Granted, the Chicago Green Festival is a private event and has the right to refuse to credential reporters it doesn’t like. However, to strip an already ideologically unfriendly reporter of his credentials while he holds a video camera might not be the best PR move ever invented.
Former White House adviser Van Jones isn’t exactly a shrinking violet – in fact, from what we’ve seen, he relishes conflict. However, that relish might not extend to people who staff the events where he gives his speeches. One video blogger found this out when he tried to clarify a remark that Van Jones had made from the stage at Chicago’s Green Festival to the effect of “Don’t ever let somebody like me in the White House.”
To be fair to Jones, he obviously wasn’t serious. In fact, the remark was intended as a jab at his political opponents, as its full context shows:
“I might have something to say, and maybe that’s why our opponents were so interested in shutting me up, and so, surprise! I’m back!” Jones crowed in his speech. “Don’t ever let somebody like me in the White House, and then insist that I come back out here with all of y’all, because now we can make this thing work.”
The implication is clear: Jones’ opponents actually made him more dangerous by forcing him out of the Obama White House, where his message was tightly controlled, and turning him back into an outsider with no filter.
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