Green Jobs Czar Resigns

By Jack Kinsella

President Obama’s “green jobs czar’ Van Jones tendered his resignation Sunday. According to most news outlet reports on the resignation, it came ‘following a firestorm of controversy’ about past statements and affiliations.

It wasn’t much of a ‘firestorm’ — the liberal media did all that it could to contain it. Byron York at the Washington Examiner said that as of Friday morning at 11:30 am, he found: (or didn’t)

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

If you were to receive all your news from any one of these outlets, or even all of them together, and you heard about some sort of controversy involving President Obama’s Special Adviser for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, your response would be, “Huh?”

If you heard that that adviser, Van Jones, had apologized for a number of remarks and positions in the recent past, your response would be, “What?” And if you were in the Obama White House monitoring the Jones situation, you would be hoping that the news organizations listed above continue to hold the line. . . .

Well, they held the line until the Labor Day weekend news cycle. Except for one innocuous piece in the Washington Post and a brief mention on CBS Nightly News, ABC, NBC and the NYTimes continued to spike the story.

But the White House doesn’t control either Fox News or the blogosphere. And perhaps realizing that the Obama administration was exposing the level of editorial control it has over the mainstream media, by Saturday night, somebody in the White House decided Van Jones wasn’t worth all the hassle.

On Sunday, Van Jones resigned. When I Googled “Van Jones” Google’s News site headlined ABC News’ cover story, which ironically enough, was ABC’s first mention of the Jones ‘controversy’. What Google chose to highlight from the ABC piece was this summary from Jones’ resignation letter:

“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” - Van Jones

The story ran at NBC news under the headline, Obama Aide Van Jones Resigns After GOP Attacks. National Public Radio ran the story under this unbelievably transparent headline; “White House ‘Green’ Advisor Jones, Under Fire From Beck and Others, Resigns.

I can see why the Obama Media might frame it that way for their broadcast and print media, but the logic of carrying the party line over onto the internet where the story’s been headlines for a week is an open insult to their web audience’s intelligence.

On Thursday, Jones tried to save his job by apologizing for some of what his resignation letter called “smears” and the mainstream press called “attacks”

“In recent days some in the news media have reported on past statements I made before I joined the administration - some of which were made years ago. If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize,” Jones said. “As for the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

How it made the transition from facts for which he apologized on Thursday into a vicious partisan ’smear’ on Sunday is worth noting carefully. It is the Principle of the Big Lie in action.

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