The Mail on Lara Logan

Here is former model and current CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan moments before a mob set upon her and sexually assaulted her for 20 to 30 minutes in Tahrir Square last Friday, February 11, the day of Mubarak’s fall. As explained in the Mail, which unlike the rest of the mainstream media takes the sexual side of life seriously, this is not the first time that Logan wore revealing clothing in a Muslim country where all women go covered in public. She did the same in Afghanistan as a correspondent for GMTV, a British network:

She found herself at the centre of a row over sexism on the front line after ITV correspondent Julian Manyon wrote in a Spectator article about ‘the considerable physical charms of my travelling companion, the delectable Lara Logan, who exploits her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy’.

Ms Logan angrily hit back at the claim, saying good contacts and a devotion to her job were the reason she enjoyed such good access to Northern Alliance leaders in Afghanistan.

She was also featured in a front-page tabloid report claiming her skimpy tops were upsetting soldiers in the combat zone.

As I read the Mail article, it occurred to me that the Lara Logan event combines everything:

1. The arrogance of Western women who go around in Muslim countries wearing revealing outfits and thinking that nothing can happen to them.

2. The Eloi behavior of Western media of continuing to send reporters, including a good looking female reporter, into Tahrir Square after other reporters had been attacked and hurt by the protesters.

3. CBS’s cover-up of Muslim violent behavior that didn’t fit the liberal script on the wonders of Muslim “democracy”—behavior that occurred after CBS and other media outlets failed to take precautions following previous Muslim attacks on Western reporters.

4. The media’s non-coverage of Muslim violence against Muslim women and women generally—and when they do finally pay attention to a Muslim attack on a woman, it’s a Western media celebrity. Meanwhile the Western media continue to conceal the violence against women, the violence against Christians, which are inherent parts of Islam.

5. Also, as Kathlene M. writes at The Thinking Housewife:

On television, heroines are depicted as tough, ball-busting, kick-boxing, man-beating babes with awesome physical powers. The Lara Logan beating and assault should remind women and girls that they are not physically as strong as men no matter how many weights women lift and kick-boxing classes they attend, and that there are dangers out there that women need to be aware of.

6. I would add to Kathlene’s point that the liberals want it both ways. They present Logan to the world as superwoman, but when she was assaulted they suddenly treated her as a helpless vulnerable female whose tribulations must be hidden from the world.

7. Finally there is the unbearable media hypocrisy of exposing other people, people they don’t like, to withering scrutiny, but instantly and automatically covering up for their own.

Here is the Mail article (VFR comments begin here):

‘Why I had to go back to Egypt’: Ex-GMTV girl Lara Logan on fears for her safety before she suffered mob sex assault

Former GMTV reporter Lara Logan suffered a nightmare sex attack while covering the jubilation in Egypt following President Hosni Mubarak’s resignation, it was revealed last night.

The 39-year-old ex-swimwear model—now chief foreign correspondent for America’s CBS News network—was set upon by a mob of more than 200 people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square.

After being separated from her TV crew, the mother-of-one endured ‘a brutal and sustained sexual assault and beating,’ according to CBS.

Attack: CBS News correspondent Lara Logan pictured shortly before she was assaulted in Tahrir Square while she was reporting on the Egyptian protests. There is no suggestion any of the men pictured were responsible for the attack

Ms Logan delivering a report on immigrants trying to get into England from France

‘Her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.’

She was saved by a group of women and about 20 Egyptian soldiers, the network said in a statement.

Ms Logan is said to have flown home to the US the day after last Friday’s attack.

‘She is currently in the hospital recovering,’ said CBS. The network did not explain the nature of the sexual assault.

The South-African born veteran war correspondent was tipped at one time to be a presenter on GMTV before leaving to work for CBS in 2002.

CBS Correspondent Lara Logan is pictured in Cairo’s Tahrir Square moments before she was assaulted

TV presenter Piers Morgan, who hosts a chat show for CNN, expressed his shock and condolences in a Tweet

She found herself at the centre of a row over sexism on the front line after ITV correspondent Julian Manyon wrote in a Spectator article about ‘the considerable physical charms of my travelling companion, the delectable Lara Logan, who exploits her God-given advantages with a skill that Mata Hari might envy’.

Ms Logan angrily hit back at the claim, saying good contacts and a devotion to her job were the reason she enjoyed such good access to Northern Alliance leaders in Afghanistan.

She was also featured in a front-page tabloid report claiming her skimpy tops were upsetting soldiers in the combat zone.

During her two years with GMTV, she covered floods in Mozambique and land invasions in Zimbabwe as well as the war in Afghanistan.

She has regularly filed reports from Afghanistan and Iraq for CBS over the last decade.

A week before the attack, Ms Logan and her crew were detained by the Egyptian authorities.

She said she was marched at gunpoint back to her hotel in ‘a very frightening experience and one that was repeated throughout the day for us.

‘Everywhere we went we were approached by people,’ she said at the time. ‘We were accused of being more than journalists, very frightening suggestions were being made. Suggestions that really could be very dangerous for us,’ she added.

She and her crew were then deported to New York but were soon planning their return. She then gave an interview with Esquire.com where she spoke of her desire head back to the Middle Eastern country.

