Book Reporter 1/21/2011 by Roz Shea
Can David Brock be believed when he names names and kicks some serious booty in BLINDED BY THE RIGHT? Today Show host Matt Lauer posed the question in an interview when the book was first released in hardcover. Brock writes in a new preface to the
paperback version of the New York Times bestseller that “as a leading conservative writer in the 1990s, I was confessing to having been complicit in a propagandistic campaign of lies against liberal targets — Anita Hill and the Clintons, among others. The question, of course, is one that all whistle blowers, publicly exposing nefarious activities in which they themselves were largely
compromised, inevitably must confront.”
He says that the “once a liar, always a liar” question is nearly impossible to answer. He finally decided to throw himself on the mercy of the court: “People could choose to believe me and my account of ‘the vast right wing conspiracy,’ or they could choose not to.”
When Brock learned that galleys of the book were being faxed around Washington prior to its initial release, he waited anxiously for the right shoe to drop. It never did. While the book was favorably reviewed in the mainstream press, conservative news organs such as the New Republic, National Review, Washington Times and New York Post, as well as the Wall Street Journal, all surprisingly took a pass. Surprising, because specific reporters and editorialists from each of these papers are pretty thoroughly kicked in the shins throughout the book. Even more surprising was that no efforts surfaced to discredit anything he wrote of a personal nature about players in the media and in the political arena. And personal they are —blushingly so. He avers that he has not been sued or even, except in a “gotcha” on the date of a wedding, caught in an inaccuracy. In one case, a columnist at
the New York Daily News called to say that Matt Drudge, author of a well-known online newsletter, had denied Brock’s allegation that he had hit on him in Los Angeles, following up with a sexually suggestive email. When Brock faxed a copy of the offending email to the Daily News columnist, he heard nothing more.
Is BLINDED BY THE RIGHT the gospel on how the right wing operated in Washington during the turbulent 1990s. Is it a how-to of yellow journalism? Is it an apology, a catharsis, or a get-even gesture by a man who was once the darling of the Washington right but then scourged when he strayed from the path? It is, perhaps, some of each. Brock alternates between braggadocio and self-flagellation for his role in the bringing down of a president. He declares that the right sought retaliation for the Democrats’ successful attacks on Judge Robert Bork during his Supreme Court nomination hearings,
and for the grilling Clarence Thomas took in his successful bid for the high court.
It was payback time, and Brock was handpicked to deliver the bill.
He begins with his days at Berkeley, where he was a liberal student activist. A hater of communism, he saw how radical the left had become in the early 1970s, and switched to the right as much to play devil’s advocate as to placate his conservative father. He wrote for a Berkeley student newspaper, the Berkeley Journal, a conservative counterpoint to the prestigious Berkeley Review. Openly gay, he says that he ignored the signs of anti-gay sentiment among his conservative colleagues, a pattern that would play a role in his future career in Washington.
During the first Bush administration he worked as a reporter at the Washington Times, owned by Rev. Sun Myung Moon. He left to serve a one-year fellowship at The Heritage Foundation. It was there that he met movers and shakers of the neo-conservative elite. He learned to his surprise what little regard this group held President Bush, who was often ridiculed for being “squishy” and “weak.” He recalls one celebrated incident when the wife of Ben Hart, a Heritage executive, gives a dinner party where a replica of President Bush’s head was presented on a silver platter.
He chronicles, with abounding hubris, his rapid upward climb to hobnob with the highest and mightiest on the GOP far right. As a new reporter at the American Spectator he succeeded in gaining interviews with the Arkansas State Troopers, which became known as Troopergate. This event first broke the barrier on a hands-off attitude by the press on a public figure’s private life. Years later he seems apologetic for his role in that fiasco, since the troopers’ allegations were later proved false, and in fact were regarded as tall tales of using their privilege as Governor Clinton’s drivers and bodyguards to set up dates for themselves, not Clinton. In his eagerness to publish the scuttlebutt, he skipped basic fact checking — as did his editors — though he shoulders sole responsibility for his carelessness. He claims to have bluffed the Los Angeles Times into publishing a Troopergate story, which would give his version more credence when it appeared in the now defunct American Spectator.
After Troopergate he is approached to write an expose on Anita Hill, the lawyer who testified against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court appointment hearings. THE REAL ANITA HILL became a bestseller and elevated Brock to a favorite on talk shows, the banquet circuit, and invitations into the super-elite circle of the Washington right. The Newt Gingrich crowd embraces him, and he covers and uncovers many escapades of his peers. He details how the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial pages climbed aboard the right wing express and writes that, despite rampant rumors that the Clintons were directly responsible for White House lawyer Vince Foster’s death, perhaps even committing murder, Foster’s suicide note implicates the Journal‘s hit pieces as a factor in the depression that led to his shooting himself in a Washington park.
Brock spares no one, not even himself, from excoriation.
Many years, hundreds of thousands of words, and millions of dollars later, he discovers that not only was Anita Hill probably accurate in her descriptions of Thomas’s sexual proclivities, but that Thomas’s strongest supporters, who were financing and encouraging Brock to write THE REAL ANITA HILL, apparently knew all along of Thomas’s questionable activities. This is, Brock says, when the blinders came off. His neo-conservative friends had held him to their collective bosom. He had entertained them in his DC townhouse, rubbed elbows with the mighty at state dinners, and had been wined and dined in lavish weekends in resort getaways. He was elevated to a pedestal, showered with awards, keynote speaking engagements, and television interviews.
It was while he was researching another surefire muckraking book on Hillary Clinton to follow up on the Anita Hill blockbuster that he discovered there was no scandal to disclose. He spent months agonizing over how to structure the book as, for the fist time, he interviewed people on both sides of the ideological spectrum. As he showed his backers pieces of the draft, it became evident to them that he was softening his strident invective and may actually be standing up for Ms. Clinton. Social invitations began to dry up. Rumors about his until then accepted or ignored gay lifestyle began to be whispered about. When THE SEDUCTION OF HILLARY RODHAM was finally published, he became a pariah, flung aside as a poisonous asp.
How credible is Brock’s account of the part he plays in the downfall of the Clinton White House? BLINDED BY THE RIGHT is touted by the New York Times as “a key document for historians seeking to understand the ethos of the incoherent 90s.” The Washington Post called it “A chilling portrait…of a partisan attack machine.” Meanwhile, Brock points out that the who’s who of the far right now sits in some of the highest positions of power in Washington. Names that we see daily in the media crop up generously throughout the book as major players in the bringing down of a presidency.
Is David Brock the poster boy for success in irresponsible reporting? How well a new book by Stephen Glass fares may be a test. Fired for his “creative journalism” at the New Republic, his newly released fiction novel is based on his own experience. We shall also see whether disgraced New York Times reporter Jason Blair can cash in on his transgressions. Undoubtedly, there is an audience out there for the saga of a lazy reporter with a propensity for peeking at his neighbor’s test paper.
http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews/blinded-by-the-right-the-conscience-of-an-ex-conservative