If you're gonna say crazy shit, make sure you're in the GOP

I think Steve Benen's right, Van Jones is a more natural activist then a member of an administration.

Joking about Republicans being "a**holes" wasn't likely to be enough to Jones' ouster -- he wasn't in the administration at the time and he did, after all, refer to himself as an "a**hole" in the same remarks -- but it was that Truther petition that proved problematic. It also brought intense scrutiny on Jones' previous political associations.

Gawker has a very good summary of Jones' background and the smear campaign launched against him, but here's the key takeaway: "[Jones] was a bookish black kid from Tennessee who went to Yale Law and moved to San Francisco and became a radical. Then he decided to use his law degree and smarts to clean up and make things better from inside the establishment."

Right-wing critics have railed against Jones for months, but the campaign against him took a sharp turn in late July. Color of Change launched an effort targeting Glenn Beck's advertisers, so Beck targeted Van Jones, who helped create the group. At that point, Jones went from being an obscure administration official in an office few have heard of (the Council on Environmental Quality) to the most hated man on Fox News.

A few things to keep in mind going forward. First, we haven't heard the last of Van Jones, and that's a good thing. He's one of the nation's great visionaries on energy and environmental issues, and as Kate Sheppard noted, "[P]erhaps the even bigger irony here is that he's always been more effective and influential as an outside activist than as an administration official.... In all honesty, Glenn Beck may have more to worry about with Jones outside the White House than in it."