Per my post and announcement last night, here's the clip of my CNN debate with David Frum about the Van Jones affair this morning. Notice that Frum has no answer for the obvious double standards. Somehow, nobody gets fired for lying us into Iraq, Tim Geithner keeps his job after tax evasion and gift scandals, Republican Congresspeople remain credible while championing the "birther" lunacy -- but Van Jones must be fired for carelessly signing a petition years ago, which he later apologized for.
As I said on CNN, the hypocrisy uncovers the real truth of this whole affair: Van Jones was targeted by the political terrorist known as Glenn Beck -- the man who leads a 21st century lynch mob looking to hunt down anyone (and especially anyone black) who has ever been a part of progressive movement politics. I don't use that term "political terrorist" lightly. According to the dictionary, a terrorist is "a person who terrorizes or frightens others" -- and usually does so with an ideological objective. There are, of course, many different kinds of terrorists, and I'd say Beck -- with his fearmongering, paranoia and hate -- fits the letter and spirit of the dictionary definition of a political terrorist quite well. Indeed, just listen to this clip or look at this not-so-veiled threat and then try to claim with a straight face that Beck isn't explicitly using the mass media to scare and terrorize people.
In placating the demands of this terrorist and his lynch mob, the Obama administration has simultaneously empowered that terrorist and that lynch mob, while abandoning its own progressive base. (And yes, yes -- I know saying that makes the sycophants upset. I know it means I'll get a lot of irritating email saying, "I guess you wanted McCain!" or "You're going to get us President Romney in 2012!" - as if the progressive movement exists solely to worship at the feet of politicians with a "D" behind their name. That's fine -- that kind of cultism is everywhere in the American Idiocracy, and I've got my "delete" key fired up and ready to go).
I am at once loathe to help fuel this media-manufactured controversy and eager to use this as a kind of "teachable moment" that Obama talks about, but rarely delivers on. If we as a movement cannot stand up for a genuine progressive hero like Van Jones -- a guy with a towering record of real-world accomplishment on behalf of issues and grassroots communities -- then we will not be able to stand up for anything, much less major legislative initiatives.
The multi-million-dollar Washington-based "progressive" organizations that previously used Van Jones to stress their environmental and racial progressivism haven't strongly spoken out about Jones and about the White House's failure to back him. Indeed, most of those organizations have issued mealy-mouthed statements praising Jones but giving their friends in the White House a pass. This is par for the course, unfortunately. As I wrote in my newspaper column this week, and as Jane Hamsher has so effectively shown, these institutions are still too concerned with their White House access than in building a real movement.
So if I can do my own little part to take up the slack through the media, I will -- even if it means I will inevitably be targeted by that same right-wing lynch mob.
Of course, perhaps the Jones affair is the canary in the coal mine. Maybe the White House's refusal to stand by Jones and willingness to accept the demands of right-wing political terrorists is a symptom of the bigger disease whereby the Obama is already selling out progressives on every major priority. Perhaps, in short, Jones isn't the issue -- and what his firing represents is.
I fear that is the case -- certainly the Obama administration's behavior on everything from health care to climate change to war suggests that's what's going on. And if that's true, then we've got a huge problem on our hands.
Gene Karpinski: Labor Day 2009: Protect the American Worker with a Clean Energy Economy
Only one-sixth of the world's top renewable energy manufacturers are based in the United States, which means we are losing out on millions of new jobs.
I find if interesting that Glenn Beck simply brings forward information available to all through the internet discrediting Jones and now he is a terrorist. Rather than call people names why weren't the CNN, MSNBC< ABC NBC, CBS and others out seeking the facts to debunk Beck. Had they done that there would not have been this issue, unless there was no information to refute him.
I can not imagine that there was not something out there that would have prevented this from happening. Jones was portrayed as a totally different person than Beck apparently presented.
Rather than resort to name calling lets find the facts to put him out of business, if you can. His next target will be Cass Sunstein what can be used to stop that?
