The Washington Post 11/4/1996
For several years now, conservatives have hailed David Brock as a hero for his scathing portraits of a lying Anita Hill and a sexually voracious Bill Clinton.
But in the wake of his relatively favorable book on Hillary Rodham Clinton, Brock is being savaged by his former fans on the right. He is no longer welcomed by conservative radio hosts such as G. Gordon Liddy and Oliver North. The American Spectator is under pressure from some conservative donors to dump him. He has been pilloried for trying to ingratiate himself with the liberal press.
“As long as you’re reaching the conclusions they agree with, you’re a great journalist,” Brock says of his conservative detractors. “When you don’t come up with the caricature they want, you’re no good anymore, or you’ve got bad motives.”
He adds: “The natural tendency is to think I’m selling out and couldn’t take the heat anymore. . . . At this point I’m sort of a pariah.”
To be sure, Brock may simply be displaying an unerring instinct for publicity. Having failed to uncover any startling new revelations about the first lady to justify his big advance, he may have concluded that simply trashing her would be too predictable. A conservative attack dog who finds admirable qualities in Hillary Clinton — now that’s news.
Brock insists his reporting for “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham” simply led him to a more sympathetic view of the first lady. But many conservatives feel betrayed.
Carol Innerst of the Washington Times called the book “hard to swallow” and “practically a love feast,” saying: “It would appear that Mr. Brock, rather than Mrs. Clinton, is the one who has been seduced. . . . The bewitched Mr. Brock has written an apologia.”
A front-page piece in the Washington Times (where Brock once wrote editorials) said the book “enrages conservatives” who accuse Brock “of seeking to rehabilitate himself with the dominant media that has so far scorned him.”
Another conservative, the New York Post’s Hilton Kramer, also invoked the seduction metaphor, accusing Brock of “wanting to be liked.” And the Weekly Standard’s headline: “Brock Hillary.”
“This is sort of what the left did to me on The Real Anita Hill,’ ” Brock says, recalling his book that depicted Hill as “a bit nutty and a bit slutty.” “People who haven’t read the book are trashing the book and trashing the author’s motives. It’s definitely disturbing.”
Some (but certainly not all) liberals have accorded Brock grudging respect. “Mr. Brock seems to have found in St. Hillary’ a means to attempt his own redemption as a journalist,” wrote James Stewart in the New York Times Book Review. ” . . . It has no doubt taken courage for him to reach the conclusions he does.”
The practice of ideologues embracing an apparent defector from the other side works in both directions. When Richard Cohen, the liberal Washington Post columnist, wrote recently that Hillary Clinton’s explanations on Whitewater were “simply not convincing,” he was praised by Rush Limbaugh and the Spectator, among others. Suddenly Cohen was a font of wisdom.
Brock dismisses suggestions that he is trying to “reposition” himself in the mainstream media. “That would be a fool’s errand,” he says. “There are too many people in liberal circles who will never get over Anita Hill or Troopergate,” the story he broke about Arkansas state troopers allegedly arranging liaisons for then-Gov. Clinton.
Despite calls for his head, Spectator Managing Editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski said Brock’s job is “absolutely, totally, completely” secure.
Brock is not entirely shocked by the conservative hostility. “There was a certain point I realized I couldn’t have a book party because most of the people I’d normally invite might not come,” he says. Footnote: Gary Aldrich, the former FBI agent who wrote a book about the Clinton White House, was none too pleased when Brock announced that he had passed along the book’s discredited rumor about Clinton having late-night trysts at the Marriott. Aldrich recently dashed off a score-settling letter to Brock:
“Sorry for all the bad press on your book, David. I guess some of it — nah, probably a lot of it is coming from the stink that’s left over from what you did to me. But actually, it’s really a crummy book. . . . David, you can only dream of what it might be like to be an FBI agent, working at the White House. . . . I’ll make it my personal business to see to it that you are never accepted there. . . .
“You are a liar, David . . . You were used by the mainstream press, the same press that now says your book is D.O.A.” Grudge Match?
When The Washington Post took a look at “Jacqueline Bouvier: An Intimate Memoir,” reviewer Stephen Birmingham was less than flattering.
The author, John H. Davis, “has made something of a profession out of being Jackie’s cousin. . . . {The book} recycles and retreads bits and pieces of his previous work,” Birmingham wrote in late September.
Book World Editor Nina King says she didn’t know until the author complained that Birmingham had been sued for plagiarism by Davis in 1978. She says The Post will run a correction “apologizing to Davis and our readers.”
Had she known of the conflict, first reported by the New York Post, “we would not have assigned him the book,” King said. “Book reviews are not supposed to be the vehicle for paying back or getting even.” She said Birmingham, like all reviewers, signed a form saying he had no previous dealings with the author.
In settling the suit, Birmingham paid Davis $75,000 and acknowledged using portions of his book in Birmingham’s own Jackie O book. “I was appalled at the unethical bad taste of Mr. Birmingham accepting to do a review of my book . . . in view of the terrible and vitriolic dispute we had,” Davis said.
Birmingham says that since the review included two other books and “since it was all so long ago, I didn’t think that altercation of nearly 20 years ago would affect my judgment of his latest work, and I don’t think it did. I don’t have any grudge against John Davis, and certainly wouldn’t settle scores in the pages of Book World.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1996/11/04/david-brocks-trip-from-darling-to-demon/6ef8b109-4e6f-47c9-b754-653987585d1a/