Festival coverage sponsored by Indiepix.
They say that no publicity is bad publicity, but what the hell is up with Jeffrey Ressner's article at Politico entitled "Atwater doc makes conservatives groan", a bizarre piece of constructed outrage wherein Ressner, a former reporter for Time Magazine, brought a handful of Republican operatives, including former McCain adviser Mike Murphy and Matt Drudge-confidant Andrew Breitbart, to a LA Film Festival screening of Stefan Forbes' BOOGIE MAN and then recorded their disappointments with the film.
The problem: Ressner never admits in the piece that he invited the hand-picked crew. Yet, he describes the public LAFF screening variously as follows: "after seeing the documentary with a conservative crowd, including (Murphy), it seemed to us that the movie would make the GOP mad" and "some in the crowd groaned and hissed, angry at how the film used Democrats of dubious distinction to make its anti-GOP points and how it tarnished Republicans as racists". Who is this "conservative crowd" who "groaned and hissed"? Why, Ressner's guests, of course. Talk about convenient! It seemed to us, indeed.
And what is the gist of their grief? Seems that Forbes had the unmitigated gall to interview Democrats - even some who were friendly with and liked Lee Atwater - about the controversial political operative. Yes, that's right, the conservatives that Ressner brought to the screening would have preferred a film that didn't have anyone criticizing Atwater. They wanted a puff piece. Or so Ressner, with his absolutely nonsensical piece of criticism, would have us believe.
"Several conservatives in the crowd found fault with director Stefan Forbes’ choice of Atwater attackers, from Clintonista Terry McAuliffe, who pontificates about morality in the back seat of a chauffeured vehicle, to several strongly biased liberal writers. “What impressed was the director’s deft use of Joe Conason, Terry McAuliffe and Eric Alterman as objective voices to drive the narrative,” sniffed Drudge Report contributor Andrew Breitbart, founder of the news website Breitbart.com."
Of course, Forbes doesn't set up that trio to be objective voices. They are introduced as liberal Democrats who sometimes admire and sometimes deplore Atwater's actions. And, in sheer screen time, they are dwarfed by numerous Republican friends, co-workers and adversaries - including Ed Rollins, who worked with and then feuded with Atwater, as well as Tucker Eskew, an adviser to George W Bush and a friend and co-worker of Atwaters. Eskew often gets the last word in the film, including several pointed jabs at liberal orthodoxies.
So why the mock, completely constructed drama? Probably couldn't have anything to do with Politico's drive for controversial headlines - particularly those that might draw a link from Drudge or traffic via the website's deal with Yahoo. That would be too simple, right? I guess we'll just have to chalk it up to bad writing and imaginative reporting.
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