Site Presented By
Monday, Nov 9, 2009
An e-mail letter that supposedly proves I really am a homophobe in fact proves just the opposite.
Apr 30, 2002 | David Brock's new book, "Blinded by the Right," is an attempt to establish two Big Lies on the platform of a thousand smaller ones. The first lie is that Brock was so revolted by the career he had made for himself out of gossipy sleaze and character assassination that he decided to retire from such sordid business and reform his journalistic act. Accordingly, he rejected the right-wing cabal that had seduced him to sin and was now redeeming himself by telling the truth. But anyone reading "Blinded by the Right" can readily see that it is itself a Mount Rushmore of gossipy sleaze and character assassination and that the only difference between the new Brock and the old one is that his venom is now directed at the friends who helped him in the past.
The job of identifying this piece of Brockian hypocrisy fell to critic Bruce Bawer, who performed the task in a devastating review that appeared in the Washington Post. This was a bad break for Brock, because Bawer is also a formerly conservative gay man who, like Brock, worked for the American Spectator. Thus his credibility on Brock's subjects is quite high. Brock responded with an angry squeal to the Post's editors, claiming that Bawer had not disclosed that he was mentioned in the book. The Post editors apologized to Brock, drawing some of the sting from Bawer's verdict.
The second Big Lie of "Blinded by the Right " is that Brock's decision to reform was triggered by a realization that the conservatives who had supported and defended him (and helped to make him rich) were closet homophobes. The reason they had to be closet homophobes is that they not only had sponsored Brock's media rise, but had continued to support him when the political left outed him as a homosexual. Enter me. Although I barely knew Brock, he cast me as the poster boy for the closet syndrome, reserving the punch line of his pivotal conversion chapter for an incident that allegedly exposed my anti-gay prejudice. According to Brock, I had uttered an unspecified "anti-gay slur" to a nameless editor who I didn't realize at the time was gay.
I responded to Brock's attack in an article for Salon. I pointed out that I had a very public career of defending gays and that in typical fashion Brock had printed damaging gossip without checking with the source to see if the inferrences he had drawn -- that I was homophobic -- were correct. I identified the editor that Brock had referred to as Chad Conway and pointed out that when I called Chad to do the checking myself he had no idea Brock had used the anecdote. Moreover, he told me he was appalled by the use Brock had made of it. I read Chad the passage and asked him to give me a statement I could use in an article I told him I was writing for Salon. Chad dictated the following sentences to me: "You have never made an anti-gay slur to me or about David Brock or anyone else. You have never said anything hurtful to me -- not about gays or anything else."
In response to this article Chad appears to have written a confused e-mail letter to a friend -- which quickly surfaced on the Internet, and which he has also sent to Salon. According to the e-mail, Chad now says the remark I made was indeed a slur. On the other hand, despite the fact that his own previous statement to me refuted that claim, he doesn't bother to retract the statement in this letter. More significantly, Chad's letter confirms what is the only important fact in this dispute (and in evaluating Brock's credibility), namely, that I am not anti-gay, covertly or overtly: "Horowitz was always very good about the gay issue with me, and personally I don't think that he is a homophobe," he writes in the e-mail. Whatever else one may conclude from this dispute, this particular statement by Chad Conway confirms Brock's irresponsibility in using the anecdote and establishes the calculating mendacity at the core of his book.
