Blogger Kate Sheppard has an interesting take on the manufactured controversy (led by far-right Fox News nut Glenn Beck) over Van Jones. As many of you know, the right has been attempting for more than a year now to try and portray Barack Obama as some kind of an angry black radical (almost exclusively through people he is connected to – so-called “associations”). The latest person targeted by Beck is Jones (although Beck has been dishonest about not admitting that there appears to be another motivation behind his all-out assault on a relatively low-level member of President Obama’s administration in a role few people would otherwise care about).
But, is Jones more powerful in the Obama administration or out of it?
Here is a part of Sheppard’s take:
Those fears have, to some extent, panned out. Jones’s most public appearance in the past few months may have been when he stood up at a White House press conference to ask the gathered reporters to silence their cell phones (he had no further remarks to make). Instead of playing a leading role in drumming up support for clean-energy polices—something he was extremely effective at—he’s now a relatively low-level bureaucrat trying to steer stimulus funding toward green-job programs. In all honesty, Glenn Beck may have more to worry about with Jones outside the White House than in it.
There may be some truth to that last sentence. Maybe Beck’s efforts (if successful) could turn Jones into something of a political martyr who could be a greater factor outside the Obama administration.
But, Beck’s motives seem to be more about: (1) smearing Barack Obama and portraying him as an angry black radical and (2) marginalizing the somewhat successful ColorOfChange boycott against him by smearing someone who helped start the group.
