by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n New Communique from the Ministry of Truth<\/strong><\/p>\n At one point, the Obama administration was bragging about bagging one Van Jones; Valerie Jarrett, in fact, even gushed that they had been scouting the erstwhile mostly unknown Jones for quite a while. The word czar was employed of his new responsibilities, and we were subsequently lectured that \u201cover $80 million\u201d in stimulus money was going to be under Jones\u2019s control \u2014 given his innovative \u201cgreen jobs\u201d approach that married civil rights with radical environmentalism.<\/p>\n And now? The ministry has downgraded that now inoperative statement, and insisted that Jones, after all, was not really an unexamined czar, but rather a mere informal \u201cadvisor\u201d.<\/p>\n Himself \u2014 or in the Stars?<\/strong><\/p>\n Jones himself, without any introspection, alleged that some vicious \u201csmear campaign\u201d did him in, but did not elaborate on what he meant. Is it not one thing to invoke the bogeyman Glenn Beck, but quite another to list in detail the ways in which Jones had been defamed and lied about?<\/p>\n Had Jones not signed a Truther petition, asking to investigate George Bush\u2019s supposed role in 9\/11 (Re: on the one hand, we are supposed to believe that Jones was a brilliant Yale law graduate,* on the other, that he did not understand the simple English wording of the petition?), he might have survived the other inanities.<\/p>\n One Act Too Many?<\/strong><\/p>\n We can attribute his \u201cRepublicans are a\u2014holes\u201d remark to lecture theatrics. I don\u2019t care whether he fashionably claims he was some sort of radicalized communist, or even worry much about all the other silly, melodramatic self-characterizations of his own would-be importance. But the racist slurs about white polluters of the ghetto, the white mass murderers in the schools, and George Bush the petroleum crack-head were the sort of things that usually get one fired or demoted (cf. Trent Lott\u2019s remark).<\/p>\n Bill Carter Redux<\/strong><\/p>\n What we are now seeing with Obama\u2019s coterie is a sort of Billy Carterism \u2014 after a while what seems at first outlandish gradually becomes repugnant. Half of the country is now furious at Obama because they are starting to see that Ayers, Khalidi, Meeks, Pfleger, and Wright were representational, rather than aberrational; that is, the associates that for 30 years were the natural friends and role models of Obama proved hard to shake and appear buffoonish 24\/7. And stranger still, Obama himself seems surprised that they keep reappearing, as if one so easily can throw under the bus decades of choices, attitudes, and second natures.<\/p>\n Ward Churchillism<\/strong><\/p>\n What do I mean by \u201crepresentational\u201d?<\/p>\n There is a strange pseudo-culture in America, of which Obama is a perfect example. Millionaire Michael Moore announces, \u201cCapitalism is evil\u201d as he hypes promotion of his moneymaking new movie. Oliver Stones praises Chavez, as the dictator shuts down voices of dissent \u2014 yet Stone himself could not make a movie in Venezuela as he does here. So too the murderer Che becomes a popular T-shirt emblem among the college elite. Van Jones calls Bush a \u201ccrackhead\u201d but then in self-important style flashes on his website, \u201cAs a tireless advocate for disadvantaged people and the environment, Van helped to pass America\u2019s first \u2018green job training\u2019 legislation: the Green Jobs Act, which George W. Bush signed into law as a part of the 2007 Energy Bill.\u201d Bush is a crackhead in front of some audiences, compliant supporter to others?<\/p>\n Wise Moves<\/strong><\/p>\n Otherwise quite content Americans, getting rich and famous in the free market under the aegis of U.S. freedom and security, have not only the luxury to play the court jester, but see it as a wise investment. Moore would never go to Cuba for brain surgery. Stone would never criticize the Bolivian government while he was living in Bolivia. No Harvard undergraduate would have liked to join occasionally murderous Che in the jungle.<\/p>\n So too it is with middle-class guys like Jones and Obama. Barack Obama, raised by white grandparents, sent to prep school, and educated at the Ivy League, realized that avenues are not so easily opened to the nerdy Barry Dunhams of the world. Jones grasped that one Anthony Jones who was admitted to Yale Law School might actually have to study, compete for grades, and then go apprentice at a grinding law firm entry-level job.<\/p>\n \u201cHell-raising\u201d\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n But as Jones relates, it was far easier to be a \u201chell raiser\u201d at Yale. What that meant I think was that in lieu of studying (\u201cYale didn\u2019t have any grades\u201d), Jones knew that he could say and do almost anything he wished among rather wealthy (and to be honest, rather nerdy) white and Asian people, playing on both their guilt, and on their vicarious sense of adventure and cutting-age revolutionary romance \u2014 and do pretty well. And so he did.