Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Reactions to Lara Logan's Sexual Assault in Egypt

If the crime is rape, expect the most obscene responses to it, from both left and right. I frankly was horrified by the story, and needed more information. But that wasn't the case for many others. Jeffrey Goldberg offers this:
Nir Rosen, the far-left journalist who joked about the sexual assault on Lara Logan, has company: Debbie Schlussel, the extreme right-wing commentator. Rosen calls for the elimination of Israel, and is a pro-Hamas Hezbollah apologist; Schlussel is a racist anti-Muslim commentator. They come from radically different places on the political spectrum, and yet they share a common inhumanity.
And from Jim Geraghty, Rosen's been fired: "NYU Accepts Rosen’s Resignation." To which Ron Kampeas responds: "What about Debbie Schlussel?"

And despite the fact of Rosen's extreme left views,
Markos Moultisas tweets: "Nothing like rape to really bring out the worst in conservatism."

Anyway, my friend
Dave in Boca left a comment yesterday:
I am/was a State Dept FSO trained as an Arabist and lived in four Arab countries. I’ve visited Egypt several dozen times both as a USG diplomat and afterwards as a Political Risk Analyst for Amoco, the largest foreign corporation in Egypt. What happened to Lara is absolutely inexcusable, but the photo shows her heading into the crowd without a shawl or scarf, the bare minimum a woman must wear in order not to be considered a prostitute when she walks in the streets of Cairo. TV snaps of Christiane Amanpour show her wearing a shawl/scarf when she was in a public street situation. Americans are notoriously [indeed all Brit Empire Anglos seem to be] very disrespectful or ignorant of foreign customs, just as a matter of course. Strange as it may seem to us Americans, Lara may have been perceived by the animals who attacked her as disrespecting Egyptian customs, flaunting a feminist agenda, or even taunting them by wearing inappropriate [to their eyes] apparel in a public situation. That’s the way the minds of these medieval males work.
RELATED: From Howard Kurtz, "Lara Logan's Egypt Nightmare" (via Memeorandum).

And at The Other McCain, "Paging Jill Filopovic."

2 comments:

Steve said...

Wow, it was her fault. WOW. If she only hadn't been so rude as to offend the tolerant Moslems by not covering her head. Imagine not respecting their misogyny. Were the tolerant Moslems also yelling out Jew, Jew as the “democratic loving” Moslems raped her.

Slobyskysa Rotchikokov said...

The only cure for islam is measured in megatons.
Sub-human barbarians cannot evolve into human beings.