After I brought the story of Denver Mayor (and Democratic candidate for governor) John Hickenlooper calling Van Jones “a rock star” to the attention of Peter Boyles, the king of Denver Morning Radio, local radio institution Mike Rosen asked “Hick” the next day (April 15th, 2010) about his praise of the self-described communist and “rowdy (black) nationalist.”

You can hear the 11-minute discussion here:

Hickenlooper says of Jones “He’s the guy from Oakland, right…or something?” as part of a posture more like “Van who?” than a guy he called “even bigger and better in  life than what you’ve heard” as you can see in the May, 2009 video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyB2SD3JjNI

Hickenlooper said in response to Mike Rosen that he was “introduced to (Jones) as someone who was actually helping kids stay in school…”

All in all, Hickenlooper’s claim was something between “I never paid much attention", “I thought he was just involved in education", and “I don’t remember.”

Had the meeting which Hickenlooper had been describing when he called Van Jones “a rock star” been their first and only meeting, Hick’s convenient amnesia might have been believable to many, if not to me.

But further research shows that Hickenlooper and Van Jones were scheduled participants/speakers at at least five separate events duing the 10 months from August 2008 through May 2009. In other words, Hickenlooper and Jones were likely together at least four separate times before Hickenlooper’s praise of the communist radical and hater of “gray capitalism"; the event during which Hickenlooper praised Jones was the last, not the first, of those events and thus makes claims of “I really didn’t know him” or “Van who?” utterly implausible.

It is possible, though very unlikely that Jones and Hickenlooper went through all of the following events without speaking to each other.  More likely, they actually had more contact than what I lay out below, whether at events I haven’t uncovered or at social gatherings such as lunch or dinner while Jones was in Colorado (four times) or Hickenlooper was in DC (one time):

August 24, 2008: Green Frontier Fest at the Sculpture Park at the Denver Performing Arts Complex.  Hickenlooper and Jones were listed as “special guests” in the official city government news release promoting the event, with Hickenlooper saying “we are delighted to add such dynamic speakers to the Green Frontier Fest lineup.”

Later that same night of August 24, 2008, a DNC kick-off event at Red Rocks at which Hickenlooper and Jones were both speakers to a crowd of about 9,000 people.

January 17, 2009: United States Conference of Mayors at the Capitol Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C.  Van Jones and Hickenlooper were both speakers at the event on its first day. Though they may have spoken in different rooms at the hotel where the meeting was held, their speaking times did not overlap so one or both may have seen the other speak. At a prior Conference of Mayors meeting, in June, 2008, Hickenlooper signed a “Green jobs pledge” created by Jones’ organization, Green for All, though there isn’t evidence that Van Jones attended that particular meeting.

May 26, 2009: Vice-President Joe Biden chairs a Middle Class Task Force meeting at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Van Jones and Hickenlooper are both listed as “speakers/participants” in a meeting entitled “Building a Strong Middle Class through a Green Economy.”

May 28, 2009: Colorado Environmental Coalition’s Rebel with a Cause Gala honoring Van Jones and at which Hickenlooper also received a “Special Achievement Award.” (This is the event at which Hickenlooper called Van Jones a “rock star”.)

Jones was not a well-kept secret in liberal/environmental circles even before Hickenlooper met him.  In an article he wrote for the Huffington Post in 2007, he describes himself as an “Environmental Justice Activist.” (Hold on to your wallets when a _____ Justice Activist of any sort comes to your neighborhood.) To be fair, that particular article doesn’t seen particularly radical, even though it does smack of the usual leftist/environmentalist/green utopian view of “green jobs” saving the world.

But that was Van Jones 2.0, the Van Jones who said in a 2005 interview that “I’m willing to forgo the cheap satisfaction of the radical pose for the deep satisfaction of radical ends.”

Prior to the Ward Churchill-like epiphany of trying to destroy the system from within, Jones was starting socialist revolutionary groups and calling for a retrial for the duly convicted Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal.

[In 2004, Jones also signed a “9/11 Truth” petition asking the government to investigate whether the destruction of the Twin Towers was actually done by the United States government.  Just after resigning from his White House appointment as “Green Jobs Czar", Jones gave an interview in which he said he didn’t read the petition he signed. Your guess is as good as mine whether that’s true.  The 9/11 Truther story and Jones’ subsequent resignation in September, 2009, came out after Hickenlooper’s meetings with and praise of Jones. It is noteworthy, however, because Jones’ resignation was a major news story, making Hickenlooper’s current “Van who?” routine that much less believable.]

The idea that a Mayor so steeped in the “green” movement would not know Van Jones is a stretch.  The idea that Hickenlooper knew nothing about Van Jones other than that he was “from Oakland” and worked “to keep kids in school” after participating in at least four events together does not pass the giggle test, particularly after Jones had been so much in the news late last year.

I should note that there are plenty of people on the far left of American politics and involved in the radical environmental, also called “green", movement, who would be pleased to pal around with and be associated with Van Jones.  Personally, I’d feel like a traitor if I befriended someone like Jones, a man who has long professed an antipathy toward capitalism.  But that’s just me…

The point here is not primarily that Hickenlooper associated with Jones (although I do hold that against him), but that the evidence points strongly toward the Mayor lying about it. Hickenlooper knows that to win an election in Colorado he can’t lose his guy-next-door facade of moderation – a facade which would be greatly damaged by ties to someone with Jones’ history.

Voters must make their own inferences from the Mayor’s apparent dissembling.  For those who are interested, here’s my take:

The mayor’s facade of being a moderate would be damaged by the public being informed of his repeated association with Van Jones.  Therefore, he decided to play dumb and hope nobody would dig any deeper.  Now that certain people have dug deeper, the implausibility of Hickenlooper’s memory lapse has to make voters question not only his “moderation” but his facility with the truth as well.

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One final note: While I greatly appreciate Peter Boyles’ scolding of certain media outlets for not giving me credit for breaking the original story of Hickenlooper calling Van Jones “a rock star", I can’t take credit for creating or finding the original video.  While I have done a fair bit of “investigative journalism” on this topic, others have done excellent work as well which I have benefitted from.  Those others, who would prefer not to have their names mentioned, know who they are and know that I’m grateful for their work.  Also, I should mention that these people do not work for a political campaign, political party, 527 group, or any similar organization. They are simply citizen journalists who want to help inform the public and who, to be honest, would probably rather not see John Hickenlooper as the governor of Colorado (nor would I.) Again, I am in their debt.