Rating: 
Summary: This book could be called
Review: "The Real David Brock" or "The Seduction of David Brock," depending on one's opinion of the author. Brock, once a leading hatchet man for the right wing who later had second thoughts about his "exposes" of Anita Hill and Bill and Hillary Clinton, among others, has written an insider's account of the far right and his estrangement from it.Brock grew up being a liberal Democrat who had idolized Robert F. Kennedy and whose first presidential vote was for Jimmy Carter in 1980. He attended U.C. Berkeley because it was seemingly the center of liberalism; however, some of the things he witnessed at Berkeley belied the belief that Berkeley was the "free speech" capital of academia. He became disappointed in what he believed was "political correctness" on the campus, and finally he veered away from most of liberalism toward conservatism. He also became interested in becoming a journalist and began working for some local publications. Upon graduation Brock moved to Washington, D.C., first working for the Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times, and later working for a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation. Brock was moving up in the world of right-wing politics despite being a gay man in an anti-gay political movement. He tried to fit in although he never really did. Brock was one of many young people who turned to conservatism in the 1980s, and he was one of many who became prominent. He notes that while Reagan was popular among the young conservatives, it was Newt Gingrich and his slash-and-burn style of politics that galvanized the young. Brock also made important political connections, most prominently Judge Larry Silberman and his wife Ricky, who served as Brock's surrogate parents. Eventually Brock's reporting talents and his passionate belief in the "movement" (as Brock calls it) lead him to write a best-selling book critical of Anita Hill and supportive of Clarence Thomas and a plum reporting assignment for the Richard Mellon Scaife-backed American Spectator magazine. Both gigs brought Brock considerable fame and money, and his infamous "Troopergate" article for the American Spectator was the spark that led to the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Bill Clinton which nearly toppled his presidency. But there was a problem with all of this success in Brock's hindsight. Brock felt he was so blinded by partisan zeal that he never felt compelled to look at all sides of the story; his employers didn't help matters by not fact-checking his work. There were numerous errors in the Anita Hill tome, as other reporters and columnists noted, and his sources for his "Troopergate" article were called into question. It wasn't long before Brock's conscience got the better of him. He began to veer away from the conservative movement. The final straw was when Brock decided to write a book about Hillary Clinton. His more even-handed approach, while admirable, cost him considerable support among his conservative backers. He eventually broke away from the conservative movement altogether, and he publicly apologized to the Clintons for Troopergate and repudiated his Anita Hill book. While ostensibly a memoir, Brook's book gives the reader an account of an era from the vantage point of one who was inside it. Brock knew many of the players in the right-wing cabal that tried to undermine Bill Clinton's presidency: Ted Olson, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, C. Boyden Gray, George Conway, and R. Emmett Tyrell are only a few of the many people Brock knew during his time with the far right. While Brock is not flattering to most of these and other players, he does give a sense of what these people were like. Furthermore, Brock gives the reader a first-person account of the so-called Arkansas Project, financed by the American Spectator and involving payments to Whitewater witness David Hale, which is sharply different from the recollections of current Solictor General Ted Olson. Brock also gives his account of his attempts to try and undermine the veracity of a competing book about the Thomas/Hill hearings for a book review; his underhanded techniques were doubtless a low point of his career. Sometimes Brock's vignettes are funny, as in his meeting with Armstrong Williams; other times his recollections are very painful, even disgusting, to read, such as his Anita Hill debacle. All in all, Brock's book is an easy, engaging read. Brock must have been stung by the comment of then-columnist for the New York Times Anthony Lewis, who described Brock's Anita Hill book as "sleaze with footnotes," for Brock fails to provide footnotes and an index for this book. However, this book cries out for footnotes and an index, and this is the major complaint I have with this book. Despite this, Brock's book perfectly complements Gene Lyons and Joe Conason's book about the get-Clinton cabal, THE HUNTING OF THE PRESIDENT, and his first-person account also complements Michael Lind's UP FROM CONSERVATISM. As such this book is highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really worth it
Review: I got about half way through this book and couldn't finish it. It'swhiny and, frankly, annoying. (...)
