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`It is no secret that I am not the biggest President Barack Obama supporter.
That being said, I can skip all the needless flattery that is usually so freely strewn about at the feet of this countries’ chosen Messiah.
But I am not here to talk about Obama, directly anyway. I am more interested in one of his pals.
You may have heard about him over the past few months, and probably more heavily over the past few days. I am talking about the Green Jobs Czar, Van Jones, a self-proclaimed communist and imploratory racist.
According to Foxnews.com, Jones, who formerly served as an adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, generated heavy criticism over the past week. He had issued apologies: first, for calling Republicans “assholes” during a videotaped address earlier in the year, and second for signing a petition in 2004 supporting the “9/11 truther” movement, which believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
In a sharply worded statement, Jones said the controversy had become an “unceasing distraction” and assailed his critics.
Early in Obama’s campaign, the president was quoted saying, “judge me by the people who surround me.”
Just by solely using Van Jones as an example, is it safe to say that Obama himself is a racist, communist? I mean we are only taking him by his own words, right?
I first read this commentary in its actual print form earlier this afternoon and I have to say I take many issues with it. First and foremost I have to admit that not every person will be a fan of the President, or “the Messiah” as you so chose to childishly refer to him as; and I am okay with differing opinions. But, to blatantly and purposefully question Obama’s ideals and beliefs on race is out of line. Our President was birthed from a white woman, his father is an African; how in the world could he possibly be racist? This is, of course, assuming that you personally define the color binary as black an white, as many people in our country do. How is our President a racist if he was raised in a predominantly white household? How is he racist if his father is African? How is he racist if he married an African American woman? How is he racist if he appointed a Hispanic to the Supreme Court? A female Hispanic at that. It’s not fair to paint Obama something he is not.
As in the case for Mr. Jones; was he a radical? Most certainly. Did his radicalism affect the work he did fro the environment? Absolutely not.
Furthermore you slandered President Obama as a communist; even mockingly titling your commentary “Van Jones, hopefully not the last Czar to go.” Firstly, the Czars in Russia were not a part of the “communist” regime the Soviet Union had. The Czar term in Russia, or Tsar if you will, died in 1721, when it was replaced with the term “imperator.” The Soviet Union, which is where you are basing your poor understanding of Communism from, ruled from 1922 until 1991; 201 years after the term Czar had been diminished. Anyone with even a mediocre understanding of modern history could tell you that.
I’ve been a student at Millersville for 2 years now; having transferred from La Salle University in Philadelphia and this is not the first time I have noticed a slant of political favoritism in your publication. I would ask of you, Mr. Hoy, to please turn off Fox News, an obvious right-winged bias media production with absolutely no value whatsoever, where the “anchors” take no issue calling Obama a racist (see Glenn Beck) or a communist and take no issue broadcasting disgusting protesters who have slandered the President to resemble Hitler, and look up the actual facts. No, I’m not asking you to turn to MSNBC, who are equally as bad on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or tune into CNN, I’m asking you to look at facts. The facts are that Obama is neither a racist nor a communist. The fact is Van Jones was damn good at his job. The fact is this kind of slander and propaganda will get the country nowhere in its future endeavors and in fact will only continue to polarize our two party system even more. The fact is if you are really, actually, terribly frightened of “communism” than you sir, have a very poor and ill advised understanding of the meaning of true communism and you should enlighten yourself to Karl Marx; who’s idea of politics was nothing like what the Soviet Union practiced.
Laura Dautrich
Junior English Education major
Minor correction: The Tsar family died in Russia in 1917, though by that point in time they held little political power. Still though, this was 5 years prior to the Soviet Union. I apologize for my error
I do not think that Laura understood the general message of the article at all. It was not an attack on Obama’s ideals and beliefs on race. And why is that out of line to question? Regardless of his ethnic background, personal history, and political affiliations, it does not dismiss the fact that he could or could not be racist. If you are merely referring to the last paragraph, that was obviously satirical and meant to just make people question, not defame our president. It was a logical statement. Obama did make that claim, so he was just doing what the president asked the people to do. I’m not sure why your whole rant dealt with Obama rather than Van Jones, since that is clearly what the article was about. But that is ok, people tend to quickly change topics to something unrelated when the facts are presented right to their face. Nowhere in the entire article did Mr. Hoy make the claim that Van Jones was not good at his job, he was merely revealing facts about his past history, and nothing was said about his effectiveness in his newly acquired and short lived term as Green Jobs Czar.
