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Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative
In a powerful and deeply personal memoir David Brock, the original right-wing scandal reporter, chronicles his rise to the pinnacle of the conservative movement and his painful break with it. David Brock pilloried Anita Hill in a bestseller. His reporting in The American Spectator as part of the infamous “Arkansas Project” triggered the course of events that led to the historic impeachment trial of President Clinton. Brock was at the center of the right-wing dirty tricks operation of the Gingrich era—and a true believer—until he could no longer deny that the political force he was advancing was built on little more than lies, hate, and hypocrisy. In Blinded By the Right, Brock, who came out of the closet at the height of his conservative renown, tells his riveting story from the beginning, giving us the first insider’s view of what Hillary Rodham Clinton called “the vast right-wing conspiracy.” Whether dealing with the right-wing press, the richly endowed think tanks, Republican political operatives, or the Paula Jones case, Brock names names from Clarence Thomas on down, uncovers hidden links, and demonstrates how the Republican Right’s zeal for power created the poisonous political climate that culminated in George W. Bush’s election.With a new afterword by the author, Blinded By the Right is a classic political memoir of our times.
400 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
David Brock
122 books32 followersDavid^Brock.
There is more than one author by this name in the database.
David Brock is a journalist currently living in Washington, DC. He started out in professional journalism with a piece in "The Wall Street Journal", that caught the attention of John Podhoretz, who was assigned with starting a magazine for the conservative daily newspaper, "The Washington Times".
He worked as a news reporter for a while at "Insight" (the Washington Times' magazine) until eventually moving up to work for the paper, itself. His prominence in the conservative movement as a journalist got him a job at the American Spectator. During his time at the Spectator, Brock became very well known for filing "hatchet jobs" against then-President Bill Clinton (William Jefferson Clinton) and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
He wrote the hugely popular book, "The Real Anita Hill", which attempted to paint Anita Hill (who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment while he was being confirmed to the Court) as being a liar who could not be trusted (Brock labeled her "a bit nutty and a bit slutty").
He eventually "broke" with the conservatives and went on to try to make amends for his character assassination and fabrication of the truth while he was in the movement.
He detailed these fabrications and denounced much of his own earlier work in his 2002 book, "Blinded By The Right".
He is now the CEO and founder of "Media Matters for America", a progressive media watchdog group thats mission is to find and correct conservative misinformation in the mainstream press.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Regis
There is more than one author by this name in the database.
David Brock is a journalist currently living in Washington, DC. He started out in professional journalism with a piece in "The Wall Street Journal", that caught the attention of John Podhoretz, who was assigned with starting a magazine for the conservative daily newspaper, "The Washington Times".
He worked as a news reporter for a while at "Insight" (the Washington Times' magazine) until eventually moving up to work for the paper, itself. His prominence in the conservative movement as a journalist got him a job at the American Spectator. During his time at the Spectator, Brock became very well known for filing "hatchet jobs" against then-President Bill Clinton (William Jefferson Clinton) and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.
He wrote the hugely popular book, "The Real Anita Hill", which attempted to paint Anita Hill (who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment while he was being confirmed to the Court) as being a liar who could not be trusted (Brock labeled her "a bit nutty and a bit slutty").
He eventually "broke" with the conservatives and went on to try to make amends for his character assassination and fabrication of the truth while he was in the movement.
He detailed these fabrications and denounced much of his own earlier work in his 2002 book, "Blinded By The Right".
He is now the CEO and founder of "Media Matters for America", a progressive media watchdog group thats mission is to find and correct conservative misinformation in the mainstream press.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Regis
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
January 17, 2016
It should be noted that there are at least three things about the title of this book that are seriously mistaken, and those mistakes set the tone for the book as a whole. For one, the author was not blinded by the right, he was self-deceived by his own lack of sincerity and depth. For another, the author of this book does not show a great deal of conscience. To be sure, he states that he was remorseful for the hatchet job he did on Anita Hill by smearing her after her allegations of sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in the Senate, but this book is the same sort of sex-obsessed rumor-mongering libelous hatchet job on the right that he used to conduct on the left. He hasn’t acquired a conscience; he merely has changed sides and dished out to his former associates what he used to dish out on their opponents on the left. On top of this, the statements of the author, and his continual contempt for traditionalists and social conservatives demonstrates that he was never a genuine conservative at all [1], but either a hypocritical neo-liberal or a libertarian with a strongly socially liberal bent. This book says all the right things about it being a mea culpa, a tell all of his former sleazy days, but it ends up being as sleazy as anything he ever did while a self-confessed right wing hit man. Instead, he is merely left-wing hit man now, which is moving down in the order of things, rather than improving.
In terms of its contents, this book is a straightforward tale. It begins with a discussion on the author’s childhood, his discovery of his own homosexuality during his teenage years, his college experiences at Cal-Berkley that exposed him to the harsh left-wing radical political correctness that led him in his more libertarian bent to side with the right despite his hostility towards his paleo-Conservative father. Most of the book discusses the author’s double life as a neo-Conservative peddler of tabloid sleaze for various right-wing publishing houses and magazines on the one hand and as a hard-drinking but closeted gay man living in danger. Eventually, on the verge of being outed by the gay mafia, he comes out and is temporarily accepted by his conservative cohorts because of his writing against the Clinton administration, but when he writes what to him is a somewhat balanced and even-handed work on Hillary Clinton, his former associates turn on him, and he returns the favor, which this book is a part of. The end of the book attempts to provide a phony sense of starting over and rejecting the corrupt ways of the past, but the book as a whole is too full of dirty dishing on the sexual escapades of those who appear to be defenders of traditional morality to be anything more than a left-wing smear job of a particularly nasty kind.