Rating:
Summary: Finally, an expose of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
Review: Finally, an expose of the very real Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, whose goals were to subvert the true American values of peace, freedom, compassion, tolerance and the Constitution, all the while waving the flag and talking about "freedom" and "family values"; and who eventually turned their sights toward the Clintons in the most vicious smear campaign ever orchestrated against a president.David Brock...dismayed at what he perceived as the arrogance of UC Berkeley leftists, was seduced by the paranoid American right. He soon found himself in a right-wing netherworldin Washington D.C. where lies, hypocrisy and intolerance were the order of the day. Brock engaged in a seedy form of journalism in which the end justified the means - i.e., it's OK to lie if it is necessary to achieve a desirable goal. Though Brock was always wary of the more virulent forms of conservatism - racism, anti-gay bigotry, anti-abortion zealotry and Christian fundamentalism - he found himself working to further their cause. He became part of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, writing lies and spreading false rumors about Bill Clinton, rumors that eventually led to his undeserved impeachment. Brock has since repudiated the conservative movement, and wrote this book to expose the movement that had duped him and many Americans for so long. It is a work that is long overdue, badly needed in this time of unchecked conservatism.
Rating: 
Summary: Post-Modern Conservativism Exposed
Review: There was a time in Washington when liberals fought conservatives and conservatives fought liberals and all worked within the framework of the constitution to try to gain power. As David Brock, ex-consrvative hack for the American Spectator and author of critical books on Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton, explains in Blinded By The Right, those days are long gone. Today's Washington is a place where the extreme Right-Wing of America has cultivated its own seperate, shadow Washington - complete with Right-Wing media outlets, think-tanks and activist groups - everything a good right-wing conservative needs, as Brock explains, to "win the battle over the mind" of the public. This book as absolutely fascinating for all those who aren't right-wing conservatives. For those who are, well, you knew you weren't going to like this book anyway. It's basically about the switch of one conservative journalist from right-wing to liberal and how he had to suppress his left-leaning tendencies to try to further his career in the Right-Wing machine. For those looking for big-names, Brock obliges, happily listing nearly each and every name of every phony conservative and every destructive Right-Wing force that's entered politics since Regan was elected in 1980. The Epilogue completes Brock's thesis, showing how the "vast, right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton talked about regarding her husband's impeachment hearings actually exists - and now has about six of it's top members in the Bush Administration. Read the book, even if it's written with too much of a autobiographical tone to it. Those looking for juicy dirt, as usual from Brock, won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining as hell
Review: Man, I've been waiting to read this book since I read Brock's fit of apologia in Esquire in 1997. It's a good window into the fevered swamp of the conservative movement, it provides plate upon plate of good dish on various conservatives (although if you're an eeeeevvill lib-rul elitist like me, the claims that the righty ranks are full of anti-semites, homophobes and a therapist's dream assortment of various obsessions and complexes won't come as a surprise) and Brock seems sincere enough in its pages. True, he may have lied in print to serve The Party, but unlike slimebaugh, he admits it, and I have no reason to doubt him now.
Although it's not a book that'll be a cornerstone of progressivism, for liberals like me it's damn entertaining, and will undoubtedly send the slack-jawed armada of "freepers" into fits. If nothing else, "Blinded" is certainly illustrative of just how far off the rails rightists have gone. Brock's a pretty good writer, too, and the book's hardly boring.
