Sandy Gholston
Van Jones
Black far-right commentator Lloyd Marcus is back at it trying to score points with conservatives (including Tea Party extremists) through his latest attack on something representing black people.
The saddest part of Marcus’s attack (an opinion piece titled “NAACP Image Award Reaches New Low”) is that he strangely attempts to use Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a weapon to take shots at the NAACP, organization president Benjamin Todd Jealous and NAACP Image Award recipient Van Jones, the victim of a vicious smear campaign led by right-wing extremist Glenn Beck and other on-air personalities at Fox News and on the radio airwaves.
Here is a portion of what Marcus wrote in his attempt to smear the NAACP and take another shot at Jones:
Dr. King’s once-great NAACP has become a negative, shameful tool of the left: overseers committed to keeping their fellow blacks dependent and subservient to the Democrat party. Including once-self-proclaimed Communist Van Jones [pictured] among the honorees at this year’s NAACP Image Award show last night epitomizes the organization’s descent into liberal Hades. Jones was forced to resign as the Obama administration’s green czar due to his radical, far-left ideas, which include believing the Bush administration blew up the towers on 9/11. Jones has spouted extremely vicious and vulgar comments about political opponents. NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous called Jones ‘an American treasure.’ Is Jones the ‘image’ that the NAACP wishes to present to young black America while treating black U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and black former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice like dirt? Utterly outrageous and shameful.
I am not sure I totally get the connection Marcus is attempting to draw to link the NAACP to Dr. King. That doesn’t seem to make sense to me. I don’t know that Dr. King really had a particularly strong affiliation or relationship with the NAACP. Contrary to popular belief, not all activists during the Civil Rights Era were directly involved with the NAACP.
Marcus’s column sounds like more right-wing hate targeted at Van Jones, a man conservatives have tried to portray as an extremist, as a communist and as someone who is anti-American (primarily to attack President Barack Obama through his association with Jones).
Right wingers are upset because Jones called Republicans “assholes” at some point in his life. To those who are upset about it, I say, “quit crying.”
Come up with your own awards if you don’t like the ones the NAACP Image Awards are handing out.
As for the comments about former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, I see a split decision. I don’t have a huge problem with Rice (I probably do not agree with her on a whole lot in terms of politics, and that is OK), but Thomas is a completely different story. Sorry, but there is not a whole lot of love over here for Justice Thomas.
As for Jones linking Bush to 9/11, that is disputed. Here is Jones, account of the controversial issue.
Whether people like Lloyd Marcus like it or not, people are not going to throw a talented and bright man like Van Jones under the bus.
I applaud the NAACP for recognizing a man who has given a lot to this country and has much more to give in the years to come.
UPDATE ON VAN JONES: Jones also holds a joint appointment at Princeton University, as a distinguished visiting fellow in both the Center for African American Studies and in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
