"Sherrod may be the only official ever dismissed because of the *fear* that Fox host Glenn Beck might go after her."

Notes Howard Kurtz:

As Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack tried to pressure her into resigning, Sherrod says Deputy Under Secretary Cheryl Cook called her Monday to say "do it, because you're going to be on 'Glenn Beck' tonight." And for all the focus on Fox, much of the mainstream media ran with a fragmentary story that painted an obscure 62-year-old Georgian as an unrepentant racist....

The administration's concern about Beck stems in part from his campaign last year that prompted the resignation of White House environmental official Van Jones over divisive remarks -- a controversy that some news organizations acknowledged they were too slow to cover. Ironically, Beck defended Sherrod on Tuesday, saying that "context matters" and he would have objected if someone had shown a video of him at an AA meeting saying he used to pass out from drinking but omitting the part where he says he found Jesus and gave up alcohol.

"Conservatives believe that they have hit upon a winning formula for such attacks: mobilizing people to dig up dirt, trumpeting it on talk radio and television, prompting Congress to weigh in and demanding action from the Obama administration."

The NYT puts the ACORN story in context:

Conservative advocates and broadcasters were gleeful about the success of the tactics in exposing Acorn workers... 

The Acorn controversy came a week after the resignation of Van Jones, a White House environmental official attacked by conservatives, led by Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, for once signing a petition suggesting that Bush administration officials might have deliberately permitted the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 

There was more than that to the Van Jones story!

Even before Mr. Jones stepped down, Mr. Beck had sent a message to supporters on Twitter urging them to “find everything you can” on three other Obama appointees.

Conservatives believe that they have hit upon a winning formula for such attacks: mobilizing people to dig up dirt, trumpeting it on talk radio and television, prompting Congress to weigh in and demanding action from the Obama administration.

Conservatives came up with that? It's almost as if they could come up with a list of tricky rules for advancing their cause, something like pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

"In a victory for Republicans and the Obama administration’s conservative critics, Van Jones resigned..."

"... as the White House’s environmental jobs 'czar' on Saturday."

That's the first paragraph of the NYT story on the Van Jones resignation — which is also its first story about Jones. The site's "Caucus" blog did take notice of the controversy — and the issue of the NYT's failure to write about it — yesterday:

Keeping up with Jones: Republicans are accusing one of Mr. Obama’s top advisers of being a communist and calling for his resignation....

Mr. Jones was caught on tape using an unprintable word to describe Republicans and allowed his name to be put on a letter requesting an investigation of whether the Bush administration allowed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to happen as a pretext for war....

Conservatives are abuzz over the mainstream media’s oversight of the story. According to the Washington Examiner, as of 11:30 a.m. Friday, none of the major news outlets, including The Times, had mentioned the controversy.

Whether the Bush administration allowed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to happen as a pretext for war? The petition — read it — "calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war." (Boldface added.)

The Caucus toned down what the petition said and did not link to it. There's a big difference between "allowed" — which might mean only the administration was not sufficiently vigilant — and "deliberately allowed" — which accuses the administration of knowing and letting it happen. The petition is asserting that there is reason to think the Bush administration wanted the attacks to occur so it could lead us into war. The innocuous paraphrase in the Caucus prevents us from feeling outraged at the document Jones "allowed his name to be put on." There's that word "allowed" again! How passive and unknowing was he? He signed it! Let's speak English and quit pussyfooting. The Caucus wanted to frame this as a story of bad old Republicans causing trouble.

Now, back to today's article on the resignation:

Controversy over Mr. Jones’s past comments and affiliations has slowly escalated over several weeks, erupting on Friday with calls for his resignation.

Appointed as a special adviser for “green jobs” by President Obama, Mr. Jones did not go through the traditional vetting process for administration officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. So it was not until recently that some of Mr. Jones’s past actions received broad airing, including his derogatory statements about Republicans in February and his signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to occur in order to use them as a “pre-text to war.”

Not just knowingly, but deliberately. Please quote to the petition. And link to it.

Mr. Jones’s involvement in the 1990s with a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement prompted recent accusations by conservative critics that he associated with Communists. The group, according to a post-mortem written by some of its founders, was an anti-capitalist, antiwar organization committed to achieving “solidarity among all oppressed peoples” with “direct militant action.”

Republican blogs and conservative talk show hosts, notably Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, seized upon Mr. Jones’s statements and associations.

"Involvement," "statements," "associations" — what did Jones do exactly? The NYT should serve its readers by putting us in a position to think about the trustworthiness of the Obama administration and its selection of "czars." This isn't just another occasion to note that "Republican blogs" and "conservative talk show hosts" attack the administration. It's interesting that the opposition won a "victory," but more important than the endless partisan battles is the question whether we can trust the administration.

