"I like it on the Left much better.
The Right is way too honest & decent for a
mixed up, lying, gayboy like me!"
Posted on 05/30/2004 7:39:29 AM PDT by Rise of South Park Republicans
David Brock Is Buzzing Again And the gadfly’s main target is Rush (and Bush, of course).
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appears in the June 14, 2004, issue of National Review. Susie Tompkins Buell was very, very impressed with David Brock. A California businesswoman who co-founded the fashion giant Esprit and went on to become a major donor to Democratic causes, Buell was in Washington last fall attending a meeting of friends and supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she met Brock, the self-described former "right-wing hit man." Buell listened as Brock, now a defector to "progressive" causes, presented plans for Media Matters for America, his new Internet-based project to monitor and criticize conservative media. In a short time, she was sold.
"It just made so much sense to me," Buell recalls. "All this garbage that's coming out of the Right is like the worst contamination of this country. . . . He brought so much understanding of what goes on over there. He's very articulate, and very, very bright."
After Brock's presentation, Buell introduced herself and offered to hold a fundraiser for him at her home in San Francisco. Brock accepted, and at that gathering Buell introduced him to other potential contributors, whose donations would become part of the more than $2 million Brock has so far raised for Media Matters.
Launched in early May, the organization says its purpose is to keep an eye on "conservative misinformation" in the American media. "Conservative misinformation," according to the group's mission statement, is defined as "news or commentary presented in the media that is not accurate, reliable, or credible, and that forwards the conservative agenda." While in its first few weeks of operation Media Matters published attacks on the usual targets — Fox News, for example — Brock seems to be devoting particular energy to what he calls an "aggressive ad campaign" against radio host Rush Limbaugh.
In addition to a series of critiques on the group's website, Brock has produced a television commercial attacking Limbaugh for comments he made about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal. Media Matters spent $100,000 to air the spot on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and a few other television outlets. Brock also commissioned Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin to conduct a survey on a variety of media issues, including perceptions of Limbaugh. Among other things, Garin found that a majority of those surveyed believe Limbaugh often presents views that are biased, "rather than impartial and balanced." Garin also found that a large part of Limbaugh's audience is politically conservative.
Conservatives — anyone, actually — might question whether such insights are worth whatever Brock paid for them, but the poll, together with Brock's anti-Limbaugh television ad campaign, suggests that Media Matters is much more than a traditional media watchdog group. Indeed, it is probably more accurate to view Media Matters as part of the constellation of groups — the so-called "527" organizations, the voter-turnout group America Coming Together, John Podesta's liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, MoveOn.org, liberal talk radio, and others — that have come together on the left in the last year or so, all aimed at electing a Democratic president this November. Certainly some of Brock's donors see it that way. Leo Hindery Jr., a cable-television executive who contributes to Democratic causes, says he sees Media Matters as part of a coordinated action on the left. "I thought this was a piece of the puzzle," Hindery says. "There are people like Mike Lux [a Democratic consultant who runs an important ad agency], who are into the strategy point of view, there's Podesta, who's into the think tank/intellectual side, and I think the third part of the triangle is David's initiative." Brock's donors read like a Who's Who of those who have financed the new, activist Left. Besides Buell and Hindery, donors to Media Matters include Peter Lewis, chairman of Progressive Corp., who has contributed more than $7 million to the 527s in partnership with his friend, the financier George Soros. There is Democratic activist Bren Simon, wife of shopping-mall tycoon Mel Simon, New York psychologist and donor Gail Furman, California philanthropist James Hormel, and others. Two anti-Bush organizations, the New Democratic Network and MoveOn.org, have also contributed to Brock's project.
In addition to his donor list, Brock's staff at times resembles that of a political campaign. In the group's K Street offices, there are a number of veterans of Democratic causes. One Brock aide did opposition research for the recent presidential campaign of Sen. John Edwards; another did the same thing for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; yet another worked on the Wesley Clark presidential campaign; another worked for Massachusetts Democratic representative Barney Frank, and so on. Given all that, it seems fair to say that Media Matters is only partly about the media. It is also very much about defeating George W. Bush.
