Effective today, Van Jones has resigned as special advisor to the president on Green Jobs.
After a few months in the administration, doing what he has been doing for his entire career, Glen Beck and Republican extremists have led, according to him, a smear campaign.

This is a man who has been part of starting two of the more influential social policy lobbying and research organizations in the country. This is a man who wrote one of the seminal green collar jobs books, published just a few years back, The Green Collar Economy. This is a man who I’m sure was not expecting to get recruited to the White House to be part of an administration. This is a man who has beliefs and sticks by them.

I don’t know Van Jones but I do live in the Bay Area. The idea of someone signing a petition to ask for an investigation into who knew what about the 9/11 attacks is not radical politics out here. And remember, that petition, from what I read, is not an accusation of guilt or fault- it’s a demand for an investigation into it. That’s American- that’s not against the law, nor is it outside the spirit of the founding of this country.

But apparently it is outside the spirit of Glenn Beck. Watch this video if you want to see the meat of Beck’s attack. Van Jones has been part of radical political groups as part of his life journey and now he is a prominent authority and activist on green jobs. Does that decrease his legitimacy as a special advisor to the president? Not at all. Did it decrease George W. Bush’s legitimacy as a president that he had a history of coking up and partying like a Texan rock star? Nope. Does it decrease Beck’s legitimacy that he is a recovering alcoholic? Nope. Not that I’m comparing radical politics to drug or alcohol abuse- what I mean is, while your past shapes who you are, what you do and what you believe, it does not legitimize or demonize your present actions. Beck could just as easily focus on the fact that Jones is a Yale Law School graduate and a published author as he does that Jones has a past in radical politics.

Jones will no longer officially be on the White House group of special advisors to the president- for the sake of the green jobs movement, I hope that doesn’t mean that he won’t have the ear of the president on some important votes or policy decisions in the future.

Jones’s idea that greening the U.S. means greening buildings and cities and that greening buildings is best accomplished by greening the ghetto through employing people who are unemployed or coming out of the prison system is an important, revolutionary concept. Is it outside conventional thinking? Yes. Does a green collar economy in general require outside the conventional thinking? Yes. Is smearing someone who is part of the new administration trying to make something that is, in essence (green jobs), a radical proposition into a doable reality outside conventional thinking? Sadly, no.