The Globe and Mail's Simon Houpt rounds up recent faux news and f-up events in the U.S. media.

He kicks off with the imitation NYT, but there's more, much more.

From the Globe:

Tina Brown's new website The Daily Beast began the week being forced to take down part of a story about prospective inaugural ball gowns for Michelle Obama. Apparently, thinking she was reaching out to the former Project Runway winner Jay McCarroll for a gown sketch, a Daily Beast reporter accidentally contacted the Toronto musician Jay McCarrol (via his website, which looks nothing like that for Jay McCarroll), who chose not to disabuse the reporter of her misconception and instead submitted a sketch done up by a friend of his who attends Ryerson University. The hoax was reported by The Smoking Gun.

Haven't we all learned that, in the immortal words of that 1993 New Yorker cartoon, on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog? On the contrary: Internet-based hoaxes are apparently getting easier. The same day Tina Brown was flaying someone for the McCarroll/McCarrol mess-up, the world went all Lewis Carroll. That's when MSNBC ran a news break reporting that Martin Eisenstadt, a man the network identified as, "a McCain policy adviser," had been the source of the leak to Fox News about Sarah Palin's alleged ignorance on Africa.

During its report, MSNBC included a Republican strategist who said Eisenstadt, "is not helping the Republican party at all, and he needs to stop it." For those who know Eisenstadt, it was a bizarre looking-glass moment that, among other achievements, pointed up the essential fakery of those TV talking heads. Because there is no such Martin Eisenstadt; if that Republican strategist didn't know that, what else is he saying that's based on absolute ignorance?

Eisenstadt in fact is a character created by a couple of New York writers who have been developing him as the basis for a film. (At least, I think that's the case: Two writers gave an interview to the Times claiming credit for Eisenstadt, and nobody argued with them - except 'Eisenstadt' himself, via his website - but when you're talking about a fake character claiming the truth of something, how can you be sure of anything?)

There's an extensive blog in Eisenstadt's name which includes occasional YouTube reports. And he's been surprisingly - or sadly - successful planting gossip that gets picked up by blogs and, sometimes, other media. He was apparently the one who planted the rumour Barack Obama would appear on the Nov. 1 episode of Saturday Night Live as a result of a donation Lorne Michaels made to his campaign, and he also leaked the supernova rumour that SNL cast member Kristen Wiig "canoodled" with Joe the Plumber during one of the show's after parties. (Eww.)

When my real editor and I discussed all of this fake news, she suggested I propose my own utopian stories I'd like to see. But as I tried to dream up some, I realized my imagination had become stunted over the last couple of years. I'd barely dared hope for an Obama victory, never mind a utopian society. Right now, all I want is this economic roller-coaster to stop without causing more damage to those who are most vulnerable.