This is less a documentary than a wholly uncritical celebration — with scant personal details — of Andrew Breitbart, the pugnacious conservative Internet media mogul who died suddenly of heart failure in March 2012, at the age of 43.
Director Andrew Marcus followed Breitbart around for two years and interviewed his fellow conservatives and family (most notably his father-in-law, formerly blacklisted actor Orson Bean, who takes credit as his political mentor).
Unfortunately, the cameras apparently stopped rolling before Breitbart’s greatest triumph, taking down vociferous liberal Rep. Anthony Weiner by exposing his sexting scandal and sticking doggedly by the story despite initial widespread skepticism in the mainstream media that Breitbart so vocally loathed for what he saw as their liberal bias.
The Weiner story is covered in clips during the closing credits, which end with a single title card acknowledging Breitbart’s passing. There is far more footage devoted to his lengthy battle against the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which lost most of its governmental funding because of an ethically dubious video entrapment endorsed and endlessly pushed by Breitbart.
Much of “Hating Breitbart’’ consists of its subject repeatedly denying accusations that he and his Tea Party colleagues are racially motivated in their unrelenting attacks on President Obama. Maybe so, but the volume of racially charged (and homophobic) comments on practically any article on Breitbart’s Web site certainly seems to tell another story about his readers.