Topic: Liberal Fascism
President Obama has established a disturbing pattern of appointing people with radical backgrounds to important posts in his administrations. Usually, they are posts not requiring Senate conformation, a coincidence that becomes readily understandable when you examine the resume of Van Jones, the former "green jobs czar," who lost his job once his radical background was publicized.
Now there’s Kevin Jennings. A gay activist, he was named to head the Education Department's Office of Safe & Drug Free Schools. Writing for the Washington Examiner, Byron York recounts the sorry tale that has surfaced to call Jennings’ qualifications into question:
As a young teacher, nearly two decades ago, Jennings was approached by a 15-year old boy (some defenders now say the boy was 16) who said he had had an encounter with an older man. Instead of pursuing the matter with the authorities, Jennings, by his own account, offered some simple advice: "I hope you used a condom."
Now I find this disturbing. Perhaps our progressive elites do not. After all, many of them—not all, mercifully—have leapt to the defense of Roman Polanski. He once drugged and raped a 13-year-old-girl—but he is, they remind us, a renowned cinema artiste who ought not to be judged by the philistine standards of middle-class morality. I suppose that Debra Winger and Woody Allen, to name two of these people, would see nothing wrong in Jennings’ behavior. (For the record, Jennings himself now says that he made a mistake.)
Then there’s Barack Obama. What could he possibly be thinking when he appoints a man of obviously questionable judgment to a key position in the Department of Education? Did he really think that Kevin Jennings was the best possible choice for a job concerned with safe schools?