Indeed, what was for me more interesting than reading the gossipy content of this book was trying to figure out why exactly the person who gave it to me, who is himself strongly leftist in his own political worldview but also a respected leader within our own congregation, found so praiseworthy about this book. Certainly, the moral life of the author, in his drunkenness and debauchery and moral dissipation, was no figure worthy of praise. It appeared to me that the person who loaned the book to me seemed to enjoy it merely because of the way it painted conservatives as hypocritical, dangerous to America’s freedom, and uninterested in the truth if it contradicts with a supposed right wing conspiracy, all while seeking to continue the false pretense that nothing similar to this problem exists on the left. Instead of presenting a genuinely worthwhile position, something worth modeling in public discourse or our own private lives, this book seeks to present a tired false dilemma, where the author was on both sides but never came to any sort of worthwhile position that truly comes to terms with the darkness and evil within his own heart, or the full extent of corruption within our body politic, of which this author is a prime example in so many ways.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
In terms of its contents, this book is a straightforward tale. It begins with a discussion on the author’s childhood, his discovery of his own homosexuality during his teenage years, his college experiences at Cal-Berkley that exposed him to the harsh left-wing radical political correctness that led him in his more libertarian bent to side with the right despite his hostility towards his paleo-Conservative father. Most of the book discusses the author’s double life as a neo-Conservative peddler of tabloid sleaze for various right-wing publishing houses and magazines on the one hand and as a hard-drinking but closeted gay man living in danger. Eventually, on the verge of being outed by the gay mafia, he comes out and is temporarily accepted by his conservative cohorts because of his writing against the Clinton administration, but when he writes what to him is a somewhat balanced and even-handed work on Hillary Clinton, his former associates turn on him, and he returns the favor, which this book is a part of. The end of the book attempts to provide a phony sense of starting over and rejecting the corrupt ways of the past, but the book as a whole is too full of dirty dishing on the sexual escapades of those who appear to be defenders of traditional morality to be anything more than a left-wing smear job of a particularly nasty kind.
Indeed, what was for me more interesting than reading the gossipy content of this book was trying to figure out why exactly the person who gave it to me, who is himself strongly leftist in his own political worldview but also a respected leader within our own congregation, found so praiseworthy about this book. Certainly, the moral life of the author, in his drunkenness and debauchery and moral dissipation, was no figure worthy of praise. It appeared to me that the person who loaned the book to me seemed to enjoy it merely because of the way it painted conservatives as hypocritical, dangerous to America’s freedom, and uninterested in the truth if it contradicts with a supposed right wing conspiracy, all while seeking to continue the false pretense that nothing similar to this problem exists on the left. Instead of presenting a genuinely worthwhile position, something worth modeling in public discourse or our own private lives, this book seeks to present a tired false dilemma, where the author was on both sides but never came to any sort of worthwhile position that truly comes to terms with the darkness and evil within his own heart, or the full extent of corruption within our body politic, of which this author is a prime example in so many ways.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...
November 16, 2016
This book is the Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead of 1980s and 1990s Washington D.C. It's a story of U.S. politics during the George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton administrations told from the view of a man who wrote influential Anita Hill takedowns and the article that launched Troopergate, in addition to a lot of other, similar material.
This man is David Brock, an adopted, gay U.C. Berkeley grad who admired RFK as a young adult but became turned off by what he perceived as censorial self-righteousness of liberal on-campus activists in college.
He moved to D.C. and joined the staff of the conservative The Washington Times after graduation, and then later joined The American Spectator, during which time, as he describes in this engaging, sobering, and clarifying memoir, he worked with a number of conservative lobbyists, lawyers, millionaires and billionaires, political operatives, politicians, and private investigators to publish apocryphal stories that would help get Clarence Thomas (the 5th vote in Bush v. Gore and Shelby County v. Holder) confirmed by a Democratic congress and harm Bill Clinton's presidential legacy and Hillary Clinton's political career and policy agenda. He had an insider's view of the Arkansas Project.
I started reading this book during perhaps the most heated moment of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when the Access Hollywood tape came out and Bill Clinton's sex scandals became relevant again. I finished it today. It seems even more important to bear witness in the shadow of an outcome so few of us expected. Many of the pro-Thomas, anti-Clinton individuals that Brock meets, works, and socializes with come across as extraordinarily craven, hypocritical, morally and ethically absent, downright looney (but also, in Brock's telling, pitiable).
I was a college classmate of Ken Starr's daughter and met him and stayed in his house when our a capella group toured the East Coast. They both seemed like decent people driven by a faith they believe in, and I wouldn't count him in the above group, although Brock's critiques of Starr's opportunistic embrace of prurience and willful mixing of politics and justice are fair.
Brock began to have second thoughts about his work and associations, as any sane person would.
On the strength of sales of his first book, The Real Anita Hill, Brock received a $1 million advance in 1995 from Simon & Schuster's Free Press to write a hit job on Hillary Clinton. He writes:
The resulting book, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, was, to Brock's benefactors and clique, a betrayal.
Booted out of a movement he had come to despise, Brock rebuilt his personal and professional life from scratch, wrote a private letter of apology to Anita Hill, and a public one to Bill Clinton. He slowly gained the trust of real journalists, Clinton loyalists, and then the Clintons themselves. He switched sides and worked for Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign and headed three pro-Hillary organizations, including Priorities USA, in 2016.
But this book was published in 2002, before any of the remarkable events of the past eight years. Here is what Brock writes about the relationship between the kind of politics he practiced in the 1980s and 1990s and voting:
After reading this book, which I recommend, one takeaway is clear. It is an argument that Brock makes explicitly as well, in some cases based on visceral, first-hand information of individuals like Laura Ingraham. Hillary Clinton is not, as many of her detractors and disappointed supporters argue, charismaless. She has a rare anti-charisma, in that self-doubting individuals who come into contact with her project onto her things they hate about themselves. She connects with voters, but too often, tragically, she connects with their darkest fears and insecurities instead of their hopes and dignity. They see their imperfections in her, they hate her for it, and past the point of reason in the case of 6.7 million voters and counting.
