Media Bias? What Green Jobs Czar?

Well, the long holiday weekend is here, and maybe the mainstream media can finally put out some stories about Van Jones (great "celebrity name" - he chose it himself) while few people are paying attention. The inflammatory, weird and oddly fascinating* Glenn Beck (who calls his role that of a "rodeo clown") has reportedly been talking off and on about Jones on the radio since spring, when the first conservative blog posts on Jones started to come out on the internet. Beck's inflammatory statement about President Obama and racism was reportedly based partly on statements by Van Jones (the theory being, I guess, that if you continue to surround yourself with racists, you might be a racist, too).

Of course, if you are a liberal who believes that it is impossible for blacks to be racist because they don't "have the power", then you could call some of Jones' statements "racialist" rather than "racist", but not everyone understands or accepts the distinction. It's clear that Jones gets along well with a lot of white people. His political positions are imbued with the typical liberal preoccupations with money and power. Most of the "racist" statements which have landed him in hot water have come from linking power and money to whites as a class, in typical liberal "group-think". Then there was his statement that black kids NEVER engage in Columbine-style shootings, and that this is a white phenomenon. Not exactly true.

Beck came out on TV with his first video which was mostly about Jones on or before August 24, as far as I can tell from a 5-second internet search. The liberal blogs have been mocking Beck for his "conspiracy theories" about Jones since late August. YouTube videos are proliferating. You would think that some of the major news outlets would start to become embarrassed by their silence.

Rand Simberg on Byron York's piece linked above:

As someone notes in comments over there, imagine if George Bush had appointed a Klansman who spouted conspiracy theories about the Clintons and called Democrats anal orifices, and put him in charge of thirty billion dollars worth of federal activity, with no confirmation hearings. . .

Does Barack Obama understand the odiousness of Trutherism? . . . Why would he think that a belief that is mainstream in his own party was particularly odious? In fact, I’m sure, given the “progressive” bubble in which he’s spent his entire life, he’s a little perplexed what the big deal is about Van Jones. None of this is news to him, any more than Reverend Wright’s views were. The only thing that shocks him is that anyone else would object.

Simberg also quotes Mark Steyn:

Is Van Jones a real Truther or a faux Truther? The White House position is that he’s the latter - hey, he just glanced at it, saw it was some routine impeach-Bush-for-killing-thousands-of-his-fellow-Americans thing, and signed it without reading it; we’ve all been there, right?

Van Jones Trutherism, like Van Jones Communism and Van Jones Eco-Racism Theory, is a kind of decadence: If you really believed 9/11 was an inside job, you'd be in fear of your life. Instead, for a cutting-edge poseur like Jones, it's a marketing niche, one that gives you a certain cachet with the right kind of people - like, apparently, Barack Obama. (Bill Clinton, to his credit, felt differently.)

More Steyn:

Traveling through the Middle East about six months after 9/11, I was struck by the number of Arabs, from Egypt to the Gulf, who simultaneously believed (a) the Mossad were behind the attacks and (b) it was a great victory for the Muslim world. Van Jones would seem to be an American variant of the same phenomenon: a man who believes 9/11 was (a) blowback for the actions of the US government's war machine and (b) an inside job by the US government's war machine.

No wonder the left derides those boorish enough to bring this stuff up: Why, surely all sophisticated persons know these positions are little more than lifestyle accessories or fashion hemlines. One season, everyone on the catwalk is agreed 9/11 was blowback by Jihadists for Social Justice. The next, everyone is equally agreed that Bush called up the White House Steel Melting Czar and buried the whole thing under "miscellaneous" in the budget.

I recommend reading the short pieces by both Simberg and Steyn. Watch some of the videos of Jones speaking and make up your own mind. Is the mainstream media justified in delaying, ignoring or soft-pedaling stories on this controversy?

How would the MSM respond to a mirror image of Jones? Glenn Reynolds:

Kind of sad to see a guy who went to Yale Law School and got a big White House job trafficking in crude racial stereotypes for political gain. If the racial angles were reversed there would be a firestorm.

Update: Tom Maguire balances out the picture of Jones a little. The following observations help explain why some conservative business people respected Jones, and may explain why the Obama Administration thought Jones would be a good choice for Green Jobs Czar despite the potential problems for the administration in his background:

But that said, here are two points for righties to ponder before Jones says good-bye. One, he would never be a success as a conventional progressive with an attitude like this:

“I’m not looking for the points of difference. I’m looking for the points of commonality. I’ve trained my mind so that people can say twenty-seven things that might be objectionable, but as soon as they say one, that twenty-eighth thing, that’s in the right direction, that’s where I’m going to go in the conversation. I think that’s really important in a country as diverse as ours, to listen. So this guy, he says, I don’t want this, I don’t want that. But he says, I want everybody to be included. Well, that’s all I need. Dayenu.”

Huh? Among the current crop of lefties, if you only agree on twenty seven points out of twenty eight, you are a despicable outsider.

Maguire goes on to describe Jones' admiration for Churchill and Reagan. Interesting.


* At least with my very limited exposure. His schtick could get old after a while, I think. I've heard he's not so weird in print.