CNN correspondent and liberal activist Van Jones gave the commencement address at Pitzer College near Los Angeles and used the opportunity to bash Fox News, blaming them for a year-long depression.
Jones told the delighted graduates, "Any time your primary source of news is named after a sneaky, predatory animal…enough said."
Jones explained that after the success of his book "The Green Collar Economy," he was invited by Barack Obama to be a consultant on the president's green jobs transitional team managing $80 billion for "green recovery spending." He called the period working as Obama's "green jobs czar" -- as he came to be called -- the best six months of his life. Then he called the next two weeks the worst in his life.
"Suddenly Fox News discovers my radical, left-wing, Bay-area past," said Jones. Jones then explained that he resigned and fell into a year-long depression because of Fox News' revelations:
So rather than put the president through all kind of pain and anguish trying to explain Bay-area left politics, I resigned.
It looks cool in the movies when you fall on your sword [but] it hurts. I went into a depression for a year -- nobody was sure I was going to come out of it. Devastating.
Knowing his audience, Jones encouraged the future activists fresh off their university training:
You're going to be in the same situation at some point if you really get out here and try and do something. At some point you're going to come up against a real dragon.
Jones's "radical, left-wing, Bay-area past" included calling Republicans "assholes" and linking George W. Bush to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
