http://counterpunch.org/cockburn02182011.html
Veteran Scottish-Irish journalist Alex Coburn makes a dubious assertion that Logan’s sexual assault was in part due to her overly westernized dress.
What’s so dubious about it? Makes perfect sense to me.
I like the part that follows:
Was there no seasoned CBS producer present to counsel caution? Maybe not, because bottom line, what got Logan into Tahrir Square that day were the demands of the US entertainment industry which require its “news” stars where possible to be hot women in exciting situations. We’d be better off, and Logan and Anderson Cooper unmolested if all US foreign footage was shot on the back lot at Universal Studios, in the town where these news roles are conceived.
Was there no seasoned CBS producer present to counsel caution? Maybe not, because bottom line, what got Logan into Tahrir Square that day were the demands of the US entertainment industry which require its “news” stars where possible to be hot women in exciting situations. We’d be better off, and Logan and Anderson Cooper unmolested if all US foreign footage was shot on the back lot at Universal Studios, in the town where these news roles are conceived.
Yes, the modern television ‘journalist’ is a shill for the American state and contentless entertainment/propaganda.
Also, if they were allowed to carry firearms the situation might have worked out differently.
I think many people make vulgar arguments, when they think they have a point. It’s the effect of wanting to support a cause, but having your principles out of wack.
It’s like people who hate the US government on some issues, while shilling for foreign regimes.
Or during Vietnam war era when many people were against that war simply because they supported authoritarian communists abroad and wanted it in the US, too. Like Jane Fonda and the Weather Underground and others. And to some extent Noam Chomsky.
Many people were against WW2 because they didn’t think Hitler was very bad and maybe was good for the German economy.
Being against war and sympathizing with people in other countries is one thing, but people seem to be too ready to have all events fit into an ideology. It blinds them. “This person is a warmonger, so obviously she was raped as a punishment. Because I side with the Egyptians, they must have the same mentality as me.” There might also be a cultural relativism in the tone of some of the commentators. But it seems more like a Manichean worldview. Which of course liberals and conservatives subscribe to, while neoconservatives mainly get blamed for it. Here someone from the US gets what is coming to them because of their casual ignorance of their own complicity and their ignorance of world cultures.
Which is actually sort of condescending to Egyptians. That they can’t handle western women and dress. Which is false: tourists dress as they please, within reason.
Do we even know what she was wearing at the time?
If you do a search on google for lara logan the two ‘related searches’ are
‘lara logan jew’
‘lara logan swimsuit’
That is sort of telling.
Posting from the gutter again. Big surprise.