As for your history lesson, it was well researched and presented; however, again I think you are missing the point. I’ve seen the media use the term, since it was a media creation, czar to describe all these new public figures, time and time again. It is not a link to communism that they are making; it is a link to the way they are appointed. Obama gives them their positions, no votes have to be taken or even considered. Czars are rulers who try and claim the same rank as the emperor, i.e. they are on equal footing with Obama on policies. They are allowed to make budgets, create legislation, etc. without having to run it by the senate, congress, or even Obama himself. Oh, and I thought since you claimed CNN and MSNBC might be good news sources to refer to, I found articles on their website that refers to these new public figures as czars as well [http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/28/cyber.czar.obama/] and [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31566399/ns/health-health_care//]. As for your assumption of his model of communism, I think you are a little uneducated in the matter. Ideas taken from the communist manifesto, like distribution of wealth, expansion of the means of production owned by the state, and a heavy progressive or graduated income tax are just a few examples of actions and laws being implemented by the Obama administration.
One word Laura. Fail. Harry’s rebuttal was almost better than the article itself. Good job Adam and Harry for keeping closed minded people at bay.
Harry,
I clearly stated that I didn’t want Adam to turn to CNN or MSNBC, maybe you just misread me. “No, I’m not asking you to turn to MSNBC, who are equally as bad on the opposite side of the political spectrum, or tune into CNN, I’m asking you to look at facts.”
The fact of the matter is that Van Jones had to resign for purely party political reasons. And this opinion is a prime example why. It obviously didn’t matter how well he preformed in his position; the fact that he was a self proclaimed Communist had everyone and their mothers up in arms.
I didn’t purposely turn the topic to President Obama because I’m uneducated on the subject matter; I turned it because throughout the original opinion there are hints, satirical or not, that Obama is a communist and possibly even a racist. I turned the argument this way because when I read the article originally that’s what I got out of it. Closed-minded? I doubt it. Maybe on some ends but most certainly not on mine.
While I do admit that maybe my entire response may have strayed from the base point; I hold it with my original assumptions of the article. Did I read into too much? Well, that’s quite possible and I probably did. I have a tendency when I read things to see things that may or may not be clearly present, but does that make my opinion any less viable? No it doesn’t. Adam presented a side of the story, all I did was present the other side. Van Jones may have been the primary figure in the article, but, come on, this opinion wasn’t about Van Jones. It’s barely 300 words long and Obama was mentioned, both directly and indirectly, more often than Jones. The end of the article, again satirical or not, was clearly and obviously not about Jones. It was about Obama, which is where I stemmed by rebuttal from.
I mean honestly, party politics aside, this opinion was never about Jones. There’s one paragraph saying that Jones is a radical in his party and had to resign over some things he said. The bulk of it is about Obama. The people he surrounds himself with, him being the “Messiah” of our country, Adam not being an Obama “fan”, it’s obvious that although he isn’t directly talking about Obama, the article turned into a criticism of the administration with just a few short sentences.
And to comment on the use of czar, while I do agree with you and admit defeat to an extent that the media has used Czar recently as a name for officials not officially elected into office, I hold my own with the title. Even with this more recent definition of Czar, Obama was elected fairly; He was appointed by a public majority, not a sole figure so the title of the article is still irking to me personally.
And lastly, I see that you do have a good understanding of communism, and those particular reasons you gave are what I personally like about communism. I don’t like when people associate communism with the Soviet Union for what they practiced was hardly what could be considered communist. And let’s face it; the majority of the American public understands Communism to be that scary red flag they saw flying over Eastern Europe for most of the 20th century, not what Marx wanted in an ideal society.