Glenn Greenwald, Susan Sarandon, and others on the pacifist left see in Hillary Clinton their own compromised relationship with American military power. They vote and protest against Middle East intervention, but then live and live well under the protection of drone strikes and mass surveillance. They hate themselves for it, and Iraq War-voting, Libya intervention-supporting Hillary makes for a ripe home for that hate.
In some hacked emails, Colin Powell accused Hillary Clinton of "hubris" and being "greedy." Powell's work on behalf of the Iraq War is the very definition of hubris. The New York Times never uses the word greed in this 2001 article:
Blinded by the Right and perhaps a great darkness in ourselves, Hillary became America's bête noire, and now we will soon have a leader whom zero of our living presidents voted for. Whatever the future holds, a lesson and next step might lie in the place where Brock's story turned years ago:
This man is David Brock, an adopted, gay U.C. Berkeley grad who admired RFK as a young adult but became turned off by what he perceived as censorial self-righteousness of liberal on-campus activists in college.
He moved to D.C. and joined the staff of the conservative The Washington Times after graduation, and then later joined The American Spectator, during which time, as he describes in this engaging, sobering, and clarifying memoir, he worked with a number of conservative lobbyists, lawyers, millionaires and billionaires, political operatives, politicians, and private investigators to publish apocryphal stories that would help get Clarence Thomas (the 5th vote in Bush v. Gore and Shelby County v. Holder) confirmed by a Democratic congress and harm Bill Clinton's presidential legacy and Hillary Clinton's political career and policy agenda. He had an insider's view of the Arkansas Project.
I started reading this book during perhaps the most heated moment of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when the Access Hollywood tape came out and Bill Clinton's sex scandals became relevant again. I finished it today. It seems even more important to bear witness in the shadow of an outcome so few of us expected. Many of the pro-Thomas, anti-Clinton individuals that Brock meets, works, and socializes with come across as extraordinarily craven, hypocritical, morally and ethically absent, downright looney (but also, in Brock's telling, pitiable).
I was a college classmate of Ken Starr's daughter and met him and stayed in his house when our a capella group toured the East Coast. They both seemed like decent people driven by a faith they believe in, and I wouldn't count him in the above group, although Brock's critiques of Starr's opportunistic embrace of prurience and willful mixing of politics and justice are fair.
Brock began to have second thoughts about his work and associations, as any sane person would.
On the strength of sales of his first book, The Real Anita Hill, Brock received a $1 million advance in 1995 from Simon & Schuster's Free Press to write a hit job on Hillary Clinton. He writes:
I attended only one short meeting with the publisher of Simon & Schuster, Jack Romanos, who asked me only one question before okaying the $1 million. Did I think Hillary Clinton was a lesbian? Romanos wanted to know.
...
By mid-1995, I had staffed up with a small brigade of researchers to get the job done. Washington and Arkansas were full of Hillary-haters, and by the time I was done, I felt as though I had talked to every one. I checked out every conceivable lead, and a lot of inconceivable ones, too. I spent days on the phone with Republican investigators on the Hill, everyone from the Barbarellas to Bossie, who gave me everything in their quiver. ... I dined at a fancy Italian restaurant with Senator Alfonse D'Amato, who was heading up the Whitewater inquiry, but he was looking for information from me.
...
After almost two years of research and writing, retracing every step of Hillary's life, doing more than one hundred interviews, and collecting virtually every piece of paper that had Hillary's name on it going back twenty years, I had something balanced to say about Hillary. Neither saintly nor evil, Hillary was a rare combination of passionate idealist and gutsy streetfighter. I was able to put myself in my subject's shoes, to judge her by the standards of the real world, not impossible ideals, to sympathize with the trials and tribulations she faced, and even to see a kind of beauty as a good soul tried to assert itself in difficult choices.
The resulting book, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham, was, to Brock's benefactors and clique, a betrayal.
Booted out of a movement he had come to despise, Brock rebuilt his personal and professional life from scratch, wrote a private letter of apology to Anita Hill, and a public one to Bill Clinton. He slowly gained the trust of real journalists, Clinton loyalists, and then the Clintons themselves. He switched sides and worked for Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign and headed three pro-Hillary organizations, including Priorities USA, in 2016.
But this book was published in 2002, before any of the remarkable events of the past eight years. Here is what Brock writes about the relationship between the kind of politics he practiced in the 1980s and 1990s and voting:
Since coming to Washington in 1986, in the next dozen years that I worked so zealously as a movement conservative, I never once took the time to vote. ... I didn't vote because the act of voting, the truest and purest expression of one's political values as a citizen, would have forced me to confront the political lie that I was living.
After reading this book, which I recommend, one takeaway is clear. It is an argument that Brock makes explicitly as well, in some cases based on visceral, first-hand information of individuals like Laura Ingraham. Hillary Clinton is not, as many of her detractors and disappointed supporters argue, charismaless. She has a rare anti-charisma, in that self-doubting individuals who come into contact with her project onto her things they hate about themselves. She connects with voters, but too often, tragically, she connects with their darkest fears and insecurities instead of their hopes and dignity. They see their imperfections in her, they hate her for it, and past the point of reason in the case of 6.7 million voters and counting.
Glenn Greenwald, Susan Sarandon, and others on the pacifist left see in Hillary Clinton their own compromised relationship with American military power. They vote and protest against Middle East intervention, but then live and live well under the protection of drone strikes and mass surveillance. They hate themselves for it, and Iraq War-voting, Libya intervention-supporting Hillary makes for a ripe home for that hate.
