Nir Rosen, journalist and NYU fellow, tweeted some thoughts on the orgy of sympathy Lara Logan received for placing herself smack dab in the middle of a mob of revolutionary Arab men. Rosen’s skepticism about how much sympathy she deserved came from an angle I hadn’t initially considered when I questioned CBS’s and Ms. Logan’s judgment in aggressively inserting herself in the middle of a volatile situation.
It turns out that Logan was kind of a war junkie, and has long made herself a fixture in Iraq and Afghanistan, where she’d cruise around on base in skimpy clothing aggressively displaying her assets to troops, even prompting one American soldier to say “I feel sorry for your husband.” In fact, Logan liked the boys on base so much that despite being married herself, she got pregnant by a married contractor in Baghdad while simultaneously carrying on with another man, prompting an embarrassing altercation. She was often “embedded,” which is a practice in which journalists are put in controlled situations with troops that are mutually beneficial to both military PR and major news networks. Logan, for her part, added an entirely novel nuance to the term. Perhaps being accustomed to being surrounded by a phalanx of heavily armed American and British troops gave her the false sense of security that led to her unfortunate decision to waltz into the middle of a mob in Cairo.
Rosen, evidently thinking “what goes around comes around” pointed to her role as a cheerleader for wars in Muslim lands, which should further raise eyebrows about her up close and personal coverage of a revolution in a Muslim country. When you add everything up, it certainly looks as though Logan was tempting fate. Wouldn’t surprise me if someone in the mob actually knew who she was (word gets around fast on the street), which could go a considerable way toward explaining the assault. Actually, it’s looking more and more like she was deliberately singled out and attacked for political reasons.
Unfortunately for Rosen, he made the mistake of violating a PC taboo, and was promptly sacrificed to the goddess:
From Karen J. Greenberg, Executive Director, Center on Law and Security
Nir Rosen is always provocative, but he crossed the line yesterday with his comments about Lara Logan. I am deeply distressed by what he wrote about Ms. Logan and strongly denounce his comments. They were cruel and insensitive and completely unacceptable. Mr. Rosen tells me that he misunderstood the severity of the attack on her in Cairo. He has apologized, withdrawn his remarks, and submitted his resignation as a fellow, which I have accepted. However, this in no way compensates for the harm his comments have inflicted. We are all horrified by what happened to Ms. Logan, and our thoughts are with her during this difficult time.
Rosen is a straight-up liberal with politics that are probably considerably to the left of most of our readers, but even that couldn’t save him when he triggered the feminist/white knight alliance we are all so familiar with.
You’d think that if the feminists and social conservatives really cared about Lara Logan’s safety and sexual integrity, they’d be ignoring Nir Rosen and calling for the head of the CBS executive stupid enough to allow her to cover the revolution. Whoever made that choice even went to far as to send her back after she’d already been detained and deported, probably to prevent just such an incident.
But no, one man who made an “insensitive” remark takes the fall, while those who actually bear a considerable part of the responsibility for the incident remain blameless. We can only take this as evidence that they don’t really care about what effect their decisions and policies have in the real world. Whether it means destroying families and handicapping children by forcing fathers out of their lives or putting women in situations where they will be hurt, what comes first is the ideology that undergirds a system that keeps them in power and in the money.
If they keep this up, eventually there will be so many victims that they too may see themselves thrown out just like Egypt’s old guard.
Update: Nir Rosen is now groveling like a whipped dog before his masters. It is embarrassing to see this, but instructive nonetheless:
