Blinded by the Right : The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

Rating:
Summary: Credible Account
Review: I believe David Brock's account in, "Blinded By The Right." He became alienated by the radical left and fell in with conservatives while a student at UC Berkley. The low path to lying and misrepresenting to smear Democrats and opponents to Clarence Thomas is disappointing, but believable. He wanted to belong, which is powerful motivator.

Rating:
Summary: The Real David Brock.
Review: Last weekend I finally had a chance to read David Brock's infamous Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative and was underwhelmed to say the least. Brock manages to be thoroughly dislikable while at the same time being completely banal. Unlike many of the other tell-all tales that have been published, it was nearly impossible to be sympathetic towards this particular narrator. It is hard to be empathic when a man slays and flails almost every friend that he ever made over the course of a dozen years working as a journalist at such renowned right-of-center institutions as The Washington Times, the Heritage Institute and The American Spectator. Charitably, he gets around to informing the reader about his attitude towards human relationships: "I lived in a mutual use society...I didn't really know what friendship was, nor was I ready to give it." [p.315]. My feelings for this memoir can be summed up in words the author penned for another topic. It manifests "a moral obtuseness that, when I think back on it, still astounds me..." [150]

A better title for this book would have been "The Unbearable Lightness of Observation" or "Will Somebody Somewhere Please Accept me" or more realistically: "Blinded by Ambition." David Brock, by virtue of his own description, was born a most ambitious young man whose biggest flaw appeared to an internal wiring that predisposed him to emotion-based decision making. His schoolboy autobiography "All About David" adumbrates the philosophy that he would adhere to for the rest of his life. Yes, after forty years, no better description is still possible of this man or his career.

Brock displays great insight when he says that while at The Washington Times he "had no deep understanding of conservative ideology." [p.36] What was true then is true now. I would contend that he never had one ounce of conservatism in him to begin with. From early on he was an unlikely rightist. His first political hero was Bobby Kennedy and one of the first pieces of legislation he supported was the proposed ERA amendment. Further, the first presidential candidate that he ever voted for was Jimmy Carter.

The whole premise for the story is flawed as if he were really a conservative to begin with there would have been one piece at least, of the leftist, anti-liberal agenda rejected somewhere at some point in the book. Yet, he appears incapable of deviating even slightly from the line of the new party for which he has fallen in love. He proffers substantive evidence that the man who was once blinded by the right is now blinded by the left. His concluding statements are an example of the type of tripe that might be a part of an undergraduate's paper for a radical professor. Brock blathers Democratic positions that have no basis in reality. He wrote, "The new [Bush] administration's policies of tax cuts for the wealthy..."[p.361] The tax cuts of both 2001 and 2003 impact everyone who pays taxes and not just the wealthy. They do so in a ratio that is proportionate to how much one has paid in the first place- but why let the truth interfere with good yarn? He continues on the same page with an accusation that Bush is "slashing environmental protections..." Another emotion inspired canard. No protections were ever slashed. Clinton's poison pills about arsenic in the water and appliance regulations were never part of his administration and were signed on the eve of Bush's inauguration. Bush was right to discard them. No existing laws were ever changed. Then he finally says that Bush was "rolling back civil rights" which is another leftist confabulation. He never has or undoubtedly will ever do such a thing. As a matter of fact, Bush through his support of the Supreme Court cases regarding affirmative action, has come out in support of civil rights legislation as if affirmative action is found to be unconstitutional it will ensure that citizens will not be discriminated against anymore based on their gender or race.

Brock is not content merely to go after Bush, he wants Ronald Reagan as well. He states that "the Reagan combination of tax cuts and deficit spending had wrecked the economy."[p.247] No more fallacious words have ever been written. Tremendous economic growth and the stock market boom of 1982 to 2000 obviously disproves his statement that the economy was wrecked. Unemployment plunged, inflation disappeared, as did our deficit from the resulting revenues that increased productivity and growth created. Obviously, with statements like this, David Brock has mentally, in the words of that old Chris Farley skit, been "living in a van down by the river" since he reentered the den of the left.

