The news about President Warren G. Harding’s salacious letters to his mistress provided the “Harding Institute for Freedom And Democracy” with the perfect opportunity to attempt to trick the American media.
Filmmakers and satirists Eitan Gorlin and Dan Mirvish, who successfully duped MSNBC in 2008 into quoting a fake pundit, Martin Eisenstadt, run the faux think tank born along with Eisenstadt.
On Tuesday, the hoax Harding Institute balked at CNN’s coverage of the president’s steamy letters.
“On behalf of the Harding Institute, I take considerable umbrage at CNN and Jake Tapert (sic) for besmirching the good name of Warren G. Harding, and I demand an apology,” the think tank’s faux senior associate fellow for public affairs “Daniel Sadler” said in a statement titled “CNN Puts the ‘Hard’ Back in Harding: Presidential Thinktank Demands Apology Over Sex Scandal.”
Eitan Gorlin told TPM that he decided to use the Harding Institute to weigh on on the letters “because we feel an affinity to the Harding name and legacy that we can’t quite shake. And because we are developing a TV show centered around Eisenstadt and the Harding Institute that we hope to get off the ground in time for the 2016 election cycle.”
“Also, as satirists, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to comment on the media’s fixation with Presidential sex scandals above substance,” Gorlin added.
The Harding Institute has a website complete with “The Harding Award for Best Apology,” a Harding store and, of course, an allusion to Martin Eisenstadt.
Gorlin and Mirvish wrote a satirical novel, “I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate Adventures with the Last Republicans” in 2009, mocking Washington, D.C., think tanks and pundits, particulalry Republican ones.
