Boogie Man is a decent, kinda interesting film about Lee Atwater, the innovative, blues-playing wigga political operative of the first Bush Administration. Except for some cheesy, bad-seed-implying psychobabble stuff in the middle of the film about how his younger brother died, Boogie makes a good portrayal of the complexities of the guy: A man who was smart enough early in his career to fake a 3rd party candidate who would sling the mud for his guy, and who recognized that a certain Governor of Arkansas was going places -- asking his assistant to compose summaries of books (who has time to get read?). A white southerner who had black friends and liked black culture to the point of playing Blues guitar, but who had to resign from the Howard University Board of Regents because students there made the good point that he had sanctioned the Willie Horton Ad. A Southerner who wanted powerful Yankees to like him for portraying them as Texans.

The wonk-bait of the film is also pretty dee-lish: George W. Bush comes off as about as clever (as opposed to smart). Atwater managed a high school presidential campaign. The Watergate-era battle for the Young Republicans chair, involving the then-thin, still-damn-ultrageeky lookin' Turd Blossom special hisself, Karl Rove. But what makes this film worth recommending is that it turns out to make a pretty good case that what made Atwater evil (for lack of a better term) was that he brought about a Rapture for Spinmeisters 20 years ago.

That is, he proved that Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon weren't flukes and that Perception can equal Reality in a Democracy. This is evil because while in the short term it might be true, in the long term the only thing that's true about it is its self-destructiveness and its deadliness: Karl Rove's victory in 2006 (sic) is the obvious example of the former, the ongoing Iraq War, which looked like it would be quickly over, is the obvious example of the latter. Thanks to Lee, a delusion that's best left to all the 20th Century Busby-Berkeley Dictatorships that got out of hand -- Nazi Germany, The USSR, Ceausescu's Romania, Chavez' Venezuela, North Korea -- is now alive and well and has been living amongst the present American elites for quite some time. I hope Atwater asked God (or whomever Lee felt the need to appeal to) to help us all, because thanks to him, we sure as hell need it.