THE REAL DAVID BROCK. YECCH.

But I think Brock protests too much. No one is attacking him because he is gay. Brock makes the mistake of overestimating his own importance.

"Why is the New York Times so threatened by me?" he demanded. "They consider me more dangerous than Rush Limbaugh."
It is an added mistake for Brock to elevate himself in this manner, because it will not only bring him more attention, but turn the egoistic Limbaugh against him, too. There is, of course, Brock's curious way of getting to what he believes to be the heart of his investigative searches.

With Anita Hill, it was her pubic hairs. With Hillary Rodham Clinton, it was her feminine napkins. And he defends himself by saying, "Did anyone make an issue of what Woodward thought of Nixon? If that anecdote was about Nancy Reagan, the cultural elite would have taken it as a significant detail."

Michael Kinsley of the New Republic refers to Brock's work as "comically sleazy journalism." For some reason, that conjures up memories for me of Evelyn Waugh and Scoop, his hilarious and marvelous novel about journalism.

But this, of course, gives Brock too much credit.
Brock doesn't specialize in the theatre of the absurd. He never makes you laugh, he only makes you cringe. He specializes in the kind of bizarre detail that common decency would prevent anyone else from committing to paper. It is a kind of fine madness.

Brock is one of those obsessed, totally self-satisfied investigators who finds shame under every rock but can't stop himself from continuing to turn them over. Some people with this affliction end up wearing restraining garments and residing in locked hospital wards.

Others go on to work as radio talk-show hosts and become quite famous.

A PORTRAIT OF KJ AS A SELFISH CHILD... v1-20-94