Brock's ambition made the right his conduit for approval after he witnessed the endless tattered-shirt marching of the politically correct hordes at his college campus. That's not particularly surprising when one considers that he attended the University of California at Berkeley. According to Brock, he was so alienated by the PC totalitarians that he fled, as he always seems to do, to the side that was its diametric opposite. That is how we inherited him. [One only wishes that he had enrolled at Hillsdale.] Brock wants us to believe that over the course of many encounters and friendships he eventually became blinded by right. Most likely, David Brock is an opportunist and, as such, he, neither the right nor the left, has been the one done the blinding all along.

One must presume that Brock showed a prodigious amount of talent as a young political writer but I think that this form of writing is not the right vocation for him. The gloss of his observations make one believe that fashion or the gossip columns are a more suitable destination. He should address this by writing a dedication for his next edition, if there is one, in honor of the "wonderful trivial muse that has dominated my existence for almost a half-century." That is in keeping with his confessional as it is plagued by superficial observations and trivial asides. We hear all about restaurants in the capitol and what his acquaintances abodes were adorned with, but why would any serious person even remotely care enough about such filler to make it an intrinsic part of an autobiographical work? I grew so tired of this E Television sensibility that I almost put the book down twice. We are informed that Sidney Blumenthal wore his suits quite stylishly and that a couple of people he knew often wore Hermes ties, as if the act of their wearing them encouraged judgment on our part. Now I concede that I am not the type of person who would even be admitted into the Calaveras County Jumping Frog jet set, but what the heck does it matter if someone wears a Hermes tie anyway? The book is thoroughly marred by endless minutiae about people who wear skirts but used to appear as tomboys and others who wear sloppy corduroy jackets. Who even remotely cares about this stuff?

While I read I could not but wonder how much this man could have learned if he had not been so obsessed with the jejune aspects of life. For a dozen years David Brock associated with some of the most gifted people in America but observing fashions, rather than thoughts, seemed to be his passion. His conservative days can be remembered by his habit of buying "Turbull & Asser shirts and switching from cigarettes to cigars" [p.91] and he then fondly recalled that a famous editor gave him "a compliment about a pale-blue spread-collar shirt I had bought with my mother's credit card at Neiman Marcus." [p.25] With such thoughts on his mind it's no wonder his convictions were as deep as a kiddie pool purchased at a Wal-Mart in July.

A major focus of the book concerns his gay sexuality. He falls into the classic trap of believing that the world is divided into only two types of people. For Brock it is between those who are pro-gay and those who are anti-gay. At the end of the book he sees the liberals [anti-liberals-BC] as being the more compassionate and tolerant and that's why he begins worshipping them as his new deity. Well, they certainly advertise that they're diverse and tolerant so, when one considers Brock's shallowness, it becomes immensely surprising that he ever found his way to the conservative side in the first place.

Brock's take on the pro-gay/anti-gay issue is devoid of meaningful argument. Really, he offers no arguments whatsoever but is content to assert interior motives without the benefit of providing the reader evidence for his conclusions. At one point he says "I thought name-calling was cool."[p.67] and this is obvious over the course of 365 tedious pages. He attacks practically everybody for being anti-gay or a racist (one imagines a member of the Blinded... editorial team flipping him diamond cuff links or designer handkerchiefs every time he made use of invective). In fine leftist fashion, Brock concludes that being anti-homosexual is an inherent part of being a Republican.

Rating:
Summary: It worked for me
Review: After having read a good number of books in the "Franken vs. O'Reilly" genre, I found Brock's book engrossing not just because of the politics involved, but because the story seemed so deeply personal and honest. I couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Revelation as History; Confession as Therapy
Review: David Brock provides an "insider" look at the so-called right wing conspiracy that apparently is still lurking in the shadows. It is the story of how a journalist evolved (quote unquote) from preppy reporter of all things conservative to a nobler, more humane man of the Left. Most conversions of this sort occur on the spiritual realm accompanied by an epiphany or two. Ideology is not a characteristic of America: Eisenhower, Nixon, Clinton, JFK and Bush I were anything but rigid in their approach to governing. Reagan alone switched ideololgy (rather late in the game) but remained true to himself. And that is the problem I have with Brock - he seems to have lost himself somewhere along the line.

