"News that's Fit to Print" -- New York Times

Today, I’m back on one of my few hobby horses. I don’t have that many really I don’t. But right at the top of the list is the double standard employed by the drive-by media’s coverage of this president and that of his predecessor.

Can you imagine what howls of protest would have followed a speech by President Bush to the nation’s schoolchildren in which he mentioned “G-d”? Well Obama did just that yesterday and he did it more than once. So, I ask again, where are the screams of outrage about the separation of church and state?

And the resignation of Van Jones highlights yet another prime example. Since the storm clouds began to gather, how much coverage did the issue receive in the “mainstream” electronic and print media? For example there was not a word in the New York Times or the Washington Post until the resignation was accepted.

But the actual resignation early Sunday of the “green jobs” adviser says as much about the Obama White House as it does about Jones – marking the latest sacrifice to the political gods after a long summer of compromises and surrenders highlighted the limits of White House power.

The departure, nominally the choice of a still-defiant Jones, who said he feared distracting from important business – confirmed Obama’s choice of pragmatism over confrontation and a belief that controversies sometimes are better solved by capitulation, a view that infuriates Obama’s allies on the left. It confirmed that the real opposition party to Obama right now is the conservative grassroots that draws its energy from Fox News, talk radio and the Drudge Report, and often leaves Republican elected officials scrambling to catch up.

And it was a fresh reminder that the White House’s vetting process didn’t fall down just on high-profile nominees like Tom Daschle. It barely touched the lower reaches of the administration. A White House official conceded Sunday that Jones’ past statements weren’t as thoroughly investigated due to his relatively low rank. Jones’ selection also was propelled by powerful patrons, who included the first lady and the vice president. In his statement, Jones was defiant. "On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” he said. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”

Excuse me, what lies and distortions?

Most of the “indiscretions” were caught on video and/or audio tape including the “Republicans are assholes” and President Bush being described as a “crackhead” and "the pollution of black neighborhoods by rich white guys".

The logic of the departure was clear: It was a hope of keeping the national conversation where Obama wanted it this week ahead of his health reform speech to a joint session of Congress later today. “Between Cambridge cops; whether administration officials are or are not for the public option; right wing mobbing at town halls; and the back to school welcome contretemps, the White House has been forced to play defense and loose-ball control over the summer,” said the former Clinton White House aide Chris Lehane, who noted that a “very important week” could have been consumed by “a discussion related to an obscure staffer who no one has ever really heard of.”

Jones’s departure resonated sharply, however, with the other topic on Sunday’s television rotation: The public insurance option in the health care debate. There, too, the White House has responded to conservative opposition by pointing first to the outright distortions – and then running the other way. To the outrage of the House Progressive Caucus, MoveOn, and other liberal voices, Gibbs and senior advisor David Axelrod said Obama this week will continue to advocate for a government-run plan to compete with private plans, but won’t insist on it, as some foes have cast the option as equivalent to a government takeover of all health care delivery.

The Jones departure recalls another Democratic surrender: The indicated willingness to abandon a plan to fund voluntary end-of-life consultations after they were miscast by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as “death panels.”

"If Jones left under pressure from the Obama administration then we are in for a very long and painful four years,” said Melissa Harris Lacewell, a political science professor at Princeton University. “I would hate to think that Glenn Beck can simply shout down any member of the administration he chooses to target.”

She was referring to the Fox News host who has rocketed to a status as one of the de facto leaders of the opposition since joining the network from the relative obscurity of talk radio and CNN Headline News. Beck's attacks on Jones intensified after an advocacy group which Jones helped found, Color of Change, led a campaign to drive advertisers away from Beck’s show. The resignation, in turn, confirmed the alternative media’s stature as the administration’s most potent foe. Along with other talk radio hosts and the Drudge Report, Beck helped drive a summer of protest against health care reform that turned the legislation into a referendum on change and government.

“But Van Jones is just the tip of the iceberg,” Beck said earlier this month. “If we understand Obama by who he surrounds himself with as HE told us, what does Van Jones’s 9/11 'truther stuff' tell us about Obama’s Middle East policy?”

Some progressives said they saw racial overtones in Jones’ departure – which came as critics began to step up their scrutiny of Jones’ past words of support for Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther on death row whose murder conviction in the death of a police officer is a cause célèbre for some on the left. What nonsense!

At a commencement address in the spring, first lady Michelle Obama held Jones up as an example to students of people who are doing interesting and innovative work. "And then there's Van Jones, who recently joined the Obama administration, a special adviser to the president on green jobs. Van started out as a grassroots organizer and became an advocate and a creator of ‘green collar’ jobs –- jobs that are not only good for the environment, but also provide good wages and career advancement for both skilled and unskilled workers,” she said.

Really? Name one?

Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett echoed that praise to a cheering crowd at the Netroots Nation convention this summer. “Van Jones, we were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House, we have been watching him really...for as long as he's been active out in Oakland... and all of the creative ideas that he has... and now we have all of that energy and enthusiasm in the White House," Jarrett said. A White House official conceded that Jones “was not as thoroughly vetted as other administration officials,” though the official suggested it had more to do with the relatively low level of Jones’s job than with the power of his patrons.

Really? It seems to me that, for all intents and purposes, Jones is Obama and vice versa!