In some hacked emails, Colin Powell accused Hillary Clinton of "hubris" and being "greedy." Powell's work on behalf of the Iraq War is the very definition of hubris. The New York Times never uses the word greed in this 2001 article:
Powell's Wealth Now Over $28 Million
Since his retirement from the military seven years ago, Gen. Colin L. Powell has become wealthy through high-priced speaking engagements, amassing an investment portfolio in excess of $28.2 million, according to his financial disclosure statement.
General Powell, who began Senate hearings today as President-elect George W. Bush's choice for secretary of state, earned $6.7 million in speaking fees last year in 109 appearances around the country, the records show.
In most cases, he charged $59,500 for his remarks to such diverse groups as Gallup, the polling organization; Petsmart, the pet supply company; Lucent Technologies; and Middlesex Community College. For a speech at Credit Suisse Financial Services, he received his highest fee for a single appearance: $127,500 on May 5.
...
General Powell said he would also resign from positions he holds outside of government. He left his membership on the corporate board of America Online last week. The disclosure records show that he will be able to take advantage of stock options from that company, which, if exercised today, would be worth $8.27 million.
Blinded by the Right and perhaps a great darkness in ourselves, Hillary became America's bête noire, and now we will soon have a leader whom zero of our living presidents voted for. Whatever the future holds, a lesson and next step might lie in the place where Brock's story turned years ago:
In finding Hillary Clinton's humanity, I was beginning to find my own.
December 10, 2012
Granted, this book is a decade old, but Brock's book is a veritable "Who's Who" of the Republican right and an expose of the right-wing disinformation machine the Republicans built in the 90s. There are so many reviews of the book, I hesitated to write one. But here are some points many of the other reviews leave out.
Brock clearly shows that the worst thing that ever happened to the GOP was the collapse of communism. Without the communists to hate and deride, Republicans were left in a vacuum. Their party had no real platform beyond communism's destruction other than the unspoken platform of maintaining the status quo of the military industrial complex. So when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Republicans looked for new enemies domestically: professional women, gays and the politically correct elitist media culture.
Whether he realizes it or not, Brock does an exceptional job of showing the underlying premise as to why the extreme wing of the GOP hates professional women and gays so much: both threaten the dominate male culture. Hence, professional women are characterized as "bull-dog dykes" and gay men as "ineffectual fags." Neither stands up to what a real man should be like nor what a real woman should be like. Brock's repetition of how professional women and gays are characterized clearly shows how the same euphemisms are used over and over.
The other thing this book does is provide a list of names of everyone involved in the Republican hegemony. It is ironic that one of these individuals likes to keep a picture of Lenin as a sort of role model, because Brock's portrayal of the GOP shows it to be even more ideologically entrenched than the communist party ever was, and just as, if not more so, vicious in its internal purges of anyone who doesn't tow the line.
In the end, you'll wonder what ever happened to true conservatism. Does conservatism really have a place in today's political discussion? Or is it as atavistic, inbred and hateful as Brock describes it to be? Rather than being the shoulders of the past that today's leaders could use to stand upon to peer into the future, as described by the late conservative writer Russell Kirk, conservatism appears to have regressed into an infantile chorus of whining.
Finally, Brock puts himself right in the middle of all this, unflinchingly showing how egotistic, power and status hungry he was along the way. He does make some attempt to explain why he behaved so shallowly, but it is much too early for Brock to really be able to objectively evaluate his own pitfalls. In the years to come, however, I'm sure he will complete his personal evaluation, and it wouldn't surprise me if he revisits this topic later in his life with the new perspective of time and distance.
In all, this book is a must read for anyone who remotely considers themselves a follower of American politics.
Brock clearly shows that the worst thing that ever happened to the GOP was the collapse of communism. Without the communists to hate and deride, Republicans were left in a vacuum. Their party had no real platform beyond communism's destruction other than the unspoken platform of maintaining the status quo of the military industrial complex. So when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Republicans looked for new enemies domestically: professional women, gays and the politically correct elitist media culture.
Whether he realizes it or not, Brock does an exceptional job of showing the underlying premise as to why the extreme wing of the GOP hates professional women and gays so much: both threaten the dominate male culture. Hence, professional women are characterized as "bull-dog dykes" and gay men as "ineffectual fags." Neither stands up to what a real man should be like nor what a real woman should be like. Brock's repetition of how professional women and gays are characterized clearly shows how the same euphemisms are used over and over.
The other thing this book does is provide a list of names of everyone involved in the Republican hegemony. It is ironic that one of these individuals likes to keep a picture of Lenin as a sort of role model, because Brock's portrayal of the GOP shows it to be even more ideologically entrenched than the communist party ever was, and just as, if not more so, vicious in its internal purges of anyone who doesn't tow the line.
In the end, you'll wonder what ever happened to true conservatism. Does conservatism really have a place in today's political discussion? Or is it as atavistic, inbred and hateful as Brock describes it to be? Rather than being the shoulders of the past that today's leaders could use to stand upon to peer into the future, as described by the late conservative writer Russell Kirk, conservatism appears to have regressed into an infantile chorus of whining.
Finally, Brock puts himself right in the middle of all this, unflinchingly showing how egotistic, power and status hungry he was along the way. He does make some attempt to explain why he behaved so shallowly, but it is much too early for Brock to really be able to objectively evaluate his own pitfalls. In the years to come, however, I'm sure he will complete his personal evaluation, and it wouldn't surprise me if he revisits this topic later in his life with the new perspective of time and distance.
In all, this book is a must read for anyone who remotely considers themselves a follower of American politics.
September 22, 2025
Brock tells the story of how he was sucked into the right-wing, became an influential author, was disillusioned and betrayed, ultimately becoming a liberally-inclined independent.
