Van Jones Hugs The Root

Evidently the twin last straws for the self-proclaimedly Marxist-Leninist "Green Jobs Czar":

I guess this would be the twenty-first century version of what the Whigs chanted about President Martin Van Buren during the 1840 campaign: "We're gonna beat Van; Van is a used-up man."

So why did Red Barry pull the plug on Van?  For the same reason that he pretended to distance himself from Jeremiah Wright during the Donk primaries last year: he was a PR headache whose short term negatives far outweighed his long-term positives.  Besides, Marxist-Leninists are a dime a dozen in this country any more; there must be some of them who haven't been so conspicuous about their radicalism and racism.  And if the debacle repeats itself, well, the Obamunists never claimed that vetting was their strong suit, seeing as how they didn't think they needed to bother with it.

Just remember one thing, though, as Ron Kessler points out today:

[T]he president showed that he is indeed Wright’s student when he sided with Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. against Cambridge, Massachusetts, police officers who were doing their duty as they checked into a report of intruders and encountered an obstreperous Gates.

Obama is a genuinely decent man who treats Secret Service agents with respect and consideration. But it is naive to suggest that the appointment of Van Jones was a slip-up.

In Jones, the White House got what it wanted. Americans who don’t understand that are in denial about just how radical President Obama really is.

"Decent" in the sense that he's not stupid enough to be as indiscrete as Van Jones.  Otherwise they're brothers beneath the skin as well as at the epideral surface.

UPDATE: J-Ger offers some cautionary advice:

The hiring of Jones was a scandal, the failure to flag this issue in the vetting process is unforgivable, and the fact that we're not watching cable-news coverage of Obama personally throwing Jones's desk knick-knacks out the third-story window of the Old Executive Office Building while the Secret Service removes him from government property is disappointing.

Obama understands how catastrophic it is to have a Truther in his administration, right? He knows that responsibility for 9/11 isn't one of those issues where we can "agree to disagree," right?

I've tried to cut Obama slack here and there. Respect the office, even if you don't agree with the man, stand when he enters the room, try to remember he's a husband and a father too, etc. But if there's any sense that Obama doesn't think Jones's past statements, views, and support of Trutherism are a big deal, and an automatic reason for dismissal, it will trigger a political firestorm that will make the differing views over the Iraq War look like the "tastes great–less filling" argument.

You know the old saying: You're known by the company you keep.  That pearl of wisdom was ignored last year, and this is what we got.  It will not be ignored again until at least 2024.

In the meantime, how does Red Barry change the subject to get his polling out of freefall?  Hmmmmm....

UPDATE II: Byron York recaps the Obamedia cricket chorus, and manages to keep a straight face in quoting a professional smearer's whining about the "smear campaign" - i.e. all the vetting that the Obamunists had no use for - that supposedly brought him down.

UPDATE III: Here is what passes for Obamedia sheepish professional repentance:

Well, hey, you know how the devout feel about blasphemers, right?