The newscaster said it was ‘in her blood’ to be covering the tumultuous events. The interview was published the day before she was attacked in Tahrir Square where this time Egyptian soldiers rescued her.

‘We were not attacked by crazy people in Tahrir Square,’ she told the website. ‘We were detained by the Egyptian army.

‘Arrested, detained, and interrogated. Blindfolded, handcuffed, taken at gunpoint, our driver beaten. It’s the regime that arrested us.

‘We were accused of being Israeli spies. We were accused of being agents. We were accused of everything.’

Enlarge Ms Logan at Bagram air base when she was covering the conflict in Afghanistan for GMTV

Ms Logan at Bagram air base when she was covering the conflict in Afghanistan for GMTV

Yet despite the traumatic experience Ms Logan said she still felt compelled to return to the country.

She reiterated the sentiments on the Charlie Rose show last Monday saying: ‘It’s very hard for me to be away from this story,’ she said. ‘I feel, in one sense, like a failure professionally.

‘I feel like I failed because I didn’t deliver, and I take that responsibility very seriously.’

The mother of a two-year-old son is one of at least 140 correspondents who have been injured or killed since January 30 while covering the unrest in Egypt, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Ms Logan was previously married to professional basketball player Jason Siemon, whom she wed in 1998. The pair separated while she was in Iraq.

In 2007, about two years after her separation, she began a short-lived relationship with CNN correspondent Michael Ware, after she began dating Joseph Burkett.

She met Mr Burkett in Iraq, where he worked as a U.S. defence contractor.

Mr Burkett also has a daughter with his ex-wife Kimberly, to whom he was still legally married when he met Logan , although they had been separated for years.

Ms Logan became tabloid fodder in early 2008 when Kimberly overdosed on tranquilisers after her husband filed for divorce.

She recovered and her lawyer reportedly told a US publication that ‘Kimberly believes Lara stole her husband.’

Ms Logan and Mr Burkett married in autumn 2008 and in December 2008 Logan gave birth to son Joseph Washington Burkett V.

Prior to Mubarak stepping down, the Egyptian military had been rounding up members of the press for their own safety after several were stabbed, punched, kicked, marched back to their hotel by gunpoint or hijacked in their cars.

Pro-Mubarak supporters had blamed the press for encouraging the uprising and publishing pro-democracy views.

CNN’s star reporter Anderson Cooper was pulled out of Egypt ten days ago after he was physically assaulted.

Cooper described how he was ‘roughed up by thugs’ and hit in the back of the head in the pro-Mubarak crowd, calling it ‘pandemonium’ and ‘out of control’.

ABC’s Katie Couric and Christiane Amanpour were also physically attacked.

Miss Couric was said to have been manhandled in the city while Miss Amanpour’s car was surrounded by rioters shouting they hated America, though she escaped unhurt.

A Greek photographer was stabbed in the leg, while the BBC’s Jerome Boehm was also targeted by thugs.

Reuters said one of its television crews were beaten up close to Tahrir Square while filming a piece about shops and banks being forced to shut during the clashes.

[end of article]

- end of initial entry -

Daniel H. writes:

“She was saved by a group of women and about 20 Egyptian soldiers, the network said in a statement….”

I don’t believe that either, the part about the group of women. It fits CBS’ narrative so they offered it up, that’s what I think. Who knows, but in any case CBS has no credibility on matters such as this.

James P. writes:

A couple of other points about Logan:

She got married at age 27, but like many Eloi females was too busy with her career to breed. Thus she now has only one child born relatively late in her life, to her second husband, when she was 37. Most likely this will be her only child. Despite having a two-year-old son, she nevertheless gads off to the most dangerous locations on Earth—Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe—with apparently no thought for her responsibility as a mother to avoid danger. I am certain her son would rather have his mother at home with him than trotting around the globe as a famous reporter.

We still don’t know exactly what a “a brutal and sustained sexual assault” means.

Karl D. writes:

Like most people I had never heard of Lara Logan before, and out of curiosity I did a little search on her. She is a piece of work. Here is an old story from The Washington Post about her tumultuous love life. I think she suffers from something that I have seen in a number of beautiful woman with brains. The need to be “taken seriously.” I dated a woman for a time who was a cross between Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. She was a documentary film maker of the liberal variety who would go into the bowels of Central America to make films of one culture or the other. She felt that as a woman (and a beautiful woman at that) she always had something to prove, thanks to years of being raised on feminist tripe. Some time after we broke up I found out she was sexually assaulted somewhere in South America and within a year she was right back at it. Now she had even more to prove. Deep down I think that she (and others like her) have a martyr complex. They want to die and be remembered as feminist saints.

A reader writes:

All reporters take their chances when they go to hot spots like Egypt, Iraq, Beirut, etc. Women may face a different sort of hazard from the hazards faced by men, but Logan’s outcome was better than beheading by penknife, which is, quite literally, the sort of thing that any reporter may have to reckon with the in the Mideast. It’s a bad place and I wouldn’t want any of my friends and loved ones going there for any reason. And I do not see a compelling reason why celebrity reporters like this women and Anderson Cooper should have to put themselves in harm’s way unless it’s as a form of reputation aggrandizement through risk to life and limb. In which case I’d say they knew the risks.

Otherwise I completely agree with everything you say.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 17, 2011 12:07 PM | Send