Customer Reviews

The REAL ANITA HILL

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Had to give 5 star review so it would be read next to the clueless conservative reviews that hold this up as an indictment of the American left, despite the author himself admitting it was a hatchet job paid for by the Heritage Foundation. Its ironic that Brock, vilefied by the right for media matters would be held up here as hero. As Stephan Colbert said so aptly "reality has a liberal bias"

this book is of course dreadfully bad as journalism; read it only as a window on the recent upsurge of rightist political fantasia, and as a supplement to brock's latest, *blinded by the right*.

in reading his latest, he will explain what the score is for this one, what he called "character assassination."

i am somewhat disturbed by some of the other reviews, here, though....witness brock: "i could see that my reportorial method for *the real anita hill* was shoddy, not only in the sources i had trusted, but in the obvious fact that i had missed significant evidence that showed that hill's testimony was more truthful than thomas' flat denials after all. my version of the thomas-hill controversy was wrong, my belief in it as truth was a delusion. perhaps the errors of *the real anita hill* could be attributed to journalistic carelessness, ideological bias, and my misdirected quest for acceptance from a political movement. in the review of *strange justice*, however, to protect myself and my tribe from the truth and consequences of our own hypocrisy, smears, falsehoods, and cover-ups, i consciously and actively chose an unethical path. i continued to malign anita hill and her liberal supporters as liars. i trashed the professional reputations of two reporters for reporting something i knew was correct. i coerced an unsteady source, i knowlingly published a lie, and i falsified the historical record" (brock, d. *blidned by the right* ny: crown, 2002. p. 248).

as can be seen here, the author of *the real anita hill* is admitting that it is not true.

Brock famously described Anita Hill as "A little nutty and a little slutty".

Regardless of your opinion on Hill's testimony, how can you take seriously a book that uses this kind of language to describe a woman?

Professional and objective journalism wouldn't use this kind of degradation even it were proven 100% that someone was maliciously lying. It's supposed to be about facts not insults.

This is a rare case where a book has been totally and completely recanted by its author...self describing it as "character assassination". Any potential reader should be fully aware of this. Mr. Brock has clearly and publicly apologized to Ms. Hill. The reason for reading the book at all is to study, as a specimen of the genre, the extraordinary confluence of politics, self interest, and pure ambition, in our mangled public discourse. Our politics have gone awry when such writing can so glibly become part of the public discussion. While Mr. Brock merits only condemnation for his cynical abuse of free speech, he also deserves respect for recanting it.

There had been a legitimate debate about Hill's accusations...but now, similar Thomas behaviors have been corroborated by five women. It's increasingly fair to say that something did happen...whether it should have risen to the level of personal scandal...in the context of a public confirmation hearing, the way it did...is an open question. But this book was never about this. It was about one very scurrilous and admittedly unethical, ad hominem, after-the-fact, reaction to it.

In his new book, Blinded by the Right, here's in part what Brock says about his writing of this book:

".... Tainted by bias, and already committed to a flawed interpretation of events in print, I got no closer to the truth in the book.... I failed to weigh my findings against the fact that all of my sources were pro-Thomas partisans..... I had no access to Hill's supporters, and therefore no understanding of their motivations, no responses to any of my charges, and no knowledge of whatever incriminating evidence they might have gathered against Thomas that was not introduced in the hearing..... As for the traits ascribed to Hill that might have motivated her to lie -- ambitious, willful, and even vengeful -- they were all culled by me from the Thomas camp. Everyone I spoke to HATED that woman."

It is truly sad, and frightening, that not only was the book published, and believed, but that, as far as I'm aware, none of the conservatives who continued to rip Anita Hill to shreds based on the falsehoods contained in this book have come forth to apologize to her. Partisanship seems almost always to trump truth and plain human decency.

It was difficult to take this book seriously to begin with. There were gaping holes in logic a fourth grader could have picked out; sources for important information were either vague or nonexistent; and on the whole, the scenario painted by Mr. Brock -- that Ms. Hill was an opportunistic, even somewhat unbalanced participant in a vast left-wing conspiracy -- was far less believable than the commonsensical notion that Clarence Thomas actually did what she said he did.

