Van Jones Steps Down as Green Czar to Avoid Distraction of Right-Wing Drumbeat

By Ryan Grim, Huffington Post. Posted September 6, 2009.

UPDATE: On "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, Gibbs told Stephanopoulos that Obama thanks Jones for his service but doesn't endorse his views or object to his resignation.

"What Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual. The president thanks Van Jones for his service in the first eight months," Gibbs said.

Before Gibbs came on his show, Stephanopoulos tweeted ominously:

Van Jones resigns Hardly Saturday Night Massacre,but when's last time WH official let go at midnight? Clearing deck pre Gibbs on This Week

It all began with Glenn Beck. Van Jones, under fire from the extremist television show host for his background in radical activism, has resigned from the administration.

Jones was Special Adviser for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality - the so-called 'Green Jobs' Czar. Jones' 2008 book, The Green Collar Economy, was a New York Times best-seller. Beck is a talk show host for Fox News.

Jones never denied his past affiliation with the radical left. In the '90s, he was involved with the group Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement (STORM), which sympathized with Maoist-inspired peasant movements throughout the world and was organized to protest police brutality.

Jones, however, left radical politics and made the decision to work within the system, rather than try to overthrow it. For Beck, however, Jones' past statements were evidence that Obama is secretly marshaling a cadre of lieutenants pushing an agenda that is "radical, revolutionary and in some cases Marxist." (Meanwhile, in reality, Obama is backing away from even including a public health insurance option as part of health care reform. How that squares with Obama's Marxist agenda Beck has yet to explain.)

Before Beck mentioned Jones in the last few weeks on his Fox News television show, Jones remained an obscure figure in the administration. After Beck mentioned him, protesters at town hall meetings made Jones a staple of their complaints.

Jones, in a statement, said he no longer wanted to be a distraction.

"On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me. They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide. I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum -- urging me to 'stay and fight.' But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past. We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future."

It's exceedingly unlikely that Beck will be satisfied by Jones' resignation, seeing in it evidence that he was correct in his assessment of Obama's supposed radical lieutenants. "Jones is the tip of the iceberg," Beck has said.

Once Beck made Jones a target, a series of revelations put him in political danger. Asked in February of this year why Democrats were having trouble pushing through legislation despite overwhelming majorities, he said, "The answer to that is, they're assholes." He was presumably referring to the GOP minority but may also have been roping in conservative Democrats.

Jones went on: "And Barack Obama is not an asshole. So, now, I will say this: I can be an asshole, and some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama, are going to have to start getting a little bit uppity."

It also emerged that Jones had signed a "truther" petition back in 2004. Truthers insist that there are unanswered questions about what U.S. officials knew about the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks before they occurred and want further investigations. Truthers are the left-wing version of birthers, people who believe that Obama was born in Kenya, is not a citizen and his presidency is illegitimate.

There's nothing inherently left-wing about 9/11 conspiracy theorists or right-wing about birthers; rather, they tend to fall on opposite ideological extremes because of mistrust of the president in question, be he Bush or Obama. But the birther movement includes prominent Republicans, including members of Congress, while connection to the truther movement can help cost a relatively obscure administration official his job.

See more stories tagged with: glenn beck, right-wing, van jones

Ryan Grim is an editorial intern at Washington City Paper.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »