(foxnews)  White House green jobs adviser Van Jones quit the post last year after he was dogged by past remarks and associations, but that isn't stopping the NAACP from awarding him one of its Image Awards -- and even calling him an "American treasure."

Jones, who served as an adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, generated mounting criticism last summer, first for calling Republicans "assholes" during a videotaped address earlier in the year and then for signing a petition in 2004 supporting the "9/11 truther" movement, which believes the Bush administration may have been involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. 

The latter development, which came on top of several others, was perhaps the most devastating and led to calls for his resignation.

But Jones still has his share of outspoken supporters, and one of them is Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP.

"Van Jones is an American treasure," Jealous writes in an opinion piece posted at CNN.com. "He is quite simply one of the few Americans in recent years to have generated powerful new ideas that are creating new jobs."

Jones was a self-described "communist" during the 1990s and previously worked with a group dedicated to Marxist and Leninist philosophies. His comments, even in recent years, were often racially charged. He's blamed "white polluters and white environmentalists" for "steering poison" to minority communities. In 2005, he drew a distinction between white and black youths involved in shooting incidents by referencing the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. 

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