If there's one thing that annoys the hell out of me, it's conspiracy theorists. Whether it be folks who believed Bill Clinton had some sort of Clintonista Death Squads offing problematic associates, people who'd swear to all that is holy that Bush was going to use emergency powers to cancel elections, throw people into FEMA death camps, and institute a fascist dictatorship, or yahoos who still believe that Obama isn't a natural born citizen... their arguments are always bizarre non sequiturs of disparate facts, half-truths, and a lot of utter BS.
And while the current conspiracy du jour is the Obama birthers, one particular group of conspiratorial nitwits still takes the cake in my book: 9/11 truthers.
9/11 truthers run the gamut of paranoid weirdos. Everything from devout antisemitic scumbags to irrational militant revolutionaries. They often get support from some of the nuttiest fringe politicians and ignorant celebrities from either side of the political spectrum here in the U.S. (examples such as Ron Paul's sucking up to them for nutterbutter votes and Cynthia McKinney's paranoid leftist delusions come to mind).
Today I learn that one of these scumbags is a top adviser to the White House on the environment. I was highly skeptical of the claim at first due to the source of the information, Fox News' own Glenn Beck, a nutter in his own right and probably the epitome of modern cable news yellow journalism. But in this case, Beck for all his flaws, found one that even the rest of the media is jumping on now. From ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper:
A top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into "evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur."
Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called "Truther" movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."
In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of "the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever."
He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. A source said Jones did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.
The Washington Times confirmed that this wasn't some accidental signing:
Mike Berger, a spokesman for 911Truth.org, told the Washington Times over the phone that all of the signers had been verified by their group. He said 9/11Truth.org board members “spoke with each person on the list by phone or through email to individually confirm they had added their name to that list.”
It'd be impossible for someone, especially someone as politically savvy as Mr. Jones to be oblivious to what this group is about or what the intentions of any statement they wanted him to sign was about. The name of the group alone gives it away, and for something as sensitive as 9/11 would necessitate anyone without severe brain damage to make friggin sure what it was they were signing.
Mr. Jones' excuses ring hollow.
But as the ABC article notes, this is not his first foray into controversy:
In 2005 Jones told the East Bay Express that the acquittal of Rodney King's assailants in 1992 in that infamous police brutality case changed him significantly. "I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th, and then the verdicts came down on April 29th," he said. "By August, I was a communist."
Jones and other young activists in 1994 formed a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, or STORM, rooted in Marxism and Leninsm.
It's still unclear in any of the news articles I've read thus far when exactly Mr. Jones stopped being a communist. But regardless of when it is clear that this is recent history, not something that can be dismissed as "you know those 60's, man, everybody was just crazy!" as folks have rationalized Bill Ayers. Or dismiss the paranoid and racist delusions of a pastor that was much closer to Obama than his supporters will ever admit (though Obama had numerous times in the past)... afterall Obama didn't make him part of his administration and disowned him when the pastor confirmed that it wasn't just taken out of context.
Nope, this guy was recently a communist and a supporter of the truther movement and now currently has the ear of the President of the United States. This is unacceptable. While everyone has the right to be as idiotic and utterly insane as they want to be when it comes to conspiratorial nonsense, there is no reason that someone with this kind of crap on their resume should be getting cushy government jobs in the administration. Obama needs to make it clear that 9/11 trutherism is unacceptable and incompatible with his administration and either have Van Jones resign or outright fire him.
With the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks coming up in roughly one week, the sooner the better. Anything less would be an insult to the American people.
As far as this story getting its traction from Glenn Beck, I think it safe to say that it doesn't excuse his other flaws and dubious nature. It is however a fairly strong indictment of the rest of the media for not catching on until after a hack like Beck found something they should have been asking about long ago.