Rating:
Summary: A Kafkaesque Hate Trip
Review: This book gets five stars for the list of names it drops, and I get five for actually making it to the last page without vomiting once. Brock gives us a guided tour of the hate matrix from the top down. Bizarre freaks like Rupert Murdoch, Sun Moon, and Richard Scaife bleed influence and money into a rat maze crowded with legions of hungry rodents thoroughly purged of principal and hungry to feed. And feed they do, on everything from the self-esteem of a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, to the tentative and twisted lies and fantasies of a bunch of power junkies, gold diggers, hillbillies, sociopaths, and miscreants, all floundering around together like pigs in a sty. Brock and his buddies attended the delivery of the current Rosemary's Baby of a presidential administration that we currently cower under in a state of near-perpetual fear and utter victimhood. He appears to repent as it twitches away in its black cradle, but his confessions and regrets are little more than weak platitudes, and the author's core personal defects are neither explored nor resolved here in any meaningful way. At the bitter end, I was left with a haunting feeling that endures. The book is billed as an autobiography, but the interior world of its author is either heavily guarded or nonexistent. Who is this guy, and who abducted his soul? Certainly not the Berkeley anarchists who angered him, or his neocon professor friends who mentored him - no comic book activists or university faculty could ever warp a smart guy like this to such an extreme. Don't crack this book expecting anything but solid concrete - it's nothing more than a running diary describing who he screwed, how hard he screwed 'em, and his resulting ample compensation. That's what you get, but you get a LOT - perhaps more than you can take. Occasionally Brock describes his motivations with blubbering, intelligence-insulting rationale: "I wanted status. I wanted love and acceptance." After a while these shallow reflective utterances taper down to a predictable drone as he plods through detailed descriptions of year after unrelenting year of his own original and continuous journalistic atrocities. Liberals wonder why they do not possess a frankenstein-meets-godzilla kind of media monster that might lumber forth to confront the fascist hate regime fueled by minds like the one floating around inside Brock's head. Read this book and you might gain some insight into the problem, but only by its very LACK of a real explanation. Maybe it has something to do with personality type. Brock's is a perfect fit for the extreme right - vain, superficial, materialistic, opportunistic, sex-confused - his every paragraph is an act of servile, self-conscious spite dedicated to advancing his puppetmasters' agenda. There's no way the left can compete with this stuff - David Brock's work makes Michael Moore's look like empirical science by comparison. Actually, it's not even ironic that Brock could come out of the closet and still survive within the hard right on nothing more than his skills in the art of character assassination and slander. To me, there's no irony in even the very thought of this book, and this idea kind of scares me, and it leads straight to the conclusion that Brock is an incorrigible operator, a hard-core narcissist with a Huey Lewis soundtrack bubbling away endlessly in the shallow murk of his own semi-conscious mind. At the end of the day, David Brock was never really 'blinded by the right'; he was already blind before he ever enlisted his services. This book doesn't describe how that happened. Read at your own risk, serve up a short dose of pity, and pray that you and your offspring will never turn out like David Brock.
Rating:
Summary: Other reviews here miss the point
Review: I always read the one star reviews first. And most of them, for this book, are misguided.
First off, Brock never claims any loyalty or affiliations with the Democratic party. So to call this some leftist hate slander treasonous etc etc is just ignorant. At the end of the book, Brock has broken his last meaningful ties with his ex-conservative friends, and sits in a political purgatory. He is exchanging ideas with a member of the left, Sidney Blumenthal, about Clinton. Brock admits to being very skeptical of Sidney to begin with, as he does not want to become the puppet of the other side just as he had been with the conservatives. His conclusion is that, contrary to his belief, there were some nice people on the left.
The first line of his epilogue, he states "In the fall of 2000, I registered to vote as an INDEPENDENT" (emphasis mine).
I've seen a review state that he changes sides like he changes his socks. Brock was a conservative, in practice, for 18 years. So that claim is absurd.
Brock exposes the journalistic integrity that was gradually forsaken as he strived to become an important member of the party, aided by those who wanted to use his skills to keep Democrats out of power. Brock admits freely that he harbors no ill will towards his ex friends, because HE is entirely responsible for his own actions and self-delusions. his intent was to expose the influences and pressures prevalent in the movement.