Mr. Jones apologized on Wednesday...

“I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past,” Mr. Jones said in a statement announcing his resignation that was released early Sunday morning....

Does that mean the NYT will not go into the matter of what Jones did and said and what the Obama administration knew about it? He's gone now. Go back to looking away, like good little Obamites.

"If I have offended anyone with statements I made in the past, I apologize."

Van Jones is sorry if you were offended.

AND: What if we're still offended?

Van Jones.

Here's a post where you can talk about White House Green Jobs Czar Van Jones.

"[T]he number of people who believe that the President has larded the government with communists (!) was astonishing."

Says Joe Klein, who attended a town hall meeting in Nebraska:

One woman said there were four known communists in the government and that she'd researched it on the internet. When I asked her afterwards, she said environmental adviser Van Jones, legal advisor Cass Sunstein (who was last spotted being excoriated by the left for supporting the FISA revisions), someone named Lloyd and she didn't remember the fourth. And wasn't it suspicious that Obama had all these czars working for him--that was a Russkie commie term, wasn't it? When I asked, the woman admitted that, among other things, she occasionally listened to William Bennett's conservative radio show. I pointed out that Bennett had once been the Drug Czar, appointed by Ronald Reagan. Life sure can be complicated sometimes.

Wow. Joe got a lot out of one woman in Nebraska! But remember, what he asserts is "astonishing" is "the number" of people who think there are communists in the government. I certainly agree that the number one is astonishing. You'd think, by now, a lot more would be plunging ahead and using the inflammatory word.

I was later told by a local observer that many of these vomitous, disgraceful notions were the fruit of Glenn Beck's fruitful imagination. "We are living Glenn Beck's fantasy life," said this audience member. The amazing thing remains not only the unwillingness of responsible Republicans--a term that is in danger of becoming an oxymoron--to call bull-- on this, but also the willingness of many prominent Republicans to join in the slinging of garbage.

Astonishing... amazing... poor Joe is continually surprised by ordinary things. What's amazing? Blech... I have to reread: not only the unwillingness of responsible Republicans... to call bullshit on this, but also the willingness of many prominent Republicans to join in the slinging of garbage. So what's amazing — to plow through Klein's verbiage — is that Republicans use and put up with inflammatory rhetoric.

Yawn. I don't really think Klein is astonished and amazed by any of this. He's just doing the old I'm-surprised-at-you routine beloved of kindergarten teachers. I'm sure he'd love conservatives to stop putting their arguments in such stimulating and colorful terms. (Look out! It's a death panel!)

Michelle Cottle reports that there are Republican-sanctioned efforts afoot to have parents not send their children to school on September 8 because the President is scheduled to address the nation's school-children that day and they are afraid that he will fill their little heads with socialist propaganda. That is somewhere well beyond disgraceful.

No, Joe. Because they are disgusted at the melding of partisan political power and education and the prospect of a child made to accept compulsory school in the form of gazing upon the face of our leader. Imagine if Bush had proposed such an exercise for all of the children on the first day of school. Well, Bush would never have proposed such a thing because: 1. He didn't have the fawning approval of the vast majority of teachers, and 2. He never acquired the idea that his countenance and voice could inspire the masses. But if he did you know very well, Joe, that you'd have been disgusted at Bush, not the people who objected to his absurd display.

Could I just say that the intensity of this getting pretty scary...and dangerous?

Could I just say... may I be so bold... timid little me... can I please just say something... I'm scared! It's dangerous!!!1!!111!

We are heading toward a cliff and the usual brakes of civil discourse are not working.

Get a grip, Joe, you timorous mouse of a man. But that's just a joke. I know you're not really concerned about "civil discourse" in the abstract. You're annoyed that the people have started paying attention and are not sitting back in awed reverence like the most confused and cowed first grader watching that nice man on TV. You thought that when the Democrats won — "I won!" — they'd be able to roll up their preferences into 1000-page bundles and there wouldn't be anything people could do about it. But — lo and behold! — they used speech, free speech, they spoke their minds, sometimes harshly and with hot emotion, but they got themselves heard. If you think that is "heading toward a cliff" without "the usual brakes," then I say you don't believe in a free democratic society.

Indeed, the Republicans have the pedal to the metal--rushing us toward a tragedy far greater than the California health care forum finger-biting Karen describes below.

What tragedy? Not passing a sprawling, amorphous, unproven rearrangement of the way health care is paid for? Who is plying overheated, irrational rhetoric? That lady in Nebraska? Glenn Beck? Or Joe Klein?