I couldn't agree more
with this:
Thank you, Glenn Beck. By helping force the resignation of Van Jones, you have done a great service to your country. But in the exact opposite way than what you intended.
Your vile and vicious smear campaign has helped reverse one of the worst examples of miscasting since John Wayne took on the role of Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.
Don't get me wrong: Van Jones was the best person for the job he just gave up. But the job was not the best use of Van Jones.
[...]
Now, thanks to Glenn Beck, we've got that voice back. No longer tied to his desk with a sock in his mouth, Van is now freed to do what he does best: inspire and energize groups around the country. Student groups and labor groups and small business groups and middle class Americans everywhere who are losing jobs and losing homes and losing hope. He's free to push with all his might and insight for the vision tens of millions of Americans tirelessly worked for during the presidential campaign -- the vision they voted for in November -- but which is now in danger of being drowned in the fetid political swamps of Washington.
If Glenn Beck had any sense at all, he would have done everything in his power to keep Van Jones right where he was.
But he didn't. And for this we should all be grateful.
This is almost exactly what I
wrote on Sunday:
As bummed as I am that we're losing a strong advocate for a green economy within the Obama administration, I am pretty confident that Van Jones will continue to be an effective voice for these issues - in fact, he may end up being more effective - outside the White House. There, he won't have the constraints that come with working for an Administration and can speak exactly how he wants to speak. Call Republicans "assholes" - which, sadly, so many of them ("birthers," "deathers," etc.) clearly are these days - as he did recently? No, you certainly can't get away with that if you're in a Presidential Administration, but you certainly can if you're on his own. Personally, I'm very much looking forward to hearing what Van Jones has to say about Glenn Beck et al. once he's totally free to say it. This should be fun.
Now, it's time - as Arianna Huffington writes - for Van Jones to "take the extra attention and energy Beck created for him and, like a jujitsu black belt, turn the blow into an opening, an opportunity to transform the negative attack into something positive for himself and for the country." In addition to getting Glenn Beck shitcanned, that will be the best revenge against the hatemongering, racist scumbag.
