THE MADNESS OF DAVID BROCK
David Brock was smoking a cigarette on the roof of his Washington, D.C. office one day in the late fall of 2010 when his assistant and two bodyguards suddenly appeared and whisked him and his colleague Eric Burns down the stairs.
Brock, the head of the liberal nonprofit Media Matters for America, had told friends and co-workers that he feared he was in imminent danger from right-wing assassins and needed a security team to keep him safe.
The threat he faced while smoking on his roof? “Snipers,” a former co-worker recalled.
“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one employee said, explaining that Brock’s bodyguards would rarely leave his side, even accompanying him to his home in an affluent Washington neighborhood each night where they “stood post” to protect him. “What movement leader has a detail?” asked someone who saw it.
Extensive interviews with a number of Brock’s current and former colleagues at Media Matters, as well as with leaders from across the spectrum of Democratic politics, reveal an organization roiled by its leader’s volatile and erratic behavior and struggles with mental illness, and an office where Brock’s executive assistant carried a handgun to public events in order to defend his boss from unseen threats. . . .
Media Matters has perhaps achieved more influence simply by putting its talking points into the willing hands of liberal journalists. “In ‘08 it became pretty apparent MSNBC was going left,” says one source. “They were using our research to write their stories. They were eager to use our stuff.” Media Matters staff had the direct line of MSNBC president Phil Griffin, and used it. Griffin took their calls.
According to visitor logs, on June 16, 2010, Brock and then-Media Matters president Eric Burns traveled to the White House for a meeting with Valerie Jarrett, arguably the president’s closest adviser. Recently departed Obama communications director Anita Dunn returned to the White House for the meeting as well.
During a 2008 meeting of the left-wing umbrella group Democracy Alliance outside San Diego, Brock’s unusual behavior drew considerable attention. According to a fellow attendee, “David completely lost his s–t. He started getting incredibly aggressive. He alienated important people in the progressive movement, like John Podesta [of the Center for American Progress] and Anna Burger [of the Service Employees International Union]. Lots of drama. There were a lot of conversations about David’s mental health.”
Two years later, at another Democracy Alliance meeting shortly after the 2010 election, Brock behaved in a way one prominent liberal who was there described as “erratic, unstable and disturbing.” Brock’s aggression, this person said, was “hard to ignore and noticed by a number of people,” generating “quite a bit of concern” about his condition. . . .
Last spring, some at Media Matters headquarters and in other parts of the progressive world were caught off guard by an interview Brock gave to Ben Smith at Politico, in which he promised to wage “guerrilla warfare and sabotage” against Fox News. “It was insane,” says a coworker. “David was totally manic at the time. We were all shocked.”
The story goes on and on and, beyond the specific revelations about MMFA in the Daily Caller article, there is a larger and more general scandal about liberal non-profit organizations like MMFA: The enormous gap in pay, prestige and privilege between the executives and the peons who actually do the work. David Brock and the other bosses at such operations not only collect six-figure salaries, but also certainly monopolize the perks that go with the job, including expense-paid travel to various conferences and meetings in resort locales where they “work” a little and relax a lot.
Ask anyone who’s spent much time in the D.C. non-profit world, and you’ll hear astonishing tales of the luxurious lifestyles of the 501(c) executive class, a lifestyle made possible by the work done by dozens of low-paid staffers. This is equally true, I should point out, of certain conservative non-profits — we need not name names — but such stuff is especially obnoxious when observed at liberal groups, which are ostentatiously devoted to left-wing notions of equality and social justice.
The poor underpaid slobs who toil inside a racket like MMFA tend to rationalize their work on the basis of “advancing the cause,” and perhaps also with the idea that one day they might get a shot at joining the non-profit political executive class. But the smarter ones eventually wise up to the racket and seek employment in the world of greedy capitalism, where one’s day-to-day work might not advance any glorious “cause,” but at least the unequal transactions aren’t dressed up in a lot of idealistic nonsense.
Congratulations to Tucker Carlson, Alex Pappas and the other underpaid slobs at The Daily Caller who put together this overdue exposé.
UPDATE: Richard McEnroe suspects that we have attracted trolls of theagent provocateur type, who are posting anti-homosexual statements in the comments in a stealthy effort to elicit derogatory reactions from other commenters, thus to “prove” that anyone who doesn’t like MMFA is a right-wing bigot. Whether or not McEnroe’s suspicion is justfied, I don’t claim to know, but consider yourself warned.