Now, Mr. Brock, a former darling of the extreme right, has recanted and admitted that the entire book was little more than a smear job, in which even the most absurd and unsubstantiated "evidence" was included so long as it fit the right-wing's own image of Ms. Hill. In fact, according to Mr. Brock, at least one of the claims reported in his book as absolute fact came from Thomas himself, via an intermediary, with positively no corroborating evidence whatsoever. He also admits to deliberately burying evidence (provided in a Wall Street Journal article and another book, "Strange Justice," that Brock savaged as a "left-wing hit job") buttressing Ms. Hill's claims that Thomas was addicted to pornographic films.

Of course, Brock still should not be absolved. His crimes against truth and honest journalism are so extensive (remember, this is the man largely responsible for breaking the Troopergate "scandal") that it will be years before his reputation can be considered rehabilitated. Still, Brock's recantation of this book provides further corroboration of what most objective observers have long since realized -- that Anita Hill was telling the truth and Clarence Thomas was lying. Unfortunately, that realization came too late to prevent Thomas' lifetime appointment to our land's highest court, where he has dutifully served as a lapdog of the extreme right and Antonin Scalia, doing his best to undo everything his illustrious predecessor, Thurgood Marshall, had fought and stood for.

Reader beware: In David Brock's later book, Blinded by the Right, he admits to smearing Anita Hill in this book. "Doubts about (Anita Hill's) testimony were furthered by the widely publicized and later recanted claims of David Brock, who coined the phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" to describe Professor Hill. Later, in his book "Blinded by the Right," Brock confessed that, to please his conservative backers, he had deliberately gone after Anita Hill's reputation in a smear campaign that relied on false and unfounded information." Wikipedia entry on Anita Hill, August 24, 2007

David Brock has publicly admitted in his latest book, "Blinded by the Right", how "The Real Anita Hill" came to be - the unverified half-truths and suppositions, the missing leads and facts that, had they come to light before Thomas was appointed, would most likely have stopped his ascension to the Supreme Court, bundled up neatly with a hard right spin.

In "Blinded by the Right" he reveals the sources, the money, and the politics behind the writing of "The Real Anita Hill", the true right wing conspiracy behind it all, and the eventual disgust and guilt he felt over the slandering of this woman. In fact, he ended up writing an apology letter in an attempt to absolve himself of the guilt of being a shill in a well planned, funded, and orchestrated conservative movement, and for betraying his journalistic integrity.

Therefore, "The Real Anita Hill" should be read only in conjunction with "Blinded by the Right", to keep the reader from having his mind poisoned by material the author himself has recanted, and that facts that surfaced after the book's publishing came to disprove. It is quite interesting from a historical perspective, and also as a chilling demonstration of the conservative movement as Brock reveals in "Blinded by the Right".

just found this in the May 24, 1993 issue of "The New Yorker" Magazine: a review of Brock's book by Jane Meyer & Jill Abramson includes...

"All nonfiction books contain errors, but this book is unusual in the extent to which its key arguments are based on them."

"At a certain point, a knowledgeable reader begins to wonder how many of these errors are innocent and how many are deliberate distortions."

"Once the sources are evaluated and the contradictory evidence is considered, Brock's arguments evaporate into an amorphous cloud of ill will."

...and the reactionaries of the right still hold fast to their hatred of reality. [Why is this book of lies still in print?]

Back in the 1990s David Brock was an investigative journalist who earned his credentials - and hefty salary - as a right wing attack dog through highly questionable reporting.

In March 1992 Brock penned a critical story on Anita Hill for The American Spectator, which was the springboard for the book that was published 13 months later. Hill had testified under oath during the latter stages of the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court-nominee Clarence Thomas that Thomas - as her supervisor at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission - made harassing sexual statements directly to her. Hill's allegations initially became public when information from an FBI interview about the allegations was leaked to the media.

The book became a best-seller and propelled Brock's career, but the stardom did not last. Several years later Brock disassociated himself from his right wing benefactors and disavowed his writing of the book, while publicly issuing an apology to Hill.

That the book is still in print is not a surprise; it was a cause celebre that virtually ushered in the era of shoddy, hateful reporting of "liberal" politicians. But that it is published as if the author stands by his work is a highly despicable act.