His story is basically pretty simple. While running the UC Berkeley student paper he wrote some pieces critical of those on the left who obstructed right-wing speakers. This drew the attention of some well-heeled right-wingers and landed him a series of high paying jobs for a variety of publications. Meanwhile, he wrote a salacious book about Anita Hill filled with unvetted rumors which brought him to national attention. Later muckraking of the various charges against the Clintons led him to discover that most were unfounded. The result, 'The Seduction of Hillary Rodham', severely disappointed his conservative colleagues and led to his ostracism.
Behind all of this was the fact that Brock was an actively gay man (as were many of his ostensibly homophobic colleages on the right). For years he attempted to keep this a secret but he was eventually outed. By this time, however, he had become so prominent that he was protected, serving sometimes as the sole living proof that the right was not anti-gay. This arrangement was tenuous, ending with his betrayal of the movement by his balanced treatment of Hillary.
As an historical sociology of the right, its leaders, its media, its tactics, and its funders from the eighties until 9/11 this was an interesting book. Many of the bad guys and gals of that period remain today, some of them in the Trump orbit, others as conservative 'never-Trumpers'.
His story is basically pretty simple. While running the UC Berkeley student paper he wrote some pieces critical of those on the left who obstructed right-wing speakers. This drew the attention of some well-heeled right-wingers and landed him a series of high paying jobs for a variety of publications. Meanwhile, he wrote a salacious book about Anita Hill filled with unvetted rumors which brought him to national attention. Later muckraking of the various charges against the Clintons led him to discover that most were unfounded. The result, 'The Seduction of Hillary Rodham', severely disappointed his conservative colleagues and led to his ostracism.
Behind all of this was the fact that Brock was an actively gay man (as were many of his ostensibly homophobic colleages on the right). For years he attempted to keep this a secret but he was eventually outed. By this time, however, he had become so prominent that he was protected, serving sometimes as the sole living proof that the right was not anti-gay. This arrangement was tenuous, ending with his betrayal of the movement by his balanced treatment of Hillary.
As an historical sociology of the right, its leaders, its media, its tactics, and its funders from the eighties until 9/11 this was an interesting book. Many of the bad guys and gals of that period remain today, some of them in the Trump orbit, others as conservative 'never-Trumpers'.
May 8, 2009
Eh. Brock's still more or less a self-flagellating opportunist. It's worth reading if you enjoy (as I do) getting the dirt on some of the shadier characters in the right wing. I loved hearing that Grover Norquist has a giant portrait of Lenin (!) in his living room, and that Newt Gingrich is pretty much as awful as you would imagine he is, and reading of Laura Ingraham crawling around on all fours, drunk, at a gay club while whacked out of her mind on cat tranquilizers just brings a small glimmering tear of joy to my eye.
August 15, 2007
I'm a few years late reading this book; I think at the time, I was a little disgruntled with the single-minded university politics around me and reviews that contained words and phrases like "tell-all!" "sensational!" and "insider's view on the right-wing conspiracy!" led me to believe that it was a politically motivated, sensationalist account.
I was so wrong. I think that I've had a hard time connecting to politics because coming of age as a political being in the time of Bush is just so surreal most of the time, you look around and all you can think is, "How did we get here?"
This book is important to read if you want to answer that question. It's thoughtful, scrupulously honest, and insightful.
It was interesting to go back into the details of events that happened when I was too young to really be aware of them, remembering the events that first made me aware of politics in this country. And, in the ugly face of those scandal-based politics, I think it's much easier to understand why our generation is so apathetic. For me, that's the first step to dropping back in and really taking a look at putting our mark on this country. As far as I'm concerned, a book that makes me want to get involved is a good thing=)
I was so wrong. I think that I've had a hard time connecting to politics because coming of age as a political being in the time of Bush is just so surreal most of the time, you look around and all you can think is, "How did we get here?"
This book is important to read if you want to answer that question. It's thoughtful, scrupulously honest, and insightful.
It was interesting to go back into the details of events that happened when I was too young to really be aware of them, remembering the events that first made me aware of politics in this country. And, in the ugly face of those scandal-based politics, I think it's much easier to understand why our generation is so apathetic. For me, that's the first step to dropping back in and really taking a look at putting our mark on this country. As far as I'm concerned, a book that makes me want to get involved is a good thing=)
October 12, 2014
I thought this was going to be an analysis of the conservative movement but instead it was more a journal of the author's activities as a right wing leader who was also a closeted gay. He did admit what we always knew- the conservative right wing is racist, sexist, homophobic and employs no fact checkers.
June 5, 2007
I totally loved this book, it stuck with me long after I read it. A riveting portrait of the conservative movement in the 1980s and 1990s, and a moving memoir about a man who changed his political allegiances at great personal cost.
Read
August 15, 2022Mixed feelings on this one. It's eye-opening to see just how long the GOP has been using the same dishonest and hypocritical tactics against their political enemies, spreading baseless conspiracy theories and deliberate misinformation campaigns decades before "alternative facts" was even a mainstream idea. Brock does a commendable job exposing the dark side of the right-wing political machine, and though some criticize this book for being largely anecdotal, it's pretty clear just from watching the activity of the GOP today that it's grounded in fact.
To his credit, Brock does make some attempt to take responsibility for his more indefensible actions. However, for every acknowledgement of wrongdoing there's also a hastily placed excuse--he reminds us over and over that he was a gay man desperately seeking approval from a movement that hated him, that he was a victim of his own repression, and that he never really believed in the less palatable ideas of the hard-core social conservatives. He seems to be looking for sympathy and absolution from the audience even as he describes threatening, harassing, and fervently bashing leftists (usually women). I get where he's coming from, I really do, but his apology wasn't all it could be.