Whatever its political orientation, Media Matters is what is known as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, meaning it is tax-exempt and can accept tax-exempt contributions (similar tax-exempt strategies are used by groups on both the left and the right). But since Media Matters has just been formed, it does not yet have the formal structure in place to accept tax-deductible donations, so, like other new charitable organizations, it has had to form a "fiscal sponsorship" relationship with an existing charity, which is already set up to accept such contributions. For that, Brock turned to the Tides Foundation, a wealthy but little-known institution that funds a variety of left-wing causes.
Finally, the creation of Brock's new organization happens to coincide with his drive to publicize his new book, The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy. The book purports to tell Americans that the "verbal brownshirts" of the Right are far more dangerous than many believe. In Brock's telling, conservatism is close to an all-powerful political movement, while liberalism, once formidable, now "seems a fringe dispensation of a few aging professors and Hollywood celebrities." The right wing is so dominant, Brock writes, that even if Democrats win the presidency this year "they still face the prospect of being brutally slammed and systematically slandered in such a way that will make governing exceedingly difficult." The brutal conservative noise machine will keep going, Brock warns, "until its capacities to spread filth are somehow eradicated."
Really? I sure hope this Garin fella charged Brock a whole lot of money to come up with that finding. I wonder if Garin also discovered that Kerry had served in Vietnam?
Rush says about Brock that he has a new PR agent and he doesn't even have to pay him.
Once there were two cows, a rightwing cow and a leftwing cow. David Brock milked them both.
I know David and watched him milk his former employers and supporters. For a price, he will now do the same to his current benefactors.
He say this as if it would be a bad thing ...
As Frank Rich wrote in the New York Times , "By his own account, Brock has lied so often that a reader can't take on faith some of the juicier newsbreaks from the impeachment era in his book."
From May 22, 2000 -
Internet and telecommunications services executive Leo J. Hindery Jr., CEO of Global Crossing Ltd. and chairman and CEO of GlobalCenter Inc., has been named to the Katalyst Board of Advisors. Hindery formerly served as president and CEO of AT&T Broadband & Internet Services.
Hindery is a leader in the worldwide telecommunications industry, reflected in his appointment in March as CEO of Global Crossing. In that capacity, he oversees the implementation of the world's first global fiber optic network, serving five continents, 27 countries and more than 200 major cities. He is also CEO of Global Center, an international Internet commerce services and network solutions company, which provides the infrastructure, IP network and IT services required to manage online enterprises.
We can only hope.
No. That's his dildo.
Apparently free speech is only for Democrats and liberals.
He'd be a mess, afterwards.
I guess she'll have us in concentration camps, if she gets her own way.
You missed the real goal - "somehow eradicated" - i.e. death camps, not concentration camps.
Also, Mr. Brock clearly misses the point that Mr. Limbaugh is a commentator, not a newsman. Mr. Limbaugh deliberately tells us much that isn't objectively "true", but he does it as satire. The left never gets satire, and seems in fact to hate it, since it makes fun of them in a way that exposes them.
With campaign finance reform the congress and the president knowinlgy scuttled our constitutional rights to political speech, and the supreme court supported doing so for the better good just so the country could go back to a small group of behind-the-scenes fat cats sitting in smoke filled rooms ruling over American politics. It's a disgrace. Where we shake our heads in wonder that there could have once been a Boss Tweed or a Pendergast machine, George Soros and his moneybags friends are silently tking over rulership of the Democrat party. And dont fool yourself, if Bush loses in Novmber the republican party will rapidly reorganize itself around these 527 travesties too. I find the entire thing disgusting.
Yes, Lefties, politics IS a contest. We think you are wrong and you think we are wrong! What a shock!
How can a flammer buzz? :@)
In addition to a series of critiques on the group's website, Brock has produced a television commercial attacking Limbaugh for comments he made about the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal.
Got news for you Brock-sucker, I proved Rush was 100% right!
"I like it on the Left much better.
The Right is way too honest & decent for a
mixed up, lying, gayboy like me!"
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