Posted on 09/06/2009 1:03:10 PM PDT by Scanian
POLITICO's top story this morning is on the midnight resignation of embattled environmental adviser Van Jones, whose radical political views and past affiliation with a 9/11 conspiracy group put pressure on the White House in recent weeks.
Much of the credit for Jones resigning should go to Fox's Glenn Beck, who as HuffPo's Ryan Grim notes, has his "first scalp."
Beck repeatedly called attention to Jones's past comments and affiliations without mentioning that he was also the co-founder of ColorOfChange, the African-American activist group leading a boycott against the Fox host. Even before the boycott, Beck mentioned Jones twice on his radio show and twice on television, but his criticism intensified considerably as dozens of companies agreed to cease running ads on his Fox show. (The boycott started after Beck called Obama "a racist" on Fox & Friends).
It was a wise strategy in making the story less about Beck vs. ColorOfChange, and instead focusing the attention — with the help of fans online — to Jones (and his role in the Obama White House). Beck mentioned Jones on 14 episodes, according to the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel, while also railing against him on "The O'Reilly Factor."
As TVNewser caught last week, Beck questioned why other networks weren't covering Jones: "Hey! ABC, NBC... well I know where NBC is... CBS where the hell are ya? CNN where are ya?"
But if you're not a Fox News watcher, or avid follower of political debates online, it's possible the Van Jones resignation came seemingly out of nowhere.
Despite all the attention on the Internet, especially within the conservative blogosphere, the Examiner's Byron York wrote Friday that the growing debate about Jones hadn't been covered on the evening newscasts or in print editions of the New York Times or Washington Post — the latter ended up running a piece yesterday.
Slate's Mickey Kaus, who was out in front of another story much of the media ignored — the National Enquirer's John Edwards scoop last year — notes the disparity between what may be a hot topic online and what gets play in the mainstream media.
"I've been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue, though everyone on the Web knows the whole story."
Now, it's happened. And as a reader points out, the story still has lots of traction online. On Sunday morning, Jones was the No. 1 trend on both Google and Twitter.
That pesky internet! It’s all Algore’s fault!
Now that Calderone has mentioned this association, it also tends to discredit the ColorOfChange, doesn't it?
Further proof, of any more were needed, of the increasing irrelevance of the mainstream media.
Oh, my! Isn't HuffPo being politically incorrect by slandering our indigenous aboriginal populations?
LOL
“First scalp”???
That’s a racist statement! How dare he continue to propogate negative stereotypes! < / sarc>
I’m sorry but I refuse to give Leftist propaganda cite Politico any traffic. Got a credible source for this story rather then this well known 0 propaganda outlet?
“without mentioning that he was also the co-founder of ColorOfChange, the African-American activist group leading a boycott against the Fox host”
This article seems to imply Beck cares about Color of Change, whereas the overwhelming ineffectiveness of the boycotts against hint otherwise.
No longer are ordinary citizens limited in their information gathering by the Dan Rathers and thought police of the major TV networks, newspapers, etc., including censors of textbooks.
Recent events have triggered a very public citizen involvement in a battle of ideas which has been going on for decades! The problem is that, until now, most Americans went about their business and ignored it.
Today, they are engaged and beginning to learn the difference between two conflicting ideas about freedom and coercive government control. America's Founders identified the conflicting ideas as liberty versus tyranny. By Lincoln's time, he had a clear understanding of it and said this: "The world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.' And the American people just now are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not mean the same thing . . . . The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act . . . . Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."
But Lincoln could distinguish between real liberty and a counterfeit idea. Of the American idea, Lincoln declared:
"Most governments have been based practically, on the denial of the rights of men. Ours began by affirming those rights . . . . [These opposing ideas] are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle . . . . It [denial of individual Creator-endowed rights] is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. . . it is the same tyrannical principle."
Of the Founding principle, Lincoln said: ". . . it is no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . .The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society . . . And yet, they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. . . All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce in a . . . revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers [initiators of threatening change] of reappearing tyranny and oppression."
Yes, the battle of ideas is re-engaged in America today, in a manner not seen for decades.
American citizens are utilizing the new technologies that make possible close examination of the Founders' ideas in many collections online such as those at Liberty USA Foundation, WallBuilders, and in new books, such as Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny." They are returning to the Founders' own explanation of their Constitution in THE FEDERALIST and to 1987's Bicentennial Year volumes such as "Our Ageless Constitution." See
Just as in Lincoln's day, those who try to fool the people into believing their definition of liberty is authentic are being exposed for the charlatans they are--mere men who wish to gain power over the lives of millions.
They are being exposed by the "self-evident truths" "embalmed" in that revolutionary document described by Lincoln.
They can read the Founders' intent that ours is not a government's Constitution to limit people. Rather, it is "We, the People's" Constitution to be used, according to Jefferson, to "bind them (government) down by the chains of the Constitution."
What we are seeing now is a battle between forces who have one charismatic, but mere mortal (Krauthammer), man out there carrying the water for changing that concept in the minds of citizens who, they thought, had been dumbed down by decades of neglect and censorship of the ideas of liberty.
Providence may have outwitted them by allowing the development of technologies that make the Founders' ideas a powerful tool in the new battle.
LOL!
Wow, old photo. From back when Algore wasn’t as well marbled.
I’m afraid it’s only a haircut. He’ll still be around, only in the background where he can’t be seen. This is only their attempt to minimize the bleeding. O’s ego and E’s plans won’t be deterred unless we persist and remain vigilent.
Any legal experts here who care to venture an opinion regarding what Jones’ (and the administration’s) liability might be if it could be proven that Jones was actively organizing the Beck boycott while employed by the White House?
Obama’s gonna come in & protect us from this internet chatter.
If they'd worked with FR rather than suing FR, they could have gotten there years ago. Now they'll have to pay through the nose for a license for the FR software that's capable of handling hundreds of thousands of "subscriber/members" and keeping news story threads live for years, not just a day or two.
Seemingly so.
However, a lot of us thought that before last year’s presidential election but we were sadly mistaken, as it turned out.
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