We All Blew It
On Thursday evening, I got worried. Friday I put in a call to ask Van Jones how to help. Saturday I started writing a blog post, which would have appeared this morning. (I've attached it below because it goes into more detail on the history of the "Bush as addict" meme.) But on Saturday night, Van resigned, and this morning I was sick at heart. Collectively we -- the environmental community, progressives, and the Obama administration -- blew this, and we let our cause, our president, and Van Jones down.
This was a lynch mob and, when it started forming a month ago, we didn't take it seriously enough. When I saw the first Glenn Beck piece on Van Jones and the Apollo Alliance as the new vast left-wing conspiracy, I could not take it seriously. Silence enabled Fox to keep pushing. The statements for which Jones apologized -- the reference to the right as "assholes" and saying that Bush was talking "like a crack-head" were such ordinary political discourse -- think Rahm Emmanuel, think Dick Cheney saying "fuck yourself" to Senator Leahy, think Tom Friedman dubbing Bush "the addict-in-chief" -- that I didn't understand why an apology was necessary; I assumed it would blow over.
Well, that was a mistake. So was the decision by the White House to treat the initial attacks not as part of an assault on the president but, instead, to allow them to be viewed as being about Van Jones. What we underestimated was the power of the fact that both Jones and the Barack Obama are black. Yes, the hysteria was about politics -- I don't think Fox News really cares about Jones's ethnicity -- but it was enabled by race. Calling Bush a "crack-head" is seen by a large part of America as worse than calling him "addict-in-chief" because crack is not just a drug -- it is a drug used largely by black people. It reminds those Americans who are still uncomfortable with Barack Obama that we have a black president.
What was the reactionary right up to on Friday? They sent operatives out to San Quentin prison to obtain videotapes of workshops that Van Jones conducted there while he was working to help prisoners transition back to society. (The inmates wouldn't let them get their hands on them -- they knew, before I did, how serious this was.) They were cueing up video clips from teenagers that Jones taught in the Oakland ghetto in 2000. If you watch the infamous "assholes" video carefully, it's clear that what Jones was saying was that Republicans play hardball better than Democrats, and that we need to start playing by their rules. He said it, though, in the language of his own community -- and that, at the end of the day, was his crime. He spoke to and was of a part of an America that Fox and the reactionary right would like to put back on the plantation or pretend is not part of our nation.
Anyone who has been an effective advocate for these communities has said things that will sound shocking to people in some other parts of America -- just as anyone who genuinely represents certain evangelical communities will have beliefs about morality that more-secular Americans might have a hard time with.
So lynch mobs can form up from all perspectives. This one, though, was clearly not spontaneous. It was organized by the Republicans as part of a conscious strategy, and it is only the first. We should be critical of ourselves for having blown this one. But we shouldn't forgive either ourselves or the administration if the next time we sense this happening we don't fight back harder, faster, and in a way that calls a mob a mob, racism racism, and an attack on the president an attack on America.
Here's the post I started yesterday:
Breaking News: "George W. Bush Says Americans Are Crack-Heads"
Well, of course, that quote is not breaking, and it's not news. It's a slight paraphrase from the ex-president's 2006 State of the Union message. The full quote was, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Of course, for two more years Bush presided over a "drill baby, drill" energy policy.Even so, presidential candidate John McCain sort of went along for a while with the addiction idea, saying our dependence had been thirty years in the making. And later, when McCain, too, jumped on the "drill baby, drill" bandwagon, California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told the country: "America is so addicted to oil it will take us years to wean ourselves from it, and to look for new ways to feed our addiction is not the answer." By June 2008, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman was calling Bush "our addict in chief."
So, somehow, describing former President Bush as being an oil addict shouldn't really be breaking news.
So why is the reactionary right in a complete frothing tizzy this summer that, more than year ago, Van Jones, one of the key rising clean-energy advocates in the country, acerbically described Bush's "drill baby, drill" rhetoric as sounding like "a crack-head"?
(Full disclosure: I once called Mike Curb, the lieutenant governor of California, "an uninformed turkey" for wanting to increase the amount of lead in gasoline. Fuller disclosure, I am a friend of Van Jones, I have been featured with him in a video dialogue on our political upbringings, and I served with him on the board of the Apollo Alliance.)
And why did Fox News go after Jones but not Friedman, not Schwarzenegger, not even Presidential Science Advisor John Holdren, who in July of '06 criticized the president for failing to follow through and help us kick our "oil addiction"?There are three possible reasons. They are connected, and it is their connection that is important.
1) Van Jones, unlike everyone else I have quoted on the topic of our oil addiction and George Bush's complicity with it, is African-American.
