In April, Van Jones was recognized by TIME as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet for the work he did with Green for All and the U.S. government.
Sunday, in the midst of a quiet Labor Day weekend, Van Jones resigned as special advisor on green jobs for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Glenn Beck, Anne Coulter, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly all promoted the idea that Jones was a threat to our national security. Once the now-infamous video surfaced showing what he said about Republicans last year during the campaign and long before he went to DC, Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks gave him two weeks, max. Turns out that prediction was optimistic.
So the Jones controversy became just another firestorm to stir up, something to discredit the president with and distract from the most important conversation today – health care. But in case you'd never heard of Jones before all this brouhaha, here's more:
This article appears in Sep 2-8, 2009.