Also, it's worth noting that you won't find much discussion about policy or a shift in Brock's actual political stances. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact is in line with Brock's assertion that for many in his generation of conservative pundits and journalists, policy was always a distant second to fame and public image. But readers should know that this book is definitely more about Brock's changing relationship with GOP tactics than his personal belief system.
Also, let me just say that I absolutely LOVE the mental image of Laura Ingraham crawling around a gay bar on all fours completely zoinked on ketamine.
To his credit, Brock does make some attempt to take responsibility for his more indefensible actions. However, for every acknowledgement of wrongdoing there's also a hastily placed excuse--he reminds us over and over that he was a gay man desperately seeking approval from a movement that hated him, that he was a victim of his own repression, and that he never really believed in the less palatable ideas of the hard-core social conservatives. He seems to be looking for sympathy and absolution from the audience even as he describes threatening, harassing, and fervently bashing leftists (usually women). I get where he's coming from, I really do, but his apology wasn't all it could be.
Also, it's worth noting that you won't find much discussion about policy or a shift in Brock's actual political stances. That's not necessarily a bad thing, and in fact is in line with Brock's assertion that for many in his generation of conservative pundits and journalists, policy was always a distant second to fame and public image. But readers should know that this book is definitely more about Brock's changing relationship with GOP tactics than his personal belief system.
Also, let me just say that I absolutely LOVE the mental image of Laura Ingraham crawling around a gay bar on all fours completely zoinked on ketamine.
December 10, 2012
David Brock explains the politics of the Republican party as only an insider with good notes could. He eagerly became the talking puppet of the party for a decade, deluding himself he was an objective journalist with an obscene salary.
He reveals the why and how of Troopergate, the Arkansas Project, President and Hillary Clinton's persistent ethics scandals, and why the party has devolved into always being against, and not for anything. Against communism. Against the Clintons. And finally against the culture of immorality they so deftly exhibit.
The index catalogs who's who in the party and what they did. As Brock rains his conscience while looking for his soul, the book picks up pace and is hard to put down.
He reveals the why and how of Troopergate, the Arkansas Project, President and Hillary Clinton's persistent ethics scandals, and why the party has devolved into always being against, and not for anything. Against communism. Against the Clintons. And finally against the culture of immorality they so deftly exhibit.
The index catalogs who's who in the party and what they did. As Brock rains his conscience while looking for his soul, the book picks up pace and is hard to put down.
December 27, 2019
"Blinded by the Right" reads like data being dumped out of a hard drive. The book is an interesting story, told in a blind rush.
August 23, 2016
I became aware of David Brock through a recent documentary called" The brainwashing of my Dad" in which he is one of those that are interviewed in the film. I found his insight and commentary into politics of the right verses left very interesting and thought provoking. This book show how David rebelled against liberalism in college and grew into a right wing conservative writer. He wrote a provocative and controversial bestselling book on Anita Hill, "The real Anita Hill", and also wrote about "Troopergate" that was one of many Clinton scandals that were propagated by the right wing media in the 1990's. Later in the 90's he develops conscience and slips back to being liberal. Thrown into the mix was his personal struggle being a gay conservative which brought it's own issues both professional and with family and friends.
I could identify with the premise of moving and changing sides in the political spectrum. I too was a liberal minded person in my young adult years. but I wasn't necessarily hard core believer of any one party. With the advent of having a family in the years surrounding 9/11 I became more conservative for awhile. I never caught hold of the anger, bitterness and lunacy that seems to grown part of right wing politics. David seems to have gone through a similar pattern himself.
The book was an interesting look at the inner workings politics in Washington DC and the give and go of the right verses left. You do see some of what drives those who push the liberal hatred to the brink with personal and unscrupulous attacks. I look forward to reading more of David Brock.
I could identify with the premise of moving and changing sides in the political spectrum. I too was a liberal minded person in my young adult years. but I wasn't necessarily hard core believer of any one party. With the advent of having a family in the years surrounding 9/11 I became more conservative for awhile. I never caught hold of the anger, bitterness and lunacy that seems to grown part of right wing politics. David seems to have gone through a similar pattern himself.
The book was an interesting look at the inner workings politics in Washington DC and the give and go of the right verses left. You do see some of what drives those who push the liberal hatred to the brink with personal and unscrupulous attacks. I look forward to reading more of David Brock.
September 19, 2011
I often like to grab a book that will challenge me and offer a point of view that I do not necessary hold. This was one of those books for me. However, it was extremely disappointing in offering nothing that was challenging.
The book is basically the memoir of a person who obviously have lead a tortured life and has taken it out on others in various ways. At first he was a conservative hit man writer and attacked liberals viciously while later he turned an became a leading liberal who now attacks conservatives viciously. When someone who is obviously as damaged as this poor guy admits to how he manufactured and lied before in doing one thing but now does the same things but for another side, it is hard to truly believe what he says. Further, much of what he presents has tons of red flags all over it for lies, embellishments, and otherwise manufactured attacks. Finally, his credibility takes a hit in how he seems intent on showing his side to be angels while the other is bloodthirsty demons out for your families destruction- this being true when he was playing the conservative and now as he is a liberal (not just stopping with this book but going into things like Media Matters, etc).
Liberals who really see conservatives as 'the enemy' will likely love this book and eat it up. It will be hard to see any conservative ever liking this book and for those who are caught in the middle, I would suggest you find another liberal leaning book to spend your time on that is going to be more cerebral versus the emotional hate vomit you will get in this one.
The book is basically the memoir of a person who obviously have lead a tortured life and has taken it out on others in various ways. At first he was a conservative hit man writer and attacked liberals viciously while later he turned an became a leading liberal who now attacks conservatives viciously. When someone who is obviously as damaged as this poor guy admits to how he manufactured and lied before in doing one thing but now does the same things but for another side, it is hard to truly believe what he says. Further, much of what he presents has tons of red flags all over it for lies, embellishments, and otherwise manufactured attacks. Finally, his credibility takes a hit in how he seems intent on showing his side to be angels while the other is bloodthirsty demons out for your families destruction- this being true when he was playing the conservative and now as he is a liberal (not just stopping with this book but going into things like Media Matters, etc).