<\/p>\n Very quickly, as his subsequent career attests in a variety of \u201corganizing\u201d jobs, Jones discovered that he could tease and provoke white liberals by posing as some sort of wild (but actually quite safe) revolutionary figure who would call America an \u201capartheid\u201d system, or dream of a \u201credistribution of wealth\u201d or praise the advantages of social revolution through hip hop music (\u201dI don\u2019t believe the true power of the people can be confined to a ballot box\u2026We need to be about the whup-ass. Somebody\u2019s f***in\u2019 up somewhere\u2026 They have names and job descriptions. You have to be creative about how you engage the enemy, because if you do it on his terms, the outcome is already known.\u201d) \u2014 all the while living a rather mundane bourgeois existence jetting around for princely lecture fees, hyping a book, trying to button-hole celebrities, and finally getting close to his exemplar Barack Obama \u2014 who likewise had parlayed Barry Dunham of a Honolulu prep school into Barack Obama, exotic avatar of revolutionary hope and change.<\/p>\n The two almost on spec can turn on the authentic \u201cstreet talk\u201d cadences when they wish to seem romantic to liberals and authentic to minorities, and then without thinking switch into nerdese when they wish to convince politicians and the public at large that they are properly circumspect and wonkish \u2014 and they can do all this in the classical delusion that one who creates inauthentic identities at opportune times, will not himself finally be disbelieved by all. In short, I think Obama has become Geraldo at month nine of his four-year term.<\/p>\n A Modest Suggestion<\/strong><\/p>\n Had Van Jones wished to help Americans transcend its energy crisis by marrying minority concerns with environmentalism, he could have quietly dropped all the police-monitoring, race-baiting, and narcissistic agitation, and simply stayed hard at work in Oakland, convincing residents to curtail drug usage, illegitimacy, and gang violence and instead install solar panels, use hybrids, and fix up energy-inefficient homes \u2014 the sort of things that corporations are eager to subsidize. Such workmanlike public service, however, does not really allow one to change one\u2019s name, reinvent oneself as Trotsky on the barricades, and tease out of liberals a quite good career.<\/p>\n Ayersism<\/strong><\/p>\n None of this is really new. Bill Ayers went right back to Chicago for his inheritance and influence-peddling and resumed the prep-school existence bequeathed to him by his father \u2014 that alone offered the platform and subsidies to spout off in praise of Hugo Chavez. Such a faux-persona made him romantic and \u201cneat\u201d in the way a tweedy liberal professor in the school of education churning out studies supporting affirmative action is not.<\/p>\n Live and Let Live?<\/strong><\/p>\n I have no problem with all of the above.<\/p>\n If the corporate-created money in the Ivy League, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the George Soros think-tanks, or NPR wishes to either subsidize or publicize radical-chic agit-prop, it seems no different than the networks running sitcoms, that likewise are sometimes funny, but usually banal.<\/p>\n No, the rub in my mind comes in when the public is asked to accept a Czar who boasts \u201cabout the whup-ass. Somebody\u2019s f***in\u2019 up somewhere\u2026 They have names and job descriptions. You have to be creative about how you engage the enemy, because if you do it on his terms, the outcome is already known.\u201d I prefer that our taxes not go to subsidize that world view, or for that matter anyone who promotes the lie that his own government was responsible for murdering 3,000 of its own, rather than radical Islamic killers led by Mohammed Atta on the orders of Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n The \u201cWhup Ass\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n Van Jones can do his \u201cwhup ass\u201d through corporate benefactions, but not on Joe Sixpack\u2019s weekly tax deductions. At least I think that is what the controversy is all about. Had Jones been white, Asian, or Hispanic, and in his many diatribes just substituted the word \u201cblack\u201d when he employed \u201cwhite\u201d, and replaced \u201cBush\u201d with \u201cObama,\u201d then the Left would really have conducted a smear campaign. But such are the times we live in, that a Jones feels he can abuse the public discourse and insult the intelligence of the public, confident that when called on it, the refuge of \u201cracist!\u201d is always there.<\/p>\n Ennui<\/strong><\/p>\n What to make of all this, the rather insignificant firing of a rather insignificant administration official?<\/p>\n Barak Obama did not transcend race as promised. Nor was there a racial backlash against him as his supporters both feared and now charge.<\/p>\n Rather the mood is weariness. One major reason Obama\u2019s polls have dropped is the public resentment of this spate of allegations of racism.