I had planned for several hours to put this up tonight, and then the news crossed the wire a few minutes ago that Van Jones has resigned. This is the best political news I've heard in a while...yet another setback for an administration increasingly besieged by incompetence and misfortune.
There will, I'm convinced, be much more to say about the hapless Obama team in the weeks to come; things will only heat up this fall.
For the moment, I plan to be one of the first to pay Glenn Beck the kudos he is due for shining the light on the truly detestable human being that Van Jones is. If anyone else was out in front of this story in the way that Beck was, I don't know who it would be. This has been one of those news items that has been fascinating to view as it spun out into more and more of a nightmare for the White House, to the point where yesterday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs could only offer the lame defense that "Van Jones continues to work for this Administration." And Glenn Beck was pushing it relentlessly the whole time.
Totally as a point-of-privilege bit of background...I am somewhat proud that I was listening to Glenn Beck before being a Glenn Beck fan was cool. It has been quite a ride, although a bittersweet one, watching the evolution of not only his show, but his reach and influence. I'll explain: I remember the first time I stumbled across his show, on a cold February morning in 2002, headed east towards Ohio, tuning into the AM blowtorch out of Fort Wayne, News Talk 1190 WOWO at around 9:06 EST. Glenn was yukking it up with Stu, Dan and the rest of the team and I was thinking, "Who IS this guy?" and not in a really impressed sort of way, either! He was SO off the wall and extremely random; I was used to Rush Limbaugh methodically dissecting a news item or opinion piece and Glenn just had the feel of someone who didn't take it all real seriously. I listened occasionally over the next couple of years and he grew on me until by 2005, I was an avid fan and went to see his stage show when he came to the Murat Theater in Indianapolis.
This is the deal: Townhall.com blogger Matt Lewis recently opined that Beck seems more like a rodeo clown to him than a serious political commentator. I like Matt and highly respect his opinion, but I differed with him on this point; however, I think I understand why he proffered that assessment. Until a couple of years ago, that is exactly how I would have described what Glenn did: hilarious radio, with a seasoning of seriousness thrown in from time to time. Good, clean fun. I miss it, to be honest. His comedic timing was excellent and he discussed a lot of things that were, frankly, really inane, but also really funny.
But not anymore. About 2 years ago, I noticed a far more purposeful tone to what Glenn was doing with his radio broadcast and his new TV show. It was a slow build, but it was easy to discern that he was doing homework requiring the kind of digging that he had not engaged in up to that point, reading books, doing research and thinking below the surface. The humorous, sarcastic edge is not as observable now as it once was; in fact, I heard Glenn himself say a couple of weeks ago on the radio show that he wishes desperately on most days that he could "just go back and do funny again", but that he would be failing his audience and his calling if he did.
Glenn has brought substantive people of expertise to his microphones that, otherwise, might not have had a voice or a platform this soon, including many faces from my favorite new advocacy group, Americans for Prosperity. Other organizations and people such as the Media Research Center, Steve Moore from the Wall Street Journal and Art Laffer, the famous supply-side economist who drew the Laffer Curve on a restaurant napkin, are routinely featured.
But my prediction is that the Van Jones resignation will bring Glenn's portfolio to a whole new dimension. Glenn Beck has walked us all through every step of the Van Jones travesty, from exposing him as a Marxist to documenting his revolutionary worldview to unearthing the radio clips that show Jones' intentions to remake the country in a leftist Communist image to finally exposing his 9/11 Truther connections.
There is a beautiful subtext to this whole story: Van Jones was the former president of Color of Change, the environmentalist wacko group that led the boycott against Beck and tried to influence Beck's sponsors into pulling away from his show. Glenn Beck went head to head with the Obama administration and in the end, the administration blinked.
So now, in the words of one of my Twitter buddies (whose Tweet I can't locate at the moment, in order to give credit), Van Jones can go to the Czar listings in the phone book and start job hunting.
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2 comments:
Not since Joe McCarthy shuffled off this mortal coil in 1957 has anyone made a career by accusing people of being communists. Glenn Beck has resurrected the practice. Not only has he found a cabal of secret communists, he has uncovered an entire communist corporation chock full of commies. The name of this company, you may ask?
THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY!
You heard me right, boys and girls. The network that gave us Uncle Miltie and Ma Perkins has apparently been secretly sending subliminal messages endorsing Marxist doctrine since it was formed in 1926. This would make perfect sense to me. Every time I watched the Rockford Files I had an unexplainable desire to read Das Kapital.
But seriously, folks. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, red baiting not only seems silly, it’s also kind of nuts. It’s not-at-all surprising that an organization would give this idiot a forum (after all, he’s on FOX Noise). What’s really stunning is the fact that his ratings are relatively high and that so many Americans take his word as gospel.
All kidding aside, half-witted ideologues are a dime a dozen. What separates Glenn Beck from his peers is the fact that he is doing some serious damage to the country he professes to love so much. For all of the comparisons to the Nazis he likes to make with regard to Liberals, Beck’s program has much in common with Adolf Hitler’s 1923 screed, Mein Kampf. Eighty-six years ago, Hitler attempted to arouse the anger of his fellow Germans by spouting half truths and utter nonsense – exactly what Glenn Beck is doing in 2009. So much of the insane dialogue that has been spewed forth at these Town Hall meetings across the country in recent weeks might have been lifted straight from a transcript of any of Beck’s programs.
Beck and his twisted ilk have done the seemingly impossible. They have deflected the blame for America’s current economic distress toward Barack Obama. An incredible feat when you take into consideration the fact that the President is one of the few people in government today whose guilt in the matter is almost nil. They have also let loose with a vengeance the very worst angels of the American nature. Opening this Pandora’s box was relatively easy. Closing it might prove to be a bit of a problem.
Deep in their hearts
They do believe
That they shall undermine someday….
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
Tom, it was actually fun reading your post. You can rant all you want, but we won in the end. Van Jones is a radical who is WAY out of touch with mainstream America, pure and simple. And now we find out today that Jones didn't even have to fill out the questionnaire that Cabinet nominees have to submit? Unbelievable.
So go ahead and call Glenn Beck and the rest of us Nazis like Nancy Pelosi did, whom I'm sure you fondly admire. Your nasty and demeaning tone speaks volumes about you. If you can't win, call names. Meanwhile, the campaign for truth and the Constitution continues.
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