Liberals who really see conservatives as 'the enemy' will likely love this book and eat it up. It will be hard to see any conservative ever liking this book and for those who are caught in the middle, I would suggest you find another liberal leaning book to spend your time on that is going to be more cerebral versus the emotional hate vomit you will get in this one.
February 14, 2014
David Brock went from left to right to center and his journey makes a fascinating read. It's enlightening to hear what really goes on at the "other side." I came away from this book realizing that the hell the right puts Obama through isn't really new after all. I guess, even though I lived through it, I didn't realize how much of what went on with the Clintons was a real old-fashioned witch hunt. If the right spent as much time and energy and money trying to make things better for the average people as they do trying to destroy the left, the world might be a better place. The only thing I would change about this book is the index. There isn't one. I kept wanting to go back and re-read what he said about certain people and events, but I couldn't look them up. I had to scan back through the book to try to find them, which I couldn't always do. Well, I loved the book anyway.
January 23, 2008
I wanted to like this--a closeted gay (and pretty cute) Republican biting the hand that fed him and revealing the truth that we all knew anyway, that Republicans are devious, soulless liars who will do and say ANYTHING to win? Sounds great. Too bad he's a terrible writer--the entire fact that he was a journalist is much more shocking than any of the revelations of decidedly questionable stories he disseminated.
May 3, 2015
TO read this book 12 years after it was published, you realize that Brock, contrary to what he said or believed when he wrote it, changed one team for another. He is now a left-wing politico whereas for one decade he was a right-wing politico. In reality, Brock was never a conservative, just an opportunist. There are many like him in DC.
January 30, 2009
Extremely interesting inside look at the politics of the Christian Right as told by the former member. Oh yeah, and he was (still is) a gay man. Some very interesting stuff about the push to impeach Clinton and Brock's own personal justifications representing a lie.
March 7, 2014
author outs self as liar in his work for the GOP. comical gossipy details about rightwing figures involved with the clinton scandals, including ann coulter and other assholes.
December 4, 2017
I just finished reading "Blinded By the Right, the Conscience of an Ex-Conservative", by David Brock and highly recommend it. Brock was, for about 12 years, a leading conservative journalist/pundit in the 80s and early 90s. He wrote "The Real Anita Hill" in which he totally trashed Hill, and was the instigator on the Troopergate scandal against Bill Clinton. However, his conscience eventually got the better of him, and he realized that all he was doing was spreading GOP lies. He became an Independent and, subsequently, a Democrat. He is the founder of Media Matters, which has the aim of debunking GOP lies.
However, the reason I loved this book so much was that he constantly provides dates, times and locations and names names - including conservative activists and financiers, pundits, writers, judges, lawyers and members of Congress. This includes often secret meeting places, the names of attendees, and who said what. While it seems obvious to many of us on the left that many on the right care only for their own positions and wealth, and those of their friends, this book makes clear that virtually no thought is given at all to the wishes and needs of the electorate. In fact, much talk is about “re-educating” the people to conservative values.
As a gay person, he associated with conservatives who would excoriate gays (but also points out those who were discovered to be gay or bi), and describes the closeted gay scene in D.C. during those times. He eventually apologized to the Clintons for the lies he had spread about them - this in an article in Esquire, and became good friends with both Bill and Hillary.
He doesn’t pull punches, either with other players or with himself. The book is a lengthy apology for his actions. Many of us had the impression that the inauguration of Barack Obama was the first time that the GOP side of Congress as a whole vowed to impede anything Obama offered. But we are reminded that Boehner said, at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, that Clinton was not a legitimate president, that if you combined the votes of Perot and Republicans, the conservatives held a majority. And so, they vowed to stop Clinton on every possible front. The book was written in 2002, so basically covers up to the end of the Clinton administration.
Brock is a good writer and the book moves quickly. He has subsequently written "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy" in 2004 and "Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government" in 2015, so I’ve added these to my reading list.
However, the reason I loved this book so much was that he constantly provides dates, times and locations and names names - including conservative activists and financiers, pundits, writers, judges, lawyers and members of Congress. This includes often secret meeting places, the names of attendees, and who said what. While it seems obvious to many of us on the left that many on the right care only for their own positions and wealth, and those of their friends, this book makes clear that virtually no thought is given at all to the wishes and needs of the electorate. In fact, much talk is about “re-educating” the people to conservative values.
As a gay person, he associated with conservatives who would excoriate gays (but also points out those who were discovered to be gay or bi), and describes the closeted gay scene in D.C. during those times. He eventually apologized to the Clintons for the lies he had spread about them - this in an article in Esquire, and became good friends with both Bill and Hillary.
He doesn’t pull punches, either with other players or with himself. The book is a lengthy apology for his actions. Many of us had the impression that the inauguration of Barack Obama was the first time that the GOP side of Congress as a whole vowed to impede anything Obama offered. But we are reminded that Boehner said, at Bill Clinton’s inauguration, that Clinton was not a legitimate president, that if you combined the votes of Perot and Republicans, the conservatives held a majority. And so, they vowed to stop Clinton on every possible front. The book was written in 2002, so basically covers up to the end of the Clinton administration.
Brock is a good writer and the book moves quickly. He has subsequently written "The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy" in 2004 and "Killing the Messenger: The Right-Wing Plot to Derail Hillary and Hijack Your Government" in 2015, so I’ve added these to my reading list.
