Breitbart’s own Rebel Pundit captured some video of Van Jones speaking ata Green Festival last weekend. He wrote about Jones’ speech here. But after listening toit, I felt one part of the speech needed additional attention. In the clipbelow, Jones explains how taking over all three branches of government in2008 only gave progressives one-third of the power they needed to createreal change.
Three big myths. If we can get our brains wrapped aroundthese three big myths, then we can do the three things we have to do to getour movement back on track…
Myth #1. If you control the government, you can govern. Wasn’t that amyth we had. If you can control the government you can govern. We have 60votes in the Senate. We have Nancy Pelosi, probably the best Speaker ever inthe House, and we have Barack Obama in the White House. We control thegovernment therefore we should be able to govern…[Makes buzzer sound]Wrong answer. Wrong answer.
We thought we had this trifecta; in fact we only had one-third of what weneeded to govern, because you also have to have, as we learned, a mediaoperation, a media communications operation. Our opponents had one. It’snamed after a sneaky, furry mammal. A sneaky, low-down, predatory, furrymammal. They have a whole TV station named after this sneaky animal. Haveyou heard of it?…I don’t want to mention Fox by name, but they hadthat.
And they also had a movement in the streets, the Tea Party. And if youonly have formal control of the government but you don’t have the media andyou don’t have the movement, you can be checkmated.
This reminds me of that famous New Yorker cover which shows the UnitesStates as seen from 9th Avenue in New York. Jones’ perspective on Fox isclearly personal. Still, the lack of perspective in this statement isstunning. Fox News, as successful as it is, only rarely beats thebroadcasts news of ABC, NBC, and CBS. It alsofaces news rivals at CNN, MSNBC, PBS, AlJazeera, BBC, RT, NPR–all of which are leftof center, far-left in several cases. And that’s not to mention the printednews giants such as the NY Times, Washington Post,etc.
But while Jones’ view of the world doesn’t reflect reality, it doesprovide some insight into how he and progressives see the world. In Jones’ view,Fox News is as powerful as the entire government of the UnitedStates.
And because this is true, progressives won’t ever really berunning things until Fox is silenced. That’s why Jones’ Colorof Change group works so hard to shut down Rush Limbaugh and why hisallies at Media Matters work to do the same to Fox.
Simplyput, they want more power than the government alone can give them. Theybelieve that if they can shut up or shut down the pesky voices of the opposition,i.e. half of the American people, then they will finally have free rein todo what they want.
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