Politico‘s Jeffrey Ressner has found some conservative-minded types who have problems with Stefan Forbes‘ Boogieman, the recently screened Los Angeles Film Festival doc about Lee Atwater, the southern-born Republican opportunist and campaign attack dog who introduced pure unmitigated evil into the American political system by pushing negative images of his Republican clients based on race-baiting, divisive half-truths and flat-out lies.

Forbes’ film, trust me, is a fairly drawn portrait of an absolutely wretched and malicious scumbag, a Karl Rove-ian manipulator of the first order who sprinkled hate and slander like so much fertilizer, a guy who tried to apologize to victims of his evil spinnings on his deathbed out of fear he might go to hell. And yet he’s got defenders who are sticking up for him.
Republican political consultant Mike Murphy has told Ressner that the film is √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚Äúa pejorative, liberal cartoon,√ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ǭù and that the doc is guilty of “a greater assault on the truth than anything Lee Atwater was accused of.” My view of the film — √ɬ¢√¢‚Äö¬¨√Ö‚Äúthe sharpest and fairest portrait of smear politics and Republican culture since So Goes the Nation, last year’s doc about the 2004 election” — is quoted in the piece. A third view comes from Breitbart.com’s Andrew Breitbart, who complains to Resser about “the director’s deft use of Joe Conason, Terry McAuliffe and Eric Alterman as objective voices to drive the narrative.”
Meaning that the film would work better if Forbes had spoken to more Atwater pallies and Republican apologists? Guess what? Such guys are heard from all through the film. This isn’t a one-sided doc, despite what Murphy and Breitbart will tell you.