May 25, 2022
First posted in 2004
I couldn’t resist this book when I first heard about it, which was sometime last spring. However, it took me until recently to actually finish it. For those of us who always believed that someone was out to get President Clinton during his tenure leading our country, the evidence is all on paper now. However, David Brock seems to turn on his friends with the same bitterness he once attacked Anita Hill with.
For anyone who doesn’t know who David Brock is, for much of the late 80s to mid 90s he was a highly-regarded Conservative reporter who wrote for such magazines as The American Spectator. He also authored the novels The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story and The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. It was after the latter novel was published that his star began to fade from Republican Conservative circles, simply because he chose to follow his conscience for a change His own disillusionment with the people he had come to regard as friends comes from the fact that after many years of believing what he had been told about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill scandal, he discovered that he had been lied to. This, coupled with an ever-increasing discomfort as a gay man in a circle of people becoming more and more ruled by Fundamentalist Christians finally creates an epiphany of his conscience, which he claims he can no longer deny.
To read my full review, please go to: https://thoughtsfromthemountaintop.co...
I couldn’t resist this book when I first heard about it, which was sometime last spring. However, it took me until recently to actually finish it. For those of us who always believed that someone was out to get President Clinton during his tenure leading our country, the evidence is all on paper now. However, David Brock seems to turn on his friends with the same bitterness he once attacked Anita Hill with.
For anyone who doesn’t know who David Brock is, for much of the late 80s to mid 90s he was a highly-regarded Conservative reporter who wrote for such magazines as The American Spectator. He also authored the novels The Real Anita Hill: The Untold Story and The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. It was after the latter novel was published that his star began to fade from Republican Conservative circles, simply because he chose to follow his conscience for a change His own disillusionment with the people he had come to regard as friends comes from the fact that after many years of believing what he had been told about the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill scandal, he discovered that he had been lied to. This, coupled with an ever-increasing discomfort as a gay man in a circle of people becoming more and more ruled by Fundamentalist Christians finally creates an epiphany of his conscience, which he claims he can no longer deny.
To read my full review, please go to: https://thoughtsfromthemountaintop.co...
October 5, 2018
This is the story of how David Brock got into politics and how he grew sour on the Republican party. I was bored with this book and had to put it aside. I am confused about Brock's motivations for getting into politics and journalism. He is a clear writer. But, he never really had a sincere commitment to conservatism. He thought, basically, that it is cool to bash people on the left and be a rebel at a university. He engaged in some harsh character assassination and smear campaigns, behavior that I don't agree with regardless of its political orientation. Again, this has nothing to do with the intellectual foundations of conservatism. We meet the political figures in this book through Brock's lens, and they are shallow caricatures. It's like a game to him--how fun and exciting it all is to trash political enemies!
July 5, 2018
A disturbing look at a right wing operative during the Bush 1 and Clinton years. Brock wrote a hit job on Anita Hill, broke the Troopergate story, and so on. All throughout he makes clear that he and his ilk only cared about "owning the libs", revenge, personal advancement and proximity to power. They never discussed or cared about policy, and had no alternatives to Clinton's agenda.
All the more strange that Brock is a gay man. Somehow he separated the homophobia of his buddies from his own life.
It makes clear that the current situation is not an anomaly, its just the logical extension of what was going on before.
All the more strange that Brock is a gay man. Somehow he separated the homophobia of his buddies from his own life.
It makes clear that the current situation is not an anomaly, its just the logical extension of what was going on before.
September 14, 2017
Took me a long time to read this book; I kept feeling bogged down by Brock's repeated denial/stupidity/blindness. At times the explanations seemed too detailed, too complicated to follow. And of course what's truly disturbing is that many of the right-wing villains he writes about are still out there spreading lies. I see some of them on Fox News when I'm at the gym.
(2017 edit: I wonder how the book would strike me now, 14 years later....)
(2017 edit: I wonder how the book would strike me now, 14 years later....)
November 30, 2021
"...Brock names names from Clarence Thomas on down, uncovers hidden links, and demonstrates how the Republican Right’s zeal for power created the poisonous political climate that culminated in George W. Bush’s election."
I would love to see an update on this book. Show us how the Republicans zeal for power created the push for voter suppression, lies about election fraud, and the extremely poisonous climate of Trump and his cult.
I would love to see an update on this book. Show us how the Republicans zeal for power created the push for voter suppression, lies about election fraud, and the extremely poisonous climate of Trump and his cult.
November 27, 2017
This book is excellent and I find it quite credible, unlike those who think "once a liar, always a liar," and don't credit anyone who has been a "right-wing hatchet man" with the capacity for change.
I have a lot more to say but no time right now. But everyone who wants to really understand the roots which made Trump's election possible needs to read this. Now.
I have a lot more to say but no time right now. But everyone who wants to really understand the roots which made Trump's election possible needs to read this. Now.
October 19, 2018
A well-written emotional roller coaster ride. Brock is excellent at shining a light on the progressive craziness of the right as a true believer from the inside. His epiphany is incomplete, but I think he has much more to say. We haven't heard the last from David Brock.
December 31, 2017
Wow, really eye opening!
August 31, 2020
Remembered reading this book about 15 years ago. Nothing new and shocking but reaffirmed that the Party of Lincoln was well on its way in going down a slippery slope.
February 25, 2021
Needs some better editing at the very least.
July 16, 2018
I picked the book up because it was on the shelf at the house and I needed something to read. A hundred pages in and I can't take it anymore. I have trouble comprehending extremists of the far right and the far left. The world just isn't that black and white.
**Another title and angle for David Brock's book could have been 'Ignorant Intelligence' where his blind investigation tactics covered both the extreme left as well as the extreme right. I still wouldn't have finished it.
**Another title and angle for David Brock's book could have been 'Ignorant Intelligence' where his blind investigation tactics covered both the extreme left as well as the extreme right. I still wouldn't have finished it.
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