Roger Ebert wrote this in his Boogie Man review last year:

“A fascinating portrait of an almost likable rogue…It makes a companion piece to Oliver Stone’s W…a remarkable portrait…heartbreaking.”

Now he sees a connection to the health care debates:

“I saw a documentary last year about Lee Atwater, the strategist for the Reagan and George H. W. Bush campaigns, the mentor of Karl Rove and George Bush. The man was a brilliant creator of memes…He made “Willie Horton” a code term. He got many people to believe “Michael Dukakis opposed the Pledge of Allegiance.” He was capable of outrageous invention, as when about the Willie Horton ad he said with a straight face: “I don’t think a lot of Southerners even noticed there was a black man in that ad.”

Atwater might have been proud of “Death panels.” Those two little words have derailed the town hall meetings, by stirring up such unruly dissent that legislators have been shouted down by their own constituents…

Posted: August 19, 2009 Comments Off