BrianGarst.com

Some have taken to outrageous politicization in response to CBS reporter Lara Logan’s sexual assault in Tahrir Square on Friday. From the right, Debbie Schlussel has found that it “kinda warms her heart” when silly, naive reporters learn “just how ‘peaceful’ Muslims really are.” Journalists, you see, need to be disabused of their fantasies in the worst way.

Even if Schlussel’s characterization of the media is true, Lara Logan is not the media; she is a person. Whatever the sins of the media may be, she is neither singularly responsible for them, nor an appropriate agent for retributive justice. It is in no way “heart warming” for a person to be brutally assaulted.

From the left, we are told by the tweeter feed of enlightened NYU Center for Law and Security Fellow, Nir Rosen, that she had it coming because she didn’t buy the anti-McChrystal kool-aid from Rolling Stone. And because she was a “war monger” who dedicated her career to “promoting America’s wars.” Oh, and because, like, thousands of other women were probably “groped” too, so suck it up, lady!

The thing to remember about Egypt is that it’s real. The people there are not idealistic fantasies abstractly bringing about a political enlightenment. They are a real people – a real mob, even – who hold all manner of beliefs. Some are there to acquire freedom, while also respecting the rights of others to do so as well. Some are just there because they can be, or as a way to play out teenage fantasies of rebellion. They know not what they want, other than that it’s not whatever they have now. But others still are there simply to acquire power, a power they intend to abuse through the brutal imposition of 7th century values – the kind of values that give men no compunction in assaulting women out in public without proper cover or escort.

I don’t know whether Lara Logan understood the situation or not, as Schlussel suggests. I suspect that she did, being an experienced reporter. That she risked an attack such as this to do her job is commendable, and ought not in any way suggest that what happened is less than deplorable. She most certainly was not deserving of the attack, neither for her past coverage of contentious political issues, nor her membership in a profession occasionally prone to naiveté. She is a person, and those who forget it to score political points on the backs of her assault are as ugly as the perpetrators themselves.

Egypt Lara Logan