2) By specifying that Bush's addiction was "crack-head"-like, Jones linked Bush to a drug largely used in the black community.
3) Van Jones works for the first black man to be elected president.
This is about politics, but it is empowered by race. If you doubt that, consider that Fox and Glenn Beck have been after Jones for a month -- but only since Beck began losing advertisers over his accusations that Obama was a racist.
The campaign to get advertisers to cancel their sponsorship of Beck's program was launched by Color of Change, a grassroots organization that Van Jones helped found.
This trumped-up controversy has been bounced back and forth for the last month in the right-wing echo chamber -- from one Fox show to another, off to the reactionary blogs, but dangerously it broke out into CBS this week.
How did the reactionaries get CBS to pick this up? In part by screaming "coverup" when the mainstream media ignored this non-news as, well, non-news.
Jones is an extraordinarily important leader. He cares, passionately, about helping young men and women find their way in the world, even if they had the misfortune to grow up in bad neighborhoods or make bad choices -- and he sees in a new green economy a powerful instrument to heal their lives. But that kind of hope is profoundly threatening to Glenn Beck and people like him. When it comes from a black man, they reach back to an old and ugly instinct.
This is a lynch mob in the making.
Follow Carl Pope on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CarlPope
James Rucker: Eleven More Companies Ditch Glenn Beck
Great news today -- 11 more sponsors have distanced themselves from Glenn Beck's television program, bringing the total to 57.
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great to see the president stand behind his people....
I read that he signed a statement that said that what happened on 9/11 wasn't caused
by Bin Laden or something to that effect.
I mean, come on....
The guy does a really stupid thing....
AND...
Everyone that serves in the White House does "at the presidents pleasure"
Get over it.
Sierra club another controlled asset.
Make legalizing hemp part of your publicity.
Make Obama back off on dirty coal by an article exposing him every issue.
What do you mean by "we", Carl? I get so annoyed when someone says "we all blew it". Those are signature words of "angstivism".
I don't see what all the fuss is about. Van Jones is cool, but maybe him and Obama had irreconcilable differences. Maybe Obama had to tell him "don't stress me man!" Maybe Van Jones said "take this job and shove it, Barack!"
Or maybe Barack said "hey man, I'm taking a lot of flack about the anti-capitalist rhetoric." Then maybe Van Jones made a unilateral choice - I'm going to get out of the way.
People are giving Glenn Beck and Fox way too much credit. I don't get why people bother to take them seriously. If I were in charge of the FCC, I'd tell Fox to clean up their act or they're going to get heavy-handed responses. Fines, fines, and more fines.
Actually, if I were president, I'd have a giant laser installed on top of the white house and I'd start burning Rupert's satellites one by one until he came to me on bended knee and begged me for tolerance.
Also, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh would cry like Jimmy Swaggart. They'd soon be singing "Amazing Grace" like gospel singers. They'd jam out on the lyric "a wretch like me" a few times and with all the soul the could muster just to demonstrate that they're really feeling it.
Carl Pope is right. This is all so 1950s.
The Republican Party of today was formed from splinter Dixiecrats who jumped out of the Democratic Party in 1970 when LBJ began to support integration.
They are herd animals in the most basic primate sense. Anyone not in their herd is the subject of derision. They suggest that their opponents are somehow deviant, nuts, obscene. They like to call their critics "Communist" and "anti-American".
And the 911 thing --- that is just free speech. I signed a petition circulated by Catholic nuns who opposed the Contras. Does that make me a depraved anti-American pinko commie?
I didn't know LBJ supported integration in 1970.
Just like they dragged down Condie Rice and Colin Powell for being black...oh, wait, that didn't happen. Drawin the race card, yet again. Never mind he actually is a communist and truther...you didn't even mention that...nope, had to make it a racial issue. It's a racial issue only because people like you want it to be.
You try to make him a commie and truther, only because people like you want it to be. Pot. Kettle. Black. Race baiting in the US is as old as the country.
The author would do well to read, then heed, the President's speech to schoolchildren. To wit, take responsibility for your own actions.
Race is NOT the predicate for every action, disagreement or outcome. This piece is a real diappointment.
Hi, Old School! Welcome to the New School. Here we are done with denial like yours.
No, whatever "school" you claim as your own, you are beholden to days of yore. Grievance is the currency of your realm.
There is no mention in this article about Van Jones signature on 911truth.org which is really what did him in. All other issues aside, isn't that reason enough to oust him? Why does this article avoid the simple fact that this guy is obviously fruit loops? Can you imagine how much of an embarrassment he would be to the Obama administration if he stuck around? What happened to improving the vetting process the administration was talking about? We should all breath a sigh of relief that this guy is gone.
