Carl Pope, executive director for the Sierra Club rightly explains that "the environmental community, progressives, and the Obama administration" "blew it" when it came to defending Van Jones against a smear campaign.
He believes that "we didn't take it seriously enough. When I saw the first Glenn Beck piece on Van Jones and the Apollo Alliance as the new vast left-wing conspiracy, I could not take it seriously."
Carl Pope "assumed it would blow over." But it didn't.
Pope says this assumption was a mistake. "So was the decision by the White House to treat the initial attacks not as part of an assault on the president but, instead, to allow them to be viewed as being about Van Jones."
Pope continues: "If you watch the infamous "!@*$%" video carefully, it's clear that what Jones was saying was that Republicans play hardball better than Democrats, and that we need to start playing by their rules. He said it, though, in the language of his own community -- and that, at the end of the day, was his crime."
Pope reveals an important fact related to this controversy. That "the campaign to get advertisers to cancel their sponsorship of Beck's program was launched by Color of Change, a grassroots organization that Van Jones helped found"
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