Directed by Andrew Marcus Reviewed by marion ds dreyfus http://www.dailyspeculations.com/wordpress/?p=8167
http://www.hatingbreitbart.com/
You may know a man by his enemies. So goes the adage, which is the guiding principle behind “Hating Breitbart.” It fits. A summary of this intense documentary would be a man with a website who forever changed the narrative journalistic paradigm, upending the traditional press and changing the ground-rules of political journalism.
A year after the passing of media gadfly and truth messiah Andrew Breitbart, an exemplary doc on the brilliant and passionate advocate who was Andrew Breitbart is a biting, often hilarious, usually provocative leave-behind for those who noted his Olympian fight against lies, government distortions and, especially, media skew the size of the Andes.
He died, we were told, of a massive heart attack at 43. What some might not know going in is that Andrew (like his sister, who has strong Mexican blood) was adopted, so his genetic predisposition to heart or related ills was not known. Intriguing factoid: His close friend confided to me that she thought he was related to George Washington’s family, since there is a resemblance [of sorts]. She added that Breitbart had tossed the idea around with her, too, so perhaps it tickled his fancy that as an acknowledged, rambunctious avatar of STTP–speaking truth to power– his DNA may have hailed from the Father of the country he so boisterously, and corruscatingly defended to his last breath.
The filmmakers culled his impish wit in hotels,conferences, panels; in cars on the move, with his ever-evident laptop a constant companion as he prepared to speak before appreciative, adoring crowds; in CPAC and at Tea Party gatherings. I attended several of the events he appeared at, where newsies massed in plantations of mics and notebooks around him for impromptu pressers, more often than not attacking him with unwarranted, even bizarre, accusations–desperate to take him down in their zeal to defend against his (what Gandhi called satyagraha) truth force. We see Blazing torrents of righteousness and sardonicism. His take-no-survivors full-on fury at those who tried not to correct the lies he pointed out, but to smear and barrage him from getting to the public with his message, make for amazing viewing. He did not back down when people of note accused the Tea Party protesting fiscal irresponsibility and waste (sound like the current sequester LP saga, eh?) of (baseless) racism. He offered, as we recall, the impressive sum of first $10,000 to anyone who could document even a single call against various black congressmen and “war heroes”–then, when nothing came forward, $100,000 to bring any solid video evidence of anyone calling out the N-word, let alone “15 people calling it out 15 times.” With the thousands of cell phones and electronics, cameras and TV crews in evidence, not a single instance of any name-calling or deliberate “spitting” could be adduced or brought forth: No one collected. The charges were fiction.