The argument that he wrote this to make a buck is silly, too. Brock was well aware that, had "The Seduction of Hillary Rodham" towed the party line, and bashed the first lady, he would, again, have been a millionaire. (He collected his advance, but gave up any future book deals by refusing to discredit Hillary in his book). Initally, after leaving the conservative movement, Brock played the brainwashed role, and refused culpability for his writings (confessions of a right wing hit-man). He makes clear that writing this book is also a way to expose his own lack of integrity and unwillingness to be true to himself as major reasons for his actions. This is the only way to reestablish trust.
I think every time O'Reilly and Hannity (and even the president) refuse to admit their own faults and lies in the face of evidence to the contrary, makes them WEAKER and less trustworthy. I can forgive a guy who says, "Ya, my fault".
ALSO, Brock mentions many times that he thinks the people he was dealing with were NOT representaive of the entire conservative movement, much less the Republican party. He states that those he dealt with, the Scaife's and the Olson's and the Barr's, the ones funding and informing HIS magazines and books, acted this way. Brock notes several times how Republicans often rejected the idealistic extremes of the neo-cons, and that some were appalled by the head hunting of Clinton. Brock is making an observation about his situation, which was no doubt influential in the conservative movement, but is not ever meant to represent everyone on the right. Brock also never claims that no one on the Left acts that way either. But since he doesn't have the experience of 'being on the left', he can't comment on it. That's a major point of the book...the pundits that said the most vile things about Hillary were the ones that were least familiar with her.
So please don't ascribe motives and theories about Brock's book that don't have any refernece to what he actually wrote.
Rating:
Summary: Needs More on the Ladies!
Review: If you need to know, Brock tells how disgusting the right wing is. Reagan put a happy face, unity, and some civility on it all, but when Daddy left, the "kids" started to lose it. Gingrich and so many others could throw bombs, but couldn't lead. Nope. Brock found himself fronting and digging dirt for this wingnut crowd, after (understandably) shying from and countering ultra-PC lefties in college. So Brock went Reagan's direction in formative years, like so many others his age. And then... well, Brock tells the story best... and I can't think of a more encompassing history of 1990's politics. The story is dark, and if you're too alert you'll keep questioning Brock's initial motives for the book, and how he spins his tales in his book. (Especially after Bill Clinton's performances - with fingers to chest -, this reader is cynical toward apologies). But, if you lay back and give Brock the benefit of doubt (at least until you finish the book), it's a good read about 90's right-wing politics, tactics, $$$$, careerism, "friendships" of convenience, and hypocrisy, not in that particular order. When I finished the book (which is hard to do -- just keep plowing through it; the info and perspective *is worth it*) I actually felt for Brock (and I don't *think* I'm a bleeding heart :-). Brock's arc and inside perspective are wholly unique. Is this book a new Whittaker Chambers' (who left the communists and spoke up) "Witness" for the *left*? A little, maybe? Anyway, I'm pretty conservative, and learned a lot. Brock's is a hard book to get through, but I'll never view the 90's (Newt, Clinton, all media) the same again. Oh yeah, back to my review title: Brock tells of his relationships with right-wing queens Arianna Huffington, Laura Ingraham, and Ann Coulter. More details next time! Do they like to play quarters? Caps?! Keggers or wine boxes?
Rating:
Summary: A good read...
Review: A great perspective on two decades of American history. Engrossing and powerful.
Rating:
Summary: OUTSTANDING - a fantastic account of the clinton wars
Review: Brock comes clean and writes a fantastic account of the late 80s and 90s war between the Right and the Left. He strode to prominence in the Conservative movement with horrific attacks on Annita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings and fired the first shots of the Clinton Wars with his article on the "TrooperGate" scandal. He outed Paula Jones in this article formenting the eventual charge of impeachment. He fires back at the unjust hypocrisy of his old friends whose "high morals and values" almost brought down the 42nd president. He outs gossip queens like Matt Drudge and Anne Coulter and fires back at the establishment that once called him comrade. If your looking for a great book on the inside fight to TRAP CLINTON IN A PERJURY CHARGE this book is for you. it was highly entertaining and full of gossip about everyone associated with the hatred spewing RIGHT WING attack machine.
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