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Politics : Impeach George W. Bush -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jttmab who wrote (3851)	6/28/2001 1:23:14 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 93284

Interesting take on the Brock imbroglio. WHAT A BROCK: Mickey Kaus and Jill Abramson get it just about right on David Brock's latest piece of flim-flam. Abramson tells Howie Kurtz: ""the problem with Brock's credibility" is that "once you admit you've knowingly written false things, how do you know when to believe what he writes? . . . It'd be awfully convenient to now say because what he's writing is personally pleasing to me that he's a 100 percent solid reporter. That would be a little disingenuous."" Mickey lets it go with an ancient Chinese proverb: "Man who lies once for money and fame may lie again for money and fame." I have a couple of other theories about Brock, whom I've observed from a distance in both gay and political Washington for over a decade. The first is that his current publicity stunt (we should all be grateful he didn't take his shirt off this time) is a possible attempt to get the American Spectator sued. He confesses that he knowingly wrote an untruth in the magazine - a textbook case of libel. Will Kaye Savage and Anita Hill, whom he maligned and intimidated, sue him? Will Mayer and Abramson? Nah. If they sue anyone, it would be the Spectator itself. Even if nothing transpires, Brock must be enjoying the brief stress he has placed on his former protectors. The second theory is that Brock is a gay man who simply cracked under pressure. Knowing he was gay in the first place made him do things far more extreme than he was comfortable with in order to impress people he believed were homophobic and would only accept him if he were not just right-wing - but a right-wing hero. Hence his over-compensating attack-dog pyrotechnics. Note that this was largely in his own head. What matters is not whether his conservative allies actually were, as he charmingly puts it, "racist, homophobic Clinton-haters." (Some probably were, but many were not.) What matters is that he thought they were and acted accordingly. So his original deceit was really a function of his homosexual insecurity in a right-wing world. With his Hillary book, Brock tried to see whether his conservative friends and allies would appreciate him for himself and his talents. When his book met with conservative indifference (actually, it met with universal indifference), he went off the deep end. It's far easier to believe, after all, that you're a victim of racist homophobes than that you simply wrote a lame, not-too-interesting book. By then, the usual identity-mongers on the left were cooing in his ears and acceptance seemed finally achievable - by sucking up to liberals. Of course, he was wrong again. Liberals aren't interested in him as such - as Abramson, Kaus and Noah have just shown - and I don't blame them. Brock has demonstrated he cannot be trusted. He has confessed to being an opportunistic liar and character-assassin. Why would anyone trust him again? So this last little pirouette in a seemingly endless musical number will not settle anything. In fact, it makes me faintly nauseous. Using the word "conscience" in a book title when you have done what Brock has done is not confession. It's spin. At long last, in his lack of center, in his need for love, in his contempt for ethics, he resembles almost perfectly the man he has fittingly come to embrace: Bill Clinton. - 6/28/2001 12:05:38 AM andrewsullivan.com