Wrong. Try reading this post again before you comment. Your comment is pure nonsequitur distractoid headfodder serving in the cause of denying the ugly racist methods of the GOP, tryagain—
"nonsequitur distractoid headfodder" --That's great, can I use that? Laser-like reasoning, too. You really delivered a mighty smackdown with that one.
I don't know why Van Jones didn't go on Beck's show... what would have been the loss?
He would have dismantled Beck.
Beck can't handle opposition... his show is one long monologue with guests that share his nutty views.
"Caller Reduces Glenn Beck To High-Pitched Hissy Fit"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/15/caller-reduces-glenn-beck_n_233846.html
Van Jones being a 9/11 Truther was enough for me. No one I know thought the a**hole reference was a big deal. I also understood that the crack reference was about addiction to oil. By the way, crack stopped being a "black" drug eons ago. It's equal opportunity. Watch a few episodes of Cops.
Read a few books. Or live a little. How funny and sad, too, that you hope to rebut such an honest essay that peers directly into not only how a person has failed himself, but in the ugly machinations at play in our society working against the forces of good—with admonitions to watch TV.
It is to laugh.
[The full quote was, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Of course, for two more years Bush presided over a "drill baby drill" energy policy.]
This original draft isn't very strong either. Developing domestic energy resources is a critical component in creating a long term strategy to develop new energy resources for the future. Any plan to ween the United States off foreign sources for energy is an absolute necessity. Drilling in the United States and drilling here now is critical.
Any carbon neutral plan we want in the future must factor the ultimate energy realities of the present. Auto emissions testing could not just turn on the "clean air" switch without an incremental addition of new standards. It was enacted through phases.
You can tell when a conservative have won a political debate with a liberal. They call you stupid, a crack-head, a racist, a Nazi, homophobic, or the worst the insult of all a Christian! Van Jones is a radical environmentalist and a Communist. He should never have been appointed to anything by any President!
What is wrong with being an environmentalist?
Did you know environmentalism is a fundamental of the religions of native America?
The problem for most fair minded Libertarians, Independents, Republicans, and Democrats is that he is a communist. Why would you put someone in charge of "jobs" who is a communist, when we live in a free market economy? The 9/11 truth thing did not help either. But I could care less what he said about Republicans, a lot of them deserve it.
I think it's interesting how Carl has created two straw men and then proceeds to blow them down with specious charges of racism, using lurid and evocative terms like "lynch mob." Van Jones wasn't forced to resign because he called Republicans a*****s, nor because he referenced Bush as a "crackhead." He certainly wasn't targeted because he was black. He had to go because he identified himself as a Truther, and because he espoused other ideas and causes so radical and outside the mainstream that they were unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans.
I suspect that Carl is well aware of this, but finds it much easier to cry racism than to confront the fact that his and his pals' leftist agenda is something that they are unable to defend in an open exchange of ideas. They know that their views are not shared by the majority, nor even a very large minority, of the American people.
Ideas based on truth are "so radical and outside the mainstream that they were unacceptable to the vast majority of Americans?" Wow, we are in worse shape than I thought.
You are not accurate about the number either, it is a minority, not a majority.
Two thoughts:
1. Your desire to see all opposition as race-based may bring you comfort and a feeling of superiority, but it strikes me as a misreading of legitimate, political disagreement . And not of our century. I suspect this misreading will ultimately be your side's undoing.
2. "...an attack on the president an attack on America."? You seem to be implying that it is unAmerican to disagree with the executive branch. I assume you either misspoke or have never read the Bill of Rights.
Not only was it un-American when Bush wan in charge, it was down right dangerous. At least now people are being allowed to speak their minds. That is an improvement.
How was it dangerous to criticize Bush during his presidency? I don't remember that. My memory is that it was the national pastime.
Jeez judging by the author’s assessment and the comments, the left is in more trouble than I thought. Let’s face it the left’s deft handling of the issues, a complete and utter failing to comprehend this is the instantaneous information age has motivated people who never participated in community organizing and mass protests the vilify the goals of progressives for a collectivist, multicultural utopia.(why should California have all the fun and all those colorful IOUs too!) Van Jones isn’t an anomaly; he’s the poster boy for everything progressives want. Obama’s problem was he wasn’t quick enough on the trigger finger for the memory whole regarding Jones’s documented self-revelation. The sooner progressives adapt to the changed environment (one in which they no longer control the narrative or content distribution the sooner they can get back to impoverishing people and empowering themselves in the name of equality and social justice
How are you making the charge that progressives are "impoverishing people and empowering themselves in the name of equality and social justice."
That is a pretty nasty thing to say, what facts are you backing it up with?
Really smart to be a "truther" right?
really stupid to deny the truth, right?
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