How can someone work, think and write one way yet suddenly decide that actually they supported the other side? Stranger still, this type of conversion is almost always Left to Right for some reason. Then there are the claims (denied, debunked, unconfirmable) that serve to buttress his arguments.

If David Brock has had a change of heart - more power to him. But the few times I have seen him on the air since his book (he discusses his book each time) he has been unable to defend or explain his actions and when questioned lapses into confusion, stammering and/or obstinancy. He is caught in a Catch 22 - the Right derides him as a traitor, the Left remains suspicious of his past.

The most hilarious outcome is the 180 degree change of heart among the talking heads. NPR types who once assigned him to a lower rung of Hell are suddenly all agog over his revelations. Conservative commentators who once hawked his books now say he is not to be trusted. Welcome to life in America.

Rating:
Summary: Laughable
Review: This guy has lost all sense of balance and intellect. He has already joined the trash heap of literary history.

Rating:
Summary: Strange Blackmail
Review: As a CNN commentator put it, this book uses apology as a marketing tool. Those who believed Anita Hill are now using David Brock's book for ammunition. Unfortunately for them, the most damaging information Brock provided about Hill in his articles and book do not depend on his veracity. Regardless of what one thinks of Brock, it's well established that:

Hill stayed quiet about the alleged harassment for eight years.

Hill left her position at the Department of Education to take a position at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, continuing to work for Thomas.

Hill was informed orally and in writing that her job at the Department of Education had civil service protection, contrary to her sworn testimony.

Susan Hoerchner, Hill's main witness, originally placed the corroborating phone calls at a time and place where Thomas could not have possibly been the harasser. She lost her recollection of this after talking to one of Hill's attorneys.

When talking to a congressional staffer, Hill identified Linda Lambert Jackson as a corroborating witness, then dropped any reference to Jackson from her testimony. It's as if Hill knew all along that Jackson would deny her story (which she later did).

One doesn't have to know much about Anita Hill's story to find errors in Blinded by the Right. "When Hill returned for further cross-examination on Saturday morning, the Republicans were loaded for bear." Hill testified on Friday, October 11, 1991. Clarence Thomas was the only witness the next day. Hill did not return for cross-examination. She cancelled one of her witness panels. The author of The Real Anita Hill got this type of stuff right.

The most remarked upon part of Brock's conversion is his confession that he "blackmailed" Kaye Savage, a source for the book Strange Justice. Savage had a civil rights position at the White House and worked with Thomas and Hill when they were employed at the Department of Education and EEOC. According to Strange Justice, one day in 1982 Savage gave Thomas a ride home from work. When she briefly went inside his efficiency apartment Savage noticed the walls "were papered with centerfolds of large-breasted nude women." This incident was also described in excerpts in the Wall Street Journal the day Strange Justice was published in October 1994.

The same day Savage was interviewed by ABC News for "Turning Point" and "Nightline." On both shows Savage said that she saw one centerfold in Thomas's apartment. The other nudes had disappeared. Several people noticed the inconsistency at the time.

Brock caught the contradiction on "Turning Point." He played up this inconsistency in his review of Strange Justice. A few weeks after the review appeared, Frank Rich wrote in his New York Times column that Brock had used derogatory information from a divorce case to bully Savage into changing the story in Strange Justice. Brock denied the charge at the time, but now he says that he did "force her into backing off the story she told the Strange Justice authors." Furthermore, Brock claims that through an intermediary Clarence Thomas told Brock of derogatory personal information "...raised against her in a sealed court record of a divorce and child custody battle more than a decade ago." (The intermediary denies this.)

This is a decidedly odd case of blackmail. First consider the motives. In a normal blackmail case the witness is pressured to say something he or she hadn't said before. In this case, Brock claims to have blackmailed Savage into saying what she already said on national television.

Savage's reaction to the alleged blackmail is also odd. If one is going to complain about being blackmailed, one should do so before cooperating with the blackmailer. And the complaint should be directed towards the police or courts. Instead Savage contacted a newspaper columnist through an intermediary, after the story was published.

