David Brock, the red-baiters, and more

Check out the newest site devoted to exposing media bias: Media Matters for America. The founding father of this enterprise is David Brock, author of one of the most important and courageous books of the past decade -- Blinded by the Right, a Seutonian insider expose of the conservative propaganda machine.

The book made a huge impression on me, not least because I could easily have fallen into the same trap that captured Brock. As many can attest, the people who claimed to represent the campus "left" circa 1980 (at least in California) were so obnoxious that one cannot blame those who, like Brock, gravitated to the opposite side. Fortunately, he did not stay there.

Anyone opposing the Murdochian hordes will face scurrilous personal attacks; Brock got hit hard after he confessed all in Blinded. His story parallels that of Harvey Matusow, a now-obscure figure of the 1950s whose cautionary tale deserves the occasional retelling.

A troubled young man who had once flirted with the Communist Party, Matusow found himself involved with McCarthyite forces. The witch-hunters paid him to provide fake testimony against alleged "communists" -- usually labor leaders with no connection to the CP. Matusow seems to have viewed his perjuries as exercises in theatre. After conscience forced him to confront the real-world consequences of his actions, Matusow confessed all in a book titled False Witness. The result: Everybody hated him. Liberals scorned him because he had lied on behalf of McCarthy and Cohn, while rightists spread the story that the dreaded Russkies paid him to write his book.

Harvey Matusow died in 2002, having ferreted out a post-HUAC life on the fringes of bohemia as a self-described "hustler" for peace and charity. Despite his work on behalf of the homeless and other worthy causes, the left treated him badly, never forgiving or forgetting his foray among the red-baiters.

As Michael Moore once noted, progressives have a bad habit of snubbing anyone on the opposing team who wants to make a switch.

Matusow's unhappy history foreshadowed the case of David Brock, who, even after his repentance (perhaps because of his repentance?) also became the target of much leftish derision. But not from me, and not from anyone with any sense. Media Matters has done scads of top-notch work in a short time. Brock will soon have a new book out, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. I look forward to it.