Monday, September 07, 2009

More Van Jones

Probably the funniest thing about Van Jones's resignation is watching leftwings defend Van Jones by way of the truther movement.

Now he's been thrown under the bus by the White House for signing his name to a petition expressing something that 35% of all Democrats believed as of 2007 -- that George Bush knew in advance about the attacks of 9/11.

It seems to me that when a poll shows some significant portion of Republicans are birthers, it's just more proof of their racism, but 35% of Democrats being truthers just means trutherism is, well, true. That sounds like the very definition of a double standard.

But don't let the nuttiness stop there. We have Carl Pope spreading the blame to a whole host of liberal interest groups.
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.

It's hard to read the pieces coming from the Left without realizing they haven't a clue about what the problem with Van Jones is. It's not that Van Jones called Republicans assholes. It's not just that he thinks George Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand and did nothing to stop it. It's that Van Jones is emblematic of the utter contempt of the left for Republicans in general and conservatives in particular. This isn't about mere politics. It's about the audacious nastiness that Obama's advisors have for Americans who supported their president after a vicious terrorist attack and how publicly they dislike the rest of us. But you won't hear that from the Van Jones apologists.