All These Wonderful Things’ AJ Schnack wonders what is up with the staged event presented as news?
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.
Hm. Right wing controversies might get a certain blogger’s attention? Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery:
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.
Meanwhile, here is a Cinematical review of Boogie Man.
