Blinded by the Right

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Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (ISBN 1-4000-4728-5) is a 2002 book written by former conservative journalist David Brock detailing his departure from the conservative movement. It is also the story of his coming out as a gay man. In the book, he recounts visiting gay bars with Matt Drudge and other conservatives.

The subtitle alludes to Barry Goldwater's The Conscience of a Conservative, which helped define the modern conservative movement in the United States.

1 Book Summary
2 Reviews
3 External links

[edit] Book Summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Brock recalls his days at the University of California, Berkeley and how he was turned off by hecklers at a speech by then United States ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick. Brock's main attraction to conservatism was his disdain for communism.

After college, Brock moved with his then partner, called "Andrew" to conceal his identity, to Washington, D.C. In D.C., Brock worked for the The Washington Times and The American Spectator. Brock claims while he was working for those publications he thought he was doing honest journalism, but in hindsight Brock admits that he never corroborated his facts.

While working for the American Spectator, he wrote an article on Anita Hill, which he later expanded into The Real Anita Hill, a book that made him popular in the conservative movement. Brock found out later that many of the uncorroborated details he used were false.

After Bill Clinton came to power, Brock was assigned to write a story, later dubbed Troopergate, about four Arkansas state troopers who held a grudge against Bill Clinton. The troopers made up stories about affairs that could never be corroborated. Brock was given assurances that the troopers would not get paid for telling their stories. He later discovered he was deceived and the troopers were paid by Richard Mellon Scaife, who bankrolled The American Spectator and the Arkansas Project, a secret project to discredit Clinton.

Brock made sure to conceal the identities of the women identified by the troopers, with the exception of one woman named Paula. Brock thought that by not revealing her last name, it would be enough to conceal her identity. Brock did not take into account that Little Rock is a small city. Eventually her identity would be revealed as Paula Jones, which led to her civil lawsuit against Bill Clinton.

Following the Troopergate story, Brock wrote a book about Hillary Clinton, The Seduction of Hillary Rodham. Unlike the Anita Hill book, Brock decided not to put anything in the book that he could not corroborate. The book was not as critical of Hillary Clinton as it was promised to be. Brock claims that conservatives planned on the book being so damning as to influence the outcome of the 1996 presidential election.

The Seduction of Hillary Rodham was the beginning of his falling out with the conservative movement. The issue that forced him to leave the conservative movement was the movement's intolerance towards homosexuality. Brock had reluctantly come out of the closet a couple of years prior to writing the Hillary Clinton book, so after his book on Hillary Clinton came out, he was shunned by many in the movement.

Brock voted for Al Gore in 2000, the first time he voted since he voted for Ronald Reagan in 1984. During the period in which he did not vote, he had two rationalizations for his non-voting:

He believed that his vote didn't count in liberal Washington D.C.
He believed that not voting allowed him to stay neutral

Brock proclaimed that the latter rationalization was bogus, as he was not neutral during that time period.

[edit] Reviews

James Kehl wrote:

David Brock's book entitled "Blinded By The Right" is perhaps one of the most important books written in this young century. Not since Michael Lind's "Up From Conservatism" has there been a book that candidly expose the Republican Right for what they are. This is not only a story of one person's journey from a wrong path to a correct path. It is also a story which details the moral bankruptcy of a movement that, unfortunately, is a major influence in American life. [...]

Since September 11, 2001, Americans have been looking for leadership, moral strength and reassurance. David Brock's book is a story of one man who looked for those things " in all of the wrong places." Americans may be making the same mistake. David Brock eventually discovered his mistake. [1]

Timothy Noah of Slate wrote:

The hopeful liberal narrative about David Brock, peddled by Hertzberg, Rich, Tomasky, and Brock himself, is that the conservative movement made Brock a distorter and a liar, and that the distortions and lies were all in the service of that movement. But Blinded by the Right offers plenty of evidence that for Brock, lying has been a lifelong habit. During his freshman year at Berkeley, when Brock was still a Naderite liberal, he lied to a man named Andrew, who would become his lover, about the fact that he was adopted. Andrew didn't learn the truth until after he and Brock had lived together many years. While campaigning to be editor in chief of the Daily Cal at Berkeley, Brock was "caught in an embarrassing lie" about an editor he didn't like. He told the Daily Cal's outgoing editor in chief that the university's vice chancellor had phoned to complain about a story that the enemy editor had presumably mangled. It wasn't true, and Brock got caught. By this time Brock had drifted right, but he offers no evidence that this particular conflict had any ideological content. Years later, Brock leaked his American Spectator piece about Troopergate to CNN, contrary to orders from his editors, who were enforcing an embargo on it. "When confronted, I came up with a clearly implausible lie," Brock confesses. Surely lying to one's comrades wasn't part of the conservative movement's playbook. The further one gets into Brock's book, the more one starts to suspect that Brock wasn't a liar for any larger cause, but simply … a liar. [2]

Marc Cooper, journalist for LA Weekly wrote:

What I found ... 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. [3]