDuinne
@henqiguai
I’ll tell you if you’ll tell me :-)
Actually, I’m not sure exactly how to pronounce my handle. In my head, I pronounce it “shoo-VAHN dwEEN” but would be glad to be corrected by someone who knows the Gaelic.
In any case, it’s a bit of faux-Gaelic, which I came up with when I was about 10 and had fallen in love with all things Scottish. I discovered in a Scottish-English glossary that Siubhan is one of several variants of my own first name. Duine (one n) is the word for “man,” and as my own surname was Mann, I cleverly (as my young self thought) added the second N and made it Duinne. So for the past 57 or so years, I have used SiubhanDuinne in various settings as a kind of “literal” translation of my own maiden name.
Neddie Jingo
“Bride Over Troubled Water”: That’s the one about the honeymoon gone terribly wrong, isn’t it? Involving a helicopter, a rope ladder, and a hurricane?
Like a bride over troubled water/I will scream “Land this f*cking thing — NOW!”
Wait’ll you get to the part where Patti Smith and the Boss duet “Because the Night” with U2 as their backing band. Sublime.
Matthew B.
@Neddie Jingo:
Any dictionary? How about Merriam-Webster, then?
Or if you’re looking for a usage guide, how about Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage?
Both usages are correct. Get over it.
Nancy
Sorry, I’m more inclined to lurk, but this has me puzzled:
Any criticism [are? is?] unwarranted
What if the construction were “Is any of your criticisms unwarranted?” That seems closer to DougJ’s title for this post, where a prepositional phrase is modifying the indefinite pronoun. I contend that in this instance, any is plural, and my American Heritage Dictionary bears me out. Its first defintion for any is “one or some, regardless of kind, quantity, or number.” Don’t make me join forces with Grover Norquist on this one.
Jane
OT but not really.
I just wanted to thank you for the subject-verb agreement in the title. Nice to see it right.
SiubhanDuinne
@Matthew B.
Okay, I can get over it, but I will say in my own defence that I was taught grammar by a seventh-grade teacher who pre-dated your twelfth-century usage by at least a couple of hundred years.
DougJ
This was the jackass (and I say that affectionately) who, if I remember correctly, had a bunch of liberal blogs claiming that Joe the Plumber was related to Keating.
Yes!
Steeplejack
@Jane:
Welcome, fusty schoolmarm.
CalD
@Matthew B.:
I think “has” would sound less odd in this case if there were some contextual clue that we were talking about a singular subject. If it’s implied that what Doug was asking whether any one of us had read the book then plural agreement is satisfied and the singular construction is correct. But if the question is read to mean have any one or more of us read the book then the plural form would be more correct.
I had actually taken the intent as the latter but assumed it was either a typo or an intentional misspelling for stylistic effect. They do a lot of that here. I guess you could make a case for the former but the fact that it does sound odd might be taken as an indicator that it might be a bit of a stretch to do so.
Jane
Response to Steeplejack:
Thank you!
Normally I grieve in private for the internet errors in apostrophe-use in “it’s” and “its”. Also the confusion in the use of “they’re”, “their”, and “there”.
It was just nice to see “has” agree with “any(one)”.
It doesn’t happen that often anymore.
Neddie Jingo
None of you has any idea what you’re talking about.
(Where “none” is a pronoun and “any” is a pleuristic demiquaveral neologism from 1200 BC…)
Watch yourself, Jane. It’s a jungle in here.
henqiguai
@SiubhanDuinne (#26):
Thanks ! That’s about where I was trying to go with it, but I’ve only picked up a few bits and pieces of the pronunciations from reading. If I remember, at the next company all-hands I’ll ask the Scots contingent.
chrome agnomen
is our grammarians learning?
jean
It appears I can barely speak my own language.
I pity the poor ESLers’.
CalD
@AhabTRuler:
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Dr. Morpheus
“…any of you….” is a phrase which asks if there is a minimum of one person out of a set of all Balloon Juice readers who might have read this book. Potentially then “…any of you…” can be “everyone”.
Specifically “…any of you…” is an open set of 0 to N Balloon Juice readers where N is less than or equal to P (the population of Balloon Juice readers). It is not strictly a singular pronoun but a plurality because it refers to a set, not an instance.
Q.E.D., “Have any of you…” not “Has any of you…” is the correct construction.
de-lurker
@SiubhanDuinne:
In Irish, at least, it’d be Shuh-VAWN DIH-neh (short vowels in the surname), and I doubt that it’s much different in Scots. “duine” means “person,” independent of gender. Man would be “fear,” pronounced “fahr.” To really get the vowel, say “far” in a stereotypical boston accent but without dropping the “r.”
RedKitten
If he had said “Has any one of you…” that would have been correct.
But if he’s leaving the “one” out, then “Have any of you…” is the correct usage. This is because when using “any of you”, “any” actually implies the possibility of multiple people.
I think the reason for the confusion is that if you were using the indefinite singular pronoun of “anybody” or “anyone”, then “has” would indeed be correct.
If you twist it to third-person, you’ll see what I’m talking about:
Have they, any of the readers of Balloon-Juice, read this book?
Has they, any of the readers of Balloon-Juice, read this book?
BruinKid
I’m just waiting for a parody of a right-wing institute called the Bush Institute for Freedom and Democracy and Kittens and Rainbows.
Martin Eisenstadt
Yes, I’ve read the book. In fact, I wrote it. As amused as I am by your discussion over grammar, I’d be more amused if one of you said, “yes, that book sounds great – I’d love to go out and buy it!” It’s gotten universally great reviews (Ken Silverstein of Harper’s said, “it’s essential reading for all political junkies.”) And the Washington Monthly named it one of their 8 Top Books of the Year. I recommend it for all political science and history students.
And for the record, of course that was a grammatical error in the headline. But I don’t fault you for it.