The echo on the right is reverberating again...
Glenn Beck used his popular Fox News show this afternoon to attack the background of Van Jones, a White House environmental advisor who co-founded an African American political advocacy group that organized an advertising boycott of his program.
During his 2 p.m. PDT show, Beck did not address the boycott spearheaded by Color of Change to protest the talk show host’s remark last month that he believes President Obama is “a racist.”
Instead, he spent a large share of his program suggesting that Jones, who co-founded Color of Change in 2005, is a radical. Jones now serves as a special advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
During a six-minute biographical profile, set to ominous music, Beck said Jones was twice arrested for political protests and has described himself as a "rowdy black nationalist." The talk show host cast the piece as part of a broader examination of Obama's "czars," special advisers to the president who "don't answer to anybody."
"Why is it that such a committed revolutionary has made it so high into the Obama administration as one of his chief advisers?" Beck asked.
A White House spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment. Color of Change declined to comment. Jones has not been active in the group since December 2007.
Color of Change is the extremist racial grievance group that isn't happy that TV's Glenn Beck did several news packages on Van Jones, the self-described "communist" and "rowdy black nationalist" who became the president's green jobs czar after jumping on the environmentalist bandwagon. The White House may be behind a push to destroy Beck by convincing advertisers to stop buying time on his show. Jones was also on the board of the Apollo Alliance, a hard-left environmentalist group that is now running large chunks of the Obama administration. The group has acknowledged that it dictated parts of the February stimulus bill to Congress.
With the help of the Obama administration, the coalition is launching a public relations campaign under the radar of the mainstream media -- which remains almost uniformly terrified of criticizing the nation's first black president -- to try to change 9/11 from a day of reflection and remembrance to a day of activism, food banks, and community gardens.
Right-wing mimic Michelle Malkin chimed in, with a blog post proclaiming, "Look who's hijacking 9/11," featuring a Photoshopped Shepard Fairey-style Obama poster declaring, "Obey." Malkin then linked to the "American Prospect" post, in yet another display of fringe-right synchronicity. Her witless non-originality continues unabated.
Meanwhile, according to the AP:
Glenn Beck returns to Fox News Channel after a vacation on Monday with fewer companies willing to advertise on his show than when he left, part of the fallout from calling President Barack Obama a racist.
A total of 33 Fox advertisers, including Walmart, CVS Caremark, Clorox and Sprint, directed that their commercials not air on Beck's show, according to the companies and ColorofChange.org, a group that promotes political action among blacks and launched a campaign to get advertisers to abandon him. That's more than a dozen more than were identified a week ago.
Unfortunately, carnival barkers like Beck are ratings gold on cable, and he averaged 2.4 million viewers each day during the week before his vacation, according to Nielsen Media Research.
BTW, Glenn--the cleaner called. Your hood is ready for pick up...