The causes for Jones' departure included the fact that he signed a 2004 petition supporting the so-called "9/11 truther" movement; that he was a self-professed communist during much of the 1990s; that he supported the cop-killer Mumia abu-Jamal; that in 2008 he accused "white polluters" of "steering poison into the people of color communities"; and that earlier this year, speaking to a friendly crowd in Berkeley, Calif., he called Republicans "a--holes.
OK calling Republicans "A-Holes" is like calling those little creatures in a river, Fish! They are what they are ... anyhoo Jones was no Progressive, he was and is a radical. The right wing has its share of loonies and so does the left fringe. The irony is that both these fringes think they are right and the other is wrong while they point fingers at each other in a holier-than-thou fashion!
How Van Jones Happened and What We Need to Do Next
http://tiny.cc/sgLNk
This posting = nail
Excellent!
Let me see if I have this straight...Van Jones makes numerous incendiary comments over the last 24 months and sounds more racist than David Duke, and yet in some way this is because of right-wing terrorists? Did they make him say his crazy thoughts? Was Van Jones controlled by the vast right wing in an attempt to undermine this WH?
Van Jones is out (as is all this silly 'progressive' talk) because 97% of the American public find his current views repugnant, let alone what he said or signed 5 years ago...the other 3% is now talking like this was a betrayal of near Judas proportions; which shows a somewhat tenuous grasp of reality.
The bigger question remains how he became Czar of anything...does the WH not vet anyone?
When Beck says that Barack Obama "hates white people and the white culture" doesn't he sound like someone who is trying to incite violence?
Has the Secret Service paid a visit to Glenn Beck? They should.
How will Fox "News" feel if something horrific were to happen due to Beck's words of incitement?
Same formula they used for the tea parties, the birthers, the deathers...
Maybe Obama is employing the "Rocky" strategy...get the ever-lovin' crap beat out of you for 95% of the fight and then get the big win at the last moment. (I guess the progressive movement is Adrienne, sitting in the corner, trying not to watch her guy get beat up.)
The fact that Shoah has vast amounts of undisputed empirical data and countless witnesses backing up its reality is what makes the denier a liar. The fact that nine-eleven has its name should be enough to make one wary.
The former administration not being able to come fully clean regarding their dismal failure regarding that day and their obfuscation of the investigation is reason enough for Mr. Jones, or anyone else, to have signed the petition. The real wackos are the ones deifying the event, because in doing so they canonize the previous government and their lame excuses (when they've bothered to give any).
Frum is the one in this broadcast who reiterated the "big lie", as he put it. And he did so again and again. That Sirota doesn't dare refute that big lie is telling: Stick to your own talking point, don't ruin your career.
Like it or not, even though Sirota is right, he loses the argument here because Frum uses the talking point of sacrosanctness. That Jones had apologized is also telling: Bow to the sanctity of the event.
The politicized holier-than-thou use of that tragic day in September is the true victory of the terrorists. They couldn't've hoped for more.
As for the author: he is right, there is a problem: He ain't the One.
f you wanted a knee jerk politician then you should have voted for one.
This seems to be intentionally inaccurate to make it appear that our president is caving-in to the lunatic fringe element of the republican party, he is not and he did not fire Van Jones, he resigned.
I could support your outrage against the president and democrats if it were true that Obama fired Van Jones, but that statement is a major distortion of the facts and completely changes crux of your argument.
The blame for this outrageous witch hunt must fall directly to those who incited the lynch mob and perpetuated the lies about a good and honorable human rights advocate, our president is the victim of this smear campaign, just as Clinton and Kerry were the victims of the lies promoted by the swiftboaters.
This is one progressive liberal who is not having any buyers remorse and continues to wholeheartedly support our president, I cannot think of anyone in the country that could be doing a better job, especially when he is being bombarded with crazy conspiracy theorists about the legitimacy of his citizenship etc.
This is no time to abandon the leader we elected in the midst of an important skirmish, sorry David but your frustrations should be directed at the insanity coming from the right and not against our egalitarian president, who I feel confident will ultimately succeed.