Saturday, September 5, 2009

Van Jones on White Subsurban Boys (and It's Positive)

Van Jones, Obama's Green Czar, suddenly has a bright and unwanted spotlight on him. Articles on the Internet that he has a very radical past have been around since he was appointed , but they didn't catch much attention, until recently.

Now a Republican Congressman is calling for his resignation. There is a question how he or anyone in Congress could demand a resignation of a Presidential appointee, when he or anyone in Congress didn't have any say in the appointment. But that aside, Mr. Jones is being criticized for:

  • Being a 9/11 "truther"
  • Having called Republicans a**holes earlier this year

According to Congressman Mike Pence (R. Indiana), "His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this Administration or the public debate."

Having doubts about the official version of 9/11 is an extremist position? And calling Republicans a**holes coarse rhetoric? Well I have a surprise for you Congressman Pence. More than 1/3 of Americans suspect the government was involved in 9/11 or complicit in the affair, and there is no lack of Americans who want to call Republicans a**holes for what they have and haven't done particularly over the last 8 years.

(I wonder if he remembers then-Vice President Cheney's coarce rhetoric in 2004. Compared to that, "a**hole" is nothing.)

The latest attack is over a video clip from 2005 in which Van Jones is portrayed by the headlines in the news as saying "Only suburban white kids shoot up schools", the headlines implying he was trashing white kids, putting them in a very negative light.

The video clip is only 3 minutes long, and you don't know the full context of the speech. But contrary to what the news headlines were trying to convince us, I think what he was saying is POSITIVE. If anything, he was standing up for (hold your breath) white, suburban, boys. Not just kids, it's boys.

"Our young, white males are suffering in the society. Profoundly. PROFOUNDLY. And nobody is saying a word about it.

"We'll criminalize the black student, criminalize the black child, the Latino child, where there's whole discussion about whether they are animals, not animals, should we abuse them, should we help them, blah blah blah. And that young white boy sitting out there, suffering.

"You've never seen a Columbine done, by a black child. Never. They always say, "We can't believe it happened here, we can't believe that these were these suburban white kids." It's ONLY them.

"Now, a black kid might shoot another black kid. He ain't go shoot at the whole school. My cousin's up in here but I don't shoot up the entire school. I might hit my cousin. I might shoot your uncle.

"But these young white men, they are in so much pain and so isolated and so alienated that they will shoot up the entire school. Where is the concern? Where is the love? Where is the compassion for these young men?

"And it's doubling twisted because if anything that you're doing is wrong we wanna hurt you we wanna punish you we're not gonna help you we're not gonna love you, so rather than punish you and attack you and jump on you like we do to black kids we just ignore you and neglect you.

"We have got to begin to look at the idea of criminality, of evil, of wrong-doing, of mistakes as being a universal condition, requiring a universally loving response, and a universally embracing response, so that our society in trying to confront any evil in at any level does not in fact become evil.

"It is just as evil, in my view, to attack these young black and brown men. It is just as evil to neglect and ignore these young white men, who, as the best I can tell, have very little now in the way of loving, affirmative male leadership that can put the arm around, wipe away a tear, and show the kind of masculinity that is not brittle or mean-spirited."

There are a boat load of Obama Czars and advisers with some very "radical" ideas which should be examined and questioned vigorously before it's too late. (Science Czar, Safe School Czar, and Regulatory Czar come to my mind, as well as Dr. Emanuel on health care "reform".)

But this one particular view on young white boys from a former radical black activist doesn't look to be one of them. On the contrary, it's about time someone stood up for young white boys, and as a black, he can get away with it. Imagine if a white person said this, particularly a white man. He would be roundly condemned as "racist".

It would be very ironic and telling if he is forced to resign because he stood up for young white boys, because he doubted the official version of 9/11, because he called Republicans a**holes. All the wrong reasons, if I may say so.

(I found the youtube video of the original video that was posted at Breitbart.com, as the embed code of the video at Breitbart keeps doing the disappearing act, for some strange unknown reason.)

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