By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

Update: Apparently the fake Martin Eisenstadt wasn't the source of the Fox News story, according to this post from MediaBistro.com. It still begs the question: Who was?

So the 24-hour cable news spin cycle got spun.

You know that story about how Sarah Palin didn't understand that Africa is a continent?

MSNBC thought it knew the source of that tidbit, originally leaked on Fox News Channel. It was, according to the station, a John McCain adviser named Martin Eisenstadt, senior fellow at the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy.

One problem: There is no Harding Institute. There is no Martin Eisenstadt.

They are both figments of the very active imaginations of a filmmaker named Eitan Gorlin and his partner, Dan Mirvish, according to the New York Time.

How embarrassing.

Eisenstadt has been quoted and debunked by other media, including the Huffington Post, political blogs for the Los Angeles Times and New Republic, and Mother Jones magazine.

So if you see a Martin Eisenstadt quoted someplace, disregard immediately.

And now all eyes are on Fox News -- or should be. Was Eisenstadt their source for the Palin story? If he wasn't, who was? The Africa-is-a-country-not-a-continent story isn't very believable, no matter who the source