And why should Thomas get involved in this? Savage's story couldn't do any real harm to him. Thomas never testified about his dealings with Savage. He had a nice job with constitutionally protected lifetime tenure. Why risk impeachment so that David Brock could bully Kaye Savage into saying something she had already said on national television?

Savage said that two people knew the details of Savage's court case - Hill and Thomas. Actually, several other people should know:

Savage's lawyer
Savage's ex-husband and his lawyer
The judge

On the other hand, Savage had no need to provide embarrassing information concerning her divorce case to Thomas or Hill. At the time Savage worked with them, Hill and Thomas were lawyers at the Department of Education and EEOC. They focused on education and employment discrimination. They probably didn't moonlight as divorce lawyers. (In 1989 Thomas became an appeals court judge, but by then Savage's case would have been settled. Neither a federal appellate judge nor a Supreme Court justice would have much need for sealed court records about a divorce.)

Throughout this and other matters Brock does not provide reliable details to help verify his story. He doesn't provide any independent evidence or references indicating that sealed court records concerning Savage's divorce exist (unlike The Real Anita Hill, which had detailed notes, his new work cites no references at all.)

But it is a verifiable fact that Kaye Savage contradicted the main point of her story in Strange Justice before she ever met David Brock. The authors of Strange Justice have never explained the contradictions between their story and Savage's interviews with ABC News. Claims of blackmail are irrelevant to the reliability of the centerfold story. The extra pin-ups should be sealed with Savage's divorce records.

This is a phony confession to sell a book. Brock should fit in well with his new friends, as long as he continues to make himself useful to them.

Rating:
Summary: Let's Brock!!!
Review: Honest. Scary. Engrossing. Brock's memoir plays the reader like a roulette wheel. A story that is hard to read, as he mentions, but nevertheless harder to not read. Brock undresses the right-wing political conspiracy for one-party domination in the United States, for all to see its ugly reality. A political memoir that is suprisingly humane, in a world where politics seem to be the antithesis of humanitarianism. Brock reminds us that our perceived happiness is not always the path to being happy. Brock's change of path, similar to an NRA member joining the green party, shows us that uncertainty in life is not a sign of weakness but can prove to be the catalyst of growth. If your ready for a change, "Blinded By The Right" will leave you with your eyes wide open.

Rating:
Summary: liberalism's prodigal son
Review: I really enjoyed this book, as evidenced by my numerous underlinings and marginalia. With one major flaw, it is a vindication of observers' assertion that a right wing conspiracy was hounding Bill Clinton, among others, and waylaying the democratic process. In this readable political history wrapped around a personal odyssey, we first learn about Brock's relationship with his father, his awareness of himself as a gay man, and his political involvement at university. Is Brock telling the truth? An article in the New York Review of Books stated that a number of people quoted or described in the book have said that the bits about them, at least, were accurate. Is Brock an opportunist who may take the often-repudiated, often-reclaimed low road ala Geraldo Rivera? Maybe. Whether or not he does will not detract from the wealth of information he imparts. Brock was right in the thick of the Clinton-hating, Anita Hill-bashing movement -- working at the American Spectator, operating for Richard Mellon Scaife, rubbing elbows with the blonde bimbos.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting the dirt on the right-wingers who stepped all over the Constitution in two coup attempts -- the unsuccessful impeachment of a duly elected president and the successful Florida 2000 debacle that ended with the Supreme Court's silver-platter delivery of the presidency to a well-funded princeling who'd actually lost the election. These same people are running things now. They are in the White House. They are getting big paybacks that will cost this country dearly. And yes, I want to know about them.

Choice bits: Ann Coulter questioning whether "to impeach or assassinate" President Clinton; Laura Ingraham saying she doesn't really believe the things she says on television; Matt Drudge, right-wing arbiter of morality, taking the author out on a date (not that there's anything wrong with that); William "I'm-more-virtuous-than-you" Bennett saying that hate-filled Rush Limbaugh is "possibly our greatest living American"?! It's as if every bully who ever took your lunch money or beat up your kid brother or stopped a recount by sending thugs down to Miami is now in politics. Brock tries, somewhat successfully, to explain why he stuck with ideologically void strategists and publicists fronting for religious fundamentalists and worked for billionaire conspiracy-monger Richard Mellon Scaife; he is less successful at explaining why they hate Clinton so much (though he is burdened by trying to explain the irrational), but he does a fine job of documenting the phenomenon. He describes the desperate mentality that justifies all actions in the name of conservatism, whether or not it tramples the Constitution and whether or not it any longer bears a resemblance to true conservatism. Scaife, who still believes that Vince Foster was murdered, funds many conservative organizations including the Federalist Society, dedicated to bringing radical jurists to the bench. Brock addresses the consequences of a radically conservative judiciary, and it is frightening.

