Fluidity of Language

Lesson for Van Jones: Don't get too uppity. By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist.

Van Jones loved the spotlight. Heck, who wouldn't, after being named a special adviser and green jobs czar for President Barack Obama. In Kansas City last week, Jones was one of the federal officials flown in to take a look at the Green Impact Zone, an idea to upgrade 150 blocks of low-income neighborhoods. Jones was introduced twice by fellow, higher-ranking fed officials -- and on both occasions, Jones made sure to interject that he was a "special adviser" to Obama. But now he's not part of the administration at all, thanks to imprudent remarks and a petition he signed years ago, a petition that implied the federal government allowed 9/11 to happen. The statement that really got Jones in trouble with radio shock-jock Glenn Beck and other conservatives came in February, when he was at a green energy conference in Berkeley. When asked why Republicans were more effective when they held Congress, Jones replied: The answer to that is: "They're assholes. That's a technical political science term. And Barack Obama's not an asshole. I will say this, I can be an asshole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to start getting a little bit uppity." Of course, for Beck and the rest of the white-America crowd, Jones got a little too uppity, especially when a group co-founded by Jones went after Beck and got some advertisers to pull out of supporting his show.

---- Oooweee, the Van man is so good-looking I'd hire him on looks alone. But woe are the BlameWhitey crowd as Van the Green Tsar has left the first black president's Tsarena.

A few short years ago Van Jones was a San Francisco Bay Area radical agitator–a committed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, waging war on the police and capitalist system. A participant in the 1992 Rodney King riots (arrested, charges dropped); signing petitions with Code Pinkers regarding government culpability in 9/11; and founder of Ellen Baker Center for Human Rights, an NGO, the Color of Change, a 501c3, and Green for All - another NGO.

NGO - nongovernmental organization. Implies independence from government, but most NGOs depend heavily on governments for their funding, and/or funding by the older and larger moneybag NGO foundations of the ruling class. Peter Hallward argues that NGOs are an aristocratic form of politics, i.e. a faction of the ruling class can pour funds into an NGO which is complicit with their particular political agenda - and it all looks benevolent, charitable, humanitarian, independent, indigenous, community-based, and grass rootsy, etc. But follow the money.

I have ranted previously on NGOs, 501c3, foundations, etc. These organizations began to take serious hold in the 1950s and their growth has exploded in the last 35 years. They are definitely a form of aristocratic politics as the "founders" and members see themselves superior and best qualified to run the social-political show they have chosen to latch onto - usually color related, green, black, brown, red, or white folks helping some color or another. Amazingly, I can't think of one NGO that has done anything of real and lasting value for the peasantry in the last 35 years.

Even though Mr. Yael T. Abouhalkah, fortunately, is only a hack for the KC Star, his mentality represents much of what tries to pass itself off as progressive thought today but it is so 1950s.

Yael and friends are behind on the times because in today's world "uppity" does not mean a black man who dares to look the white women in the eye or the black woman who refuses to give up her seat on the bus - - no, uppity today is code for asshole, as defined by Mr. Van Jones himself, in above paragraph, in his owns words : "They're assholes. That's a technical political science term. And Barack Obama's not an asshole. I will say this, I can be an asshole. And some of us who are not Barack Hussein Obama are gonna have to start getting a little bit uppity."

So you see Bubba, to be a little bit uppity you only have to be an asshole - these days it doesn't matter what color you are or what political body you support - you simply have to feel self-important, arrogant, and overstep the boundaries of politeness - obnoxious is a plus (the Bush family are masters of uppity/asshole). You can be a member of the "white-American crowd" and be an uppity. And if you make the sheople chuckle by referring to yourself and the opposition as assholes - that's a cool uppity.

We can all be uppity - and some of us are bigger uppities than others. Some make a living at being an uppity, and for some being an uppity seems to come naturally. And, wouldn't you know it, in our physically fixated culture - it usually helps if you're a good-looking "aristocratic" uppity.

Of course, uppity/asshole can also, as Mr. Anthony "Van" Jones knows well, come back and bite you in the ....... especially if you love the spotlight.