Glenn Beck gets a scalp as green czar Van Jones quits

Advertisers may have deserted him in horror after he labeled President Barack Obama a racist, and liberal commentators may be calling for his head, but the right-wing television host Glenn Beck has got his first big scalp: Van Jones, Obama's 'green jobs czar', has quit under a wave of Republican pressure led by Beck.

The resignation of Jones, whom Beck had called a "committed revolutionary", was revealed close to midnight on Saturday. Yesterday, the Fox News host stated: "The American people stood up and demanded answers. Instead of providing them, the [Obama] administration had Jones resign under cover of darkness.

"I continue to be amazed by the power of everyday Americans to initiate change in our government through honest questioning."

In his resignation statement, Jones complained of the "vicious smear campaign" against him. "I have been inundated with calls - from across the political spectrum - urging me to 'stay and fight'," he said. "But I came here to fight for others, not for myself. I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past."

What he didn't say was that the man who hired him in March, President Obama, had not felt able to offer him his support.

In recent weeks, egged on by Beck, Republicans have been asking more and more questions about Jones's past as a radical left-winger. Jones has never denied this aspect of his life but has explained countless times that he has since disavowed radical action, preferring to work "within the system" to bring change.

Nevertheless, he was forced to issue two public apologies last week, one for signing a petition that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war", and the other for using a "crude term" to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the White House.

The reason he got under Beck's skin was because of his affiliation with Color of Change, the pressure group that led the successful campaign to get 46 advertisers to withdraw from Beck's show. The campaign was launched when Beck called Obama a "racist" who had "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" after the president stepped in to defend the black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates following his infamous run-in with a white police officer earlier this summer.

Ironically, the mishandling of the Gates affair - Obama had to back-pedal furiously after saying the police officer had behaved "stupidly" - may have been what prevented Obama backing Jones.

Meanwhile, Beck, with or without advertisers, goes from strength to strength, despite the scorn of liberal commentators. The mayor of the town where the TV host grew up, Mount Vernon, Washington, has declared September 26 'Glenn Beck Day'. ·