Boogie Man

Did anyone else take time to watch last night's broadcast on on Frontline of Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story? It is a complex portrait of a reptile whose deathbed confessions are also suspect as a final act of showmanship. Yet, at the same time, the final images of him are harrowing, and then we see sewer maggots such as Strom Thurmond and James Baker speaking at his memorial, but then we see James Brown in the audience. Something tells me that even if a similar cancer overtakes the carcas of Karl Rove he won't find a similar reconciliation with guilt. It's much easier to see him playing a game with his ghosts the way Roy Cohn does in Angels in America. And, yet, I suspect the ghost of Lee Atwater is out there, planning not just for the White House in 2012 but smaller races in 2010 and even smaller ones between now and then.