THE SANE LEFT COUNSELING THE NUTSO LEFT

A Guardian (UK) writer counseling the American Left to "rethink" the kind of muckraking that Keith Obermann wants.

When the American left is willing to excuse crazy ideas from liberals because "at least they're our crazies," and diabolize the opposition as enemies of democracy – remember Hillary Clinton's "vast right wing conspiracy" mongering? – it is at its most unappealing.

Some on the left understand this. David Corn, Mother Jones's Washington editor, wrote of the Van Jones resignation that Jones was responsible for his own positions but that the easy acceptance by so many American liberals of conspiracy theories about 9/11 sure didn't help:

The 9/11 conspiracy theory was just too tempting for many Bush critics. Van Jones says he was not fully aware of what he was signing when he put his John Hancock on that 9/11 petition. This might be true. But I can see how Jones and others on the left – without thinking too much – might have easily said, sure, sign my name to any call for any investigation of Bush and Cheney. And that sloppiness, if that's what it was, has cost him his job.

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It was abundantly clear that Jones knew what he was signing. From the Guardian:

Jones had to know the petition dealt with an incendiary topic. If he didn't bother to check the precise wording, well, all the more reason for him to resign. (Undermining Jones's "I know nothing" defense is the fact that the petition was not his only brush with the truther movement.)

He was was an organizer for a whacko protest march. He appeared later at a public rally and was quoted expressing similar sentiments. The writer doesn't mention Jones' active work in organizing rallies for Philadelphia cop killer, Mumia Abu-Jama. Nor the production on his "Freedom Fighter" label of a ant-war, anti-American CD. (He has a speaking part if you wish to listen at the link.) Nor do they mention how his group deliberately, in the eyes of the San Francisco Chronicle reporter, deliberately timed their demonstration at the same time and place as a meeting between Oakland police and youth.

Nor does the Guardian writer or David Corn (formerly leftwing Nation) mention Jones' assertion (on YouTube) that accuses whites of polluting black communities.

Even Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal & Constitution thinks "Glenn Beck got it right" And she's this whacky: (she writes)

Jones’ affection for the teachings of Marx and Lenin wasn’t the real problem. Marx, especially, had a few good ideas (though the broad application of them turned out to be a spectacular failure). The bigger problem was Jones’ membership in a leftwing club of paranoids who seem to believe that President Bush knew about the impending attacks on 9/11 but did nothing to prevent them because Bush wanted to go to war.

And she thinks Beck is Fox's "mad dog."

At least he doesn't have dillusions about how good Marxism and Communism are.

S.F. Chronicle editorial says the White House was right to distance itself to Jones when his "radical history" became "under intense scrutiny." No mention that the S.F. Chronicle knew about his "history" and it was bloggers who exposed the ugly truth.