Where the author excels is in describing the evolution of the far right political movement in the past two decades -- the Reagan coalition, the birth of the neoconservative movement, and the Gingrich Revolution with its shift from political battles to moral. He also captures the hypocrisy of the men and women who decry adultery and homosexuality in the morning then seduce their own interns or meet at D.C.'s gay bars in the evening; the conservative think tanks and organizations that get tax-exempt status; partisan organizations that decided to impeach Clinton long before anyone had heard of Monica Lewinsky .... "trampling", as the author states, " the Constitution for partisan ends, to gain power they couldn't win in an election". Amen.

The book is also a condemnation of the mainstream media, who not only gave Brock's very biased book about Anita Hill great reviews, but who regularly confer legitimacy to even the most blatantly partisan shills. (I'm sure Matt Drudge's appearance on Meet the Press and Rush Limbaugh on This Week with David Brinkley had Edward R. Murrow spinning in his grave.) Brock states that, after years of working at the American Spectator and writing books under conservative editors, he later learned that journalists usually had fact checkers! Brock admits that his writing was filled with fabrications and sourceless rumors, and that he made no attempt to verify or balance the misinformation. Early in his career he believed what he was writing, but later he did not. You may or may not want to put your coins in the pocket of the author, but this is a very interesting and readable expose.

Democracy's only hope, if we can't depend on the loyal opposition to grow spines, is that the right is so mean, nasty and vicious that they will turn on each other. After reading this book, I fully expect that to happen.

This book is filled with a wealth of information about the links between individuals and organizations, particularly Scaife, who seems to be democracy's Moriarty -- a sinister mastermind at the hub of all that is wicked in rightist politics. The only problem with the book is that there is no index. With so many names and organizations listed, it's a real fault not to have one, but I had so much fun that I'm giving it 5 stars anyway.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but not convincing
Review: For the most part, I enjoyed reading David Brock's book. It was well written and entertaining and it gave me a new perspective on some of the conservative leaders in our country. However, the book came off to me as something like a gossip novel. I don't know if what he was saying about some of the people was really true or not. The book really needed more substance. I wasn't convinced that I was getting the whole story. One interesting element in the book was Brock's discussion and criticism of himself as someone ignoring his own morals and principles to get ahead. He seemed honest and I appreciated the fact that he decided to follow what he believed was right. I would like to see a book from him discussing issues that he feels strongly about, instead of bashing a movement he disagreed with. Brock even discussed in his book that it seemed like the conservative movement was not so much about issues as it was about uniting against the liberals. It almost seemed like he was doing the same thing from the other side. As a teenager nearing the age to vote, it did give me new inspiration to research who I vote for, and not get caught up in blindly following a party. I appreciated Brock's discussion of why he chose to join the conservative crowd when he was in college. It gives me a lot to think about as I will have to make those kinds of decisions for myself very soon. Overall, Brock's book was entertaining, but could've been much better with more substance and less gossip.

Rating:
Summary: Best explanation of the Right's tactics and victories
Review: I was surprsied that this book offered more than the disappointing story of a closeted homosexual operative in the U.S. conservative movement. Explained (and exposed) cogently by David Brock, U.S. conservative think-tanks, media organs, and pundits are in fact funded by a cadre of wealthy and irrational benefactors. They ruthlessly conduct an ongoing war against their fellow-Americans while masquerading as responsible publishers, journalists, and intellectuals. As Brock explains, the far right consists largely of strategists and PR operatives rather than rational thinkers. Anyone who is dubious about right wing commentators and organizations and suspects that they must somehow be connected and coordinated will find this book fascinating.