Blinded by the Fight

"This is a terrible book," reads the first line of David Brock's newest book. He's right. And it's all downhill for the next 287 pages. But it's not a complete loss. "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative" is a pretty damn good train wreck.

I read through it rather lasciviously wondering if Brock -- the now repentant former bad-boy ink-slinger of the Gingrich Revolution who smeared Anita Hill and helped invent the "Troopergate" story -- could reveal himself to have been any more cynical, calculating, craven and corrupt. No disappointment on that issue. Nor was I ever able to find any further evidence of that "conscience" he mentioned in the subtitle.

What I found instead was the rather staggering story of a little snot who as soon as he enrolled at UC Berkeley in 1981 came up with a plan to trade his soul for recognition and cash; managed to do so just about on schedule; and now -- facing middle age -- has deployed Plan B, which is to garner an equal amount of cash by confessing what a shit he was. Like he said, it's a terrible book.

Though I suppose for hardcore Bill Clinton lovers -- those soft-headed among you who actually still believe that Slick Willy was a victim, that he was caught in a "perjury trap" and that "it was only about sex" -- this is a great book. Here are all your bogeymen, all the major players of the "vast right-wing conspiracy," revealed by ex-co-conspirator Brock to be just the conniving, double-dealing, amoral Clinton haters you always knew they were.

Brock begins his narrative as a 1981 UC scrub, predictably liberal, but starting to tire of the ambiance of political correctness. When President Reagan, two years later, invades the tiny island of Grenada, Brock senses an angle. He knows very little about international politics, but that doesn't stop him from writing a flay-'em-and-hang-'em paean to the Gipper's imperialist intervention in the campus paper, the Daily Cal. Brock is subsequently reviled by most of his peers, but wins the adoration of the campus conservative clique.

"I had no deep understanding of conservative ideology," Brock writes. So deeper he plunges into the right; he hasn't found a calling so much as a niche market. From the Daily Cal, Brock's rise is meteoric. He helps found the neo-con Berkeley Journal. And at age 23, he's drafted into the granite publishing heart of the Republican right, the Moonie-backed Washington Times. Brock lays on the detail how -- as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution -- he does his part by slanting copy, fabricating facts, besmirching the reputation of his rivals, polishing his bosses' apples to score promotions, apologizing for the contras, lionizing Pinochet and dutifully keeping his gay personal politics tightly corseted in the closet, lest he offend his right-wing patrons.

"The formula came easy to me," he says in describing his ability to crank out the unfounded, partisan smear pieces demanded by his editors. Further rewards come when he's picked up -- with a fat salary -- by the tendentious and reckless American Spectator. That shop, oiled by cash from Clintonphobe Richard Mellon Scaife, dedicates itself wholly to trashing the Democrats. And Brock's first big assignment is to destroy the character of Anita Hill, which he does in a magazine hit piece followed by his first best-seller, The Real Anita Hill. Brock kind of figures she was telling the truth, but what the hell.

Ditto with the Troopergate story -- which he more or less invents. The lurid sex tales spilling from the lips of Governor Clinton's former bodyguards all seem rather fishy to Brock, but he soldiers on with that hit piece as well. And, along the way, pockets five grand in payola from a GOP partisan investor named Peter Smith. "I was a whore for the cash," Brock explains.