The first time I heard about the conservative, red-baiting crusade against Van Jones, I thought, this is ridiculous, even funny. “Will a ‘red’ help blacks go green? White House appoints ‘radical communist’ who sees environment as racial issue,” was the headline on an influential far-right website known as World Net Daily. What is this, 1952?
I’m not laughing anymore.
There’s a lot to say about the way Van Jones was hounded out of Washington by Fox News opionator Glenn Beck and his allies. Much of it has been said in the last couple of days. Because others have done a good job digging into the back-and-forth about Jones, I don’t want go there. Nor do I want to defend everything that he has said or done. He clearly made mistakes, most notably and recently signing a so-called Truther petition in 2001, an act for which he has since apologized.
But I’ve covered Jones on a handful of occasions in the last few years, and I’ve really been impressed. So I want to add a few observations about him, about the controversy and about where this is leading:
1. The charge that Van Jones is a communist is laughable. Van was a political radical and a prison reform activist after he graduated from Yale Law School during the 1990s, but so what? Like many of us, he evolved. I first heard him speak about social justice to a conference of Business for Social Responsibility, a liberal business group, a few years ago and he wowed the audience. He then became a leading advocate for green jobs and environmental justice. He told me in a column in 2007 that the environmental movement has “to start talking the language of work, wealth and health, which is the language of everyday Americans.” “Work, wealth and health” could be a Republican slogan. He spoke last year at FORTUNE’s Brainstorm Green conference, along with the likes of Bill Ford and Bill Clinton, and he wowed the crowd of well-to-do business people. He’s a progressive, like millions who voted for Obama. A communist? Give me a break.
2. Glenn Beck has identified his next targets. In a message to his followers on Twitter last week, Beck wrote: “Watch Dogs: FIND EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER. Do not link before burning to disc.” Sunstein has been nominated to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Lloyd is associate general counsel and chief diversity officer of the FCC, and Browner is the White House climate change czar. I don’t know Lloyd, but Sunstein is a brilliant and iconoclastic economist who will bring fresh ideas to Washington and Browner, while hard-edged, ran EPA during the Clinton administration. Who’s going to want to serve the government in a climate as poisonous as this?
3. The mainstream media blew this story. You’d think that a drumbeat of irresponsible attacks on a charismatic black White House official would get the attention of The Times or The Washington Post, but no. I don’t think The Times had a word about this until Jones quit, by which time it was too late. Worse, the press has yet to hold Glenn Beck and his allies to account. To follow the story as it unfolded, you had to be reading David Roberts on Grist (who has tracked it for weeks) or Alternet (this story challenges Beck’s lies) or this Gawker post digging into the facts or David Weigel’s tenacious reporting in The Washington Independent.
4. What about Rupert? Now that he owns The Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch would like to be treated with respect. But Fox News doesn’t even try to live up to its standard of “fair and balanced.” While strong opinions are fine, Beck is a smear artist who, at one point, said of Jones: “This is a convicted felon, a guy who spent, I think, six months in prison after the Rodney King beating.” Uh, no–never convicted, no time in prison. In fact, Jones was arrested while serving as a volunteer legal monitor of a march protesting the Rodney King verdict and the charges were subsequently dropped. Here are the facts from someone who was there at the time. That Murdoch permits (encourages?) distortions on his network is shameful. I’d love to see the WSJ tackle Fox News, but I won’t hold my breath.
5. What about Obama? The White House didn’t exactly cover itself in glory by standing behind Jones.
Photo credit: Eclectek via Wikimedia Commons
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
It looks like we’re headed back to getting the government we deserve. For a while, after November, I had hoped that had changed, and Americans would get a government better than what we deserve.
Hatriots like Beck, Limbaugh, Savage & the rest are merely exploiting sentiments which already exit in the populace. Disingenuous apologists like Kristol and creepy underwiterslike Murdoch help make the astroturf movement possible.
This goes far beyond just being sore losers or Health Care Reform. All this open rage is purely an irrational and emotional response. They refuse to accept Obama as their President and so the town hall shouting, the disrespect, the arms brandishing, the birther & teabagger nonsense.
That emotional undercurrent is fear. It’s fear, pure and simple. These are not open, fair-minded individuals. They’re terrified of being on the receiving end of what they themselves would impose on others. These people are afraid, and angry, ergo the irrational talk. That pent-up rage stems from the cognitive dissonance between their despicably elitist world view and the reality of a more egalitarian America.
These are anti-intellectual children who would accept any authoritarian measure from one of their own as long as it allowed them to feel safer. They want to feel safe, and a world in which a black man could become President of the United States of America holds no safety for them. These authoritarian goons want Daddy. Daddy in the White House.
Privilege and preference extended to a specially protected class is the only world they’ve ever known. Even though, because of their social and economic status, they could never hope to join that world, it is part of a greater fantasy in which they so ardently believe.
They cannot imagine our future with a place for them, and so they are angry and afraid.
As always, good post, Marc.
I’m still very surprised that the Chicago-honed Obama team has gotten blindsided by the opposition that finds that running down the winning team is a better use of their extraordinary amounts of energy than making the country a better place.
Re Van Jones. He’s reaping the results of an 8 year campaign to instill a culture of “thou shalt not question.” His track record is honorable. His public ponder about complicity of the W administration in the 9/11 attacks echoes an uneasy feeling that many of us have also had.
Does questioning the former administration make me different from a Birther who questions the current one? Sure. I’m asking for evidence and a public review. The Birthers don’t believe the evidence they have. The facts have been discarded to fit the theory. Van Jones is another victim of this.
Marc, You are right. The smear and lie tactics need to be challenged. Why the mainstream press (I would love to use ‘responsible’ but don’t feel it deserved) doesn’t hold these liars and myth makers to account I cannot fathom. Mary and Louise, Swift Boat, death panels, etc. This is a consistent tactic that will continue to work until folks like you force the climate to change. Unfortunately it looks like a long term, full time and possibly thankless job.
Seems to me that Van Jones has devoted his life to making the planet a healthier place and to helping end poverty through job training and opportunities for people to get decent jobs. Hard work and noble work, indeed. What has Glenn Beck accomplished other than spreading hate, lies and fear? I am so disappointed that he was allowed to “win” this.
I heard Van Jones speak at a recent event, and I believe he is a force for positive change that America needs. I came away highly impressed by both the man and his mission, and I hope Van finds success in all of his future endeavors.
If Beck is so wrong, why doesn’t Van Jones appear on the program and straighten him out? Why doesn’t the president speak up on Jones behalf? Why doesn’t the press secretary come out with a clear and unequivocal statement on Van Jones that would explain the fallacy in Beck’s thinking. Why doesn’t the red phone ring? Any one of those would convince me that your assessment is correct.