Austin Vegas's Meraki Life

newyorker:

Comment: The Truth in “King of Bain”

The reviews for “King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town,” a twenty-seven-minute campaign documentary distributed online by a Super PAC that supports Newt Gingrich, have not been kind. “Highly misleading” and “manipulative,” declared the Washington Post. “Misleading and exaggerated,” saidthe Times. On Monday, in South Carolina, the film’s subject, Romney, called it “probably the biggest hoax since Bigfoot.”

The criticisms are grounded in the belief that political advertising should be factually accurate and presented in a balanced context. That would surely be desirable, and it is useful for journalists to try to hold politicians accountable for their lies. Yet to dismiss “King of Bain” because it selects facts, distorts history, and tugs unrelentingly on the viewer’s emotions would be to overlook other interesting aspects of the film. “King of Bain” is to the Super PAC era of political distortion what “Apocalypse Now” was to Hollywood’s era of the auteur director: an apotheosis of inspired excess, and a marker of the times we inhabit.

- In today’s Daily Comment, Steve Coll writes about “King of Bain”:http://nyr.kr/yyxiVY

Have you seen this all the way through?  Who do you think crippled the economy?  Was it politicians or was it the finance industry? or both?

Watch it, follow the sources? What do you think of this?

In NO WAY does this mean I’m a Newt supporter, however, I find it interesting that this “movie” takes it’s direction straight out of the Karl Rove playbook with it’s emotional slant and hard at the throat punches.  Yet Karl himself commented yesterday in the WSJ, the film is “stuffed with hyperbole, half-truths and flat-out lies” and something more incline to be produced by “left-wing propagandist Michael Moore”.

I actually agree with Karl, that Mitt will need to counter this sooner than later; but I also think that if Obama wants to stay top of mind he should consider keeping this fire going with his own move in Florida before the primary there.  Maybe something suggesting his “experience” helping “turn around” the auto industry in 4 years and growing jobs?