Volume 49, Number 11 · June 27, 2002
True Confessions
By Jane Mayer
Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative
by David Brock
Crown, 336 pp., $25.95
In March of 1992, a sensational investigative report by an unknown journalist was published in a little-read magazine. Though it wasn't clear at the time, David Brock's article, 'The Real Anita Hill,' which appeared in the American Spectator, marked the beginning of one of the nastiest decades in American political history. In this piece Brock revived the dirty tricks of Watergate days and adapted them to the popular press. Using catchy phrases, like 'a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty,' and buttressing them with a tone of conviction and seemingly authoritative facts, Brock alleged that Hill had concealed parts of her past and that her testimony about Clarence Thomas was false. Brock used the language of investigative journalism to demolish Hill's credibility and character. After its charges were broadcast repeatedly on the growing right-wing talk-radio circuit, and then picked up by the mainstream press and television, Brock's long article convinced many open-minded Americans to reassess their thinking about the vexing Rashomon episode that had transfixed the country the autumn before, when Hill had accused her former boss, the nominee to the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas, of lewd behavior and harassment while she worked for him in the 1980s, and of then lying about it under oath during his confirmation hearings.
Review, 5410 words
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