When I wrote about Van Jones last week, the only people who took notice of his appointment were David Horowitz, who first reported on his background, and Glenn Beck, whose ranting made it appear that there was somewhat of a conspiracy on the part of the Obama administration to appoint extremist radicals to positions of importance. Nevertheless, Beck must be given all the credit to alerting everyone to Jones’ position at the White House.
Now, finally, some of the mainstream media has picked up the story. Yesterday, Jake Tapper of ABC News blogged on the Jones appointment. Fox News put various statements made by Jones on their website. Finally, TNR ran an article on its website by Kate Sheppard, which both called attention to Jones while ridiculing the entire brouhaha.
Sheppard’s piece is an example of particularly flawed argument. First, she writes that “for months now, various right-wing bloggers and Glenn Beck have been trying to whip up outrage over Van Jones, Obama’s green-jobs guru. Their feverish accusations to date—that he’s a secret communist, say—have been absurd and easily ignored.”
I used to have a saying: “Just because J.Edgar Hoover said it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.” Today, I would have to add that because Beck has first brought it to the nation’s attention, also doesn’t mean it’s not true. It turns out, of course, that Jones’ record and background is not only fair game, but that the reports about him are true. He was a proclaimed communist and Maoist, and has publicly said that today he is adopting new strategies to achieve his radical and anti-capitalist goals. And that is why, Sheppard is forced to say, he is becoming a “political headache” for the White House.
Sheppard tries to legitimize Jones by pointing to how many national liberal leaders have endorsed him, from Nancy Pelosi on. The real question, of course, is why they have done this? It is akin to the question I asked in the pages of TNR in the 1980’s, when the peace movement was at its hilt, and I asked how they expected to be taken seriously when they accepted the participation of Soviet line Communists. The major liberal summits that featured Jones as a keynoter, and on which she reports, should be embarrassed at their willingness to feature someone with Jones’ views.
Sheppard should start by reading the analysis on Frontpagemag.com by Ben Johnson, if she can stand to read a sound argument, even though it comes from a conservative source. Johnson lays out with direct and accurate quotes from Jones what he believes, and how he intends to use his green jobs position as a vehicle for a clearly left-wing socialist agenda.
Here is the key Jones quote:
Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we’re not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won’t be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that’s a process and I think that’s what’s great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.
This is left-wing lingo, and a clear call for “transforming the whole society” to the original communist vision Jones obviously still believes in.
How could such a man get any White House appointment, especially one with a large budget and a strategy for social revolution as its goal? If George W. Bush had appointed a David Duke supporter who only four years earlier was a leader of a Klan offshoot, the Left would rightfully have yelled bloody murder until the appointee was dismissed. One must also ask what happened to the traditional FBI vetting of one’s background, and the calling attention to it by the Bureau to the President, before the appointment was made.
Did Obama know of Jones’ views and associations? If not, why not? And if he did, why did he still appoint him? One wonders if Bill Ayers had not been the subject of so much attention before the election, whether he too would have been given a major appointment as an education czar?
And that’s before the thing about Mumia hit the fan.
And then, of course, we have the strange case of John Holdren; eugenicist. I think he made it. He no longer seems to be controversial, when in reality, he’s more of a nutcase (and probably more dangerous) than Jones.
I really hate to bring this up, but I have to. Does the fact that Jones is getting so much more flak than Holdren indicate that we have a lower tolerance of nuttiness from blacks than whites? Is Holdren getting a white pass?
/Ducks…
“…whose ranting made it appear that there was somewhat of a conspiracy on the part of the Obama administration to appoint extremist radicals to positions of importance.”
Oh gosh, it appears that Glenn Beck and I are guilty as sin. I am definitely convinced that Barack Obama is trying to sneak “extremist radicals” of the Saul Alinsky variety into his administration. Van Jones seems to go out of his way to attract attention. He often comes across as a guy who just injected a double dose of amphetamines. John Holdren, on the other, says a few weird things offhandedly and then proceeds to behave normally. It will take a few weeks longer until he resigns. Jones should be gone before Tuesday. He was cut a lot of slack because of his “authentically man of color” behavior. A white man would have been forced to quit sometime last week.
I have a feeling we won’t be hearing much more from Van Jones after Tuesday when he gets his pink slip. Good riddance. Another inexplicably bad appointment by a man who is in way over his head. I fully expect Obama to break down in tears at some point in his presidency and admit that he has no idea what he is doing and that he is a smooth-talking poser who is just playing president on tv.
Meanwhile…the big networks, the NY TIMES, and the WaPo are running around with their fingers in their ears yelling: “La la la la la la I can’t hear you.
3, then why’s Holdren still there? Because he looks like a nerdy white scientist with his coke-bottle glasses and beard?
I really don’t like to presume racism, but I’m seeing a pattern going back the Joyclin Elders of the crazy people being a political liability only when they’re black. The only one who managed to hang on long enough to do any real serious damage was Hazel O’Leary, but eventually, she was shown the door.
Don’t get me wrong; Jones needs to go. But somehow, we have a way of looking at a Holdren (or Ayers, for that matter), and thinking that anyone who looks like that has to be harmless. Eventually, these guys are going to figure out that they can get the worst kinds of radicals in power by making sure they have that white professorly look.
All of the creepy radicals have to go. I’ll reserve comment on whether or not the POTUS fits that description.
“…and thinking that anyone who looks like that has to be harmless.”
Saul Alinsky taught his adherents not to behave in an iconoclastic fashion. He encouraged them to adopt the speech and mannerisms of those they desired to radicalize. Van Jones only get this right about half the time. Obama’s unofficial czar can’t help himself when he speaks in front of friendly crowds. He gets downright crazy and forgets that inexpensive video and audio recorders are readily available to the masses. In this day and age—there is virtually no such thing as a private audience of people exclusively on your side. One must always be on their guard.
Isn’t Hazel O’Leary a woman of color? I think she might be half black. O’Leary knew how to be subtle and “professional.” Joyclin Elders apparently never took any lessons from the Alinsky crowd. She was too brutally frank and willing to blow the minds of middle of the road Americans.
Glenn will not fall: Glenn has a lot to say and it’s for the good of Freedom. We are a free nation and anyone who is trying to turn us into a communist country…I do not stand for-Sorry.
Testify! She was my kind of woman! Ahead of the curve, and proud of it.
What was that that Obama said about not being threatening to whitey?
Joyclin Elders apparently never took any lessons from the Alinsky crowd. She was too brutally frank and willing to blow the minds of middle of the road Americans.