<\/p>\n The slurring of the police in response to the Gates\u2019s rants seems to be amplified ad nauseam by others around Obama or his supporters in general. Racism we are told explains why the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee won\u2019t pay his taxes (at least I think his own sinking star is why Rangel lashed out at supposedly racist Americans opposed to the healthcare bill). Racism accounts for the poor political skills of the Governor of New York. Racism is the font of the Town Hall movement. And racism explains why one must resign from a U.S. government that he has accused of murdering 3,000 of his own, when bin Laden himself had repeatedly bragged of his authorship of such mass destruction.<\/p>\n Nothing is so fatal to a con as boredom. Tragically, when a Rangel, Paterson, Jones, or Obama \u2014 all enjoying privileges and successes that 300 million Americans might only dream of \u2014 start in on the now accustomed trope, the public turns the channel and sighs \u201cBeen there, done that.\u201d And I think they really mean it this time.<\/p>\n *Here is Jones on his\u00a0Yale Law Review<\/em>\u00a0education, a version of the Jason Blairpost facto<\/em>\u00a0trashing of the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>: \u201cI was accepted to both places, and decided to go to Yale because Yale didn\u2019t have any grades and was smaller than Harvard. I figured, once I enroll I\u2019m guaranteed to graduate, so I can just go and be a radical hell raiser student, and they can\u2019t do anything about it. Which is pretty much what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media New Communique from the Ministry of Truth At one point, the Obama administration was bragging about bagging one Van Jones; Valerie Jarrett, in fact, even gushed that they had been scouting the erstwhile mostly unknown Jones for quite a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[652],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-AE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2305,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/not-this-pig\/","url_meta":{"origin":2272,"position":0},"title":"Not This Pig","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media And On It Goes I support the President on Afghanistan and am relieved he did not pull out of Iraq as once promised (all combat brigades out by March 1, 2008 \u2014 he said during his initial campaigning). That said, almost a year ago,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2292,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rep-charles-rangel-sign-of-the-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":2272,"position":1},"title":"Rep. Charles Rangel–Sign of the Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is becoming a metaphor for almost all the sins of our age. Let us count the ways. How about corruption? Currently, Rangel is under investigation by two House subcommittees for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1830,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trouble-with-elitist-theories\/","url_meta":{"origin":2272,"position":2},"title":"The Trouble with Elitist Theories","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services What's behind the Tea Party protests, low approval ratings for Congress, distrust of the media and unease with experts in the Obama administration? In short, a growing anger at the sermonizing and condescension by many of America's elites. We see this specifically, for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2230,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-buck-passes-here\/","url_meta":{"origin":2272,"position":3},"title":"The Buck Passes Here","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"According to Obama's chorus of whiners, nothing is ever his fault. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Meet the Obama whiners. \u201cThey did it\u201d is the new administration\u2019s credo when things go wrong. Most often, the culprit for disappointment in Obama\u2019s hope-and-change agenda remains George W. Bush \u2014 a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2268,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/no-rules-in-the-arena\/","url_meta":{"origin":2272,"position":4},"title":"No Rules in the Arena?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 21, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services It was certainly uncouth of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., to scream out \"You lie\" at his commander-in-chief in the middle of Barack Obama's recent healthcare speech before a joint session of Congress. And others who keep insisting that the president doesn't have an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2301,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/once-upon-a-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":2272,"position":5},"title":"Once Upon a Time…","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Whatever happened to the old Barack Obama? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Once upon a time, a fresh new politician, Barack Obama \u2014 black, young, eloquent, and hip \u2014 soared with rhetoric about hope and change. The people were mesmerized. 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