The crazy that is the great uninformed is glomming on Lara Logan who reports for CBS News.
Yesterday, Ava and I wrote "TV: Whose mistake?" (at six in the morning -- though it wasn't posted until forever later, so if there's a 'tonight CBS will air' still in there, that's why). Unlike Digby and the Bob Somerby crowd, we can get CBS News on the phone. We heard what happened, we heard how CBS News was responding. Before 60 Minutes aired. So maybe that's why we understand what was on the TV while the howler monkeys are scratching their asses and still confused?
I have no idea. It was very clear, before we worked the phones, that one source, in a story with multiple sources and multiple witnesses, was being removed from the story.
Greg Mitchell is notorious for hating women. This predates his 'news' era and goes back to the days when he (mis)covered music. He is the man who regularly complied top ten lists of journalists that always excluded women (one time he included the women of McClatchy -- but failed name them).
He is the man who decided recently to attack Jamie Leigh Jones. Jones states she was raped, I believe her. In court against the mighty corporation Haliburton -- not known for handing candy to children -- Jones lost her case. A woman who is disgusting did an attack on Jamie at Mother Jones. The attack was so offensive that the woman is not at Mother Jones. But not that long ago, she published another attack on Jamie at another site.
I believe Jamie Leigh Jones.
Greg only grew interested when he could insist that Jamie was lying.
As Marcia pointed out October 31st:
Not only did he slime Jamie Leigh Jones -- with no proof but that of a
whore who's attacked Jamie for the last years -- he also ignored Abeer
Qasim Hamza.
He bankrupted Editor & Publisher basically, drove off all the
readers, and ended up at The Nation -- where readers are again being
driven away. In 2010, he starts writing for The Nation.
If little really gave a damn about rape, don't you think he would have
covered Abeer.? Covered the court-martials leading up to Steven D.
Green's trial?
He didn't and, as Ava and C.I. have long pointed out, The Nation ignored
Abeer. Alexander Cockburn wrote about her in one column -- and gets
credit for that. Ava and C.I. then began an online and offline campaign
against Katha Pollitt -- the 'feminist' (and racist, as a Black woman I
can say she's hugely racist including assuming that she has the right
to tell the NAACP and Black parents what to focus on -- Katha is
White). Katha finally did a sentence on the rape. That's all she could
manage.
And that's all The Nation's ever managed.
One of the most famous War Crimes of the Iraq War. Abeer was in her
home with her parents and 5-year-old sister when US soldiers broke in,
took the parents and the younger sister into the bedroom and shot them
dead and gang-raped Abeer before shooting her dead.
Greg couldn't write about that.
What a load of s**t he is.
Greg and his pig boys -- and their token woman -- are all out for Lara today.
Digby promotes 'rape hysteria' in her post on Logan while pretending to be kind. Rape hysteria? "I have no idea if any of this was prompted by her horrible attack."
Those hysterical women!
Digby got in on a pass. And she knows how to work it, doesn't she?
The sexism never stops and Digby's the token 'girl' who allowed her crowd to pretend for so long that sexism was a thing of the right wing and didn't exist on the left.
When you're slamming Lara Logan for a report and feel the need to bring in that maybe her rape is responsible?
You're slamming rape victims.
Most women who are raped will never get justice in a court. Proving rape is one of the most difficult things to this day. You have to be willing to have your whole life dragged through the mud, for one thing. For another, unless your rapist shows up filthy at the trial, there will be those -- in the court room, in the jury -- who just don't want to believe it.
Rape is a horrible crime. In society, there's a natural desire to look away and ignore.
Worse, there's a sexist need -- on the part of some men and some women -- to attack those who come forward.
Think of the two women who state they were raped by Julian Assange.
Immediately, the same pack of many of the men going after Lara Logan today were attacking those women.
And that includes a little 'girl' who should have known better but was just a piece of trash who took allegations of rape and downgraded them to "allegations of sexual misconduct." What's that? He put a party hat on his penis, did he? You were going down on him and he farted? Is that 'sexual misconduct'? Rape. The word is rape.
I'm really tired of these pathetic women with their Hitler Strap-on Penises who rush to defend men by tearing down women . Bob Filner? Still love Bob. Very sad over the crimes that took place. I didn't wade in here or elsewhere with attacks on those women. I noted July 29th:
I like Bob. I will always praise his work on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. He deserves praise for that. I have never seen him exhibit the behavior he is currently accused of. I would hope that means it is not true, however, I am aware it may very well be true. As much as I like -- no, as much as I love Bob, it is not my job to run interference for him or to insist that he's innocent. I hope he is. I do not know he is. These are serious charges. Women who are making them have a right to be heard. I am certainly not interested in attacking these women or in smearing them.
Bob not only had to resign as Mayor of San Diego, he has a conviction and he's on probation. He did the harassment the women accused him of. I love Bob to this day but what he did was wrong and criminal. It's not all he did in his life. He did some great work in Congress, he was a Freedom Rider as a young man. Maybe he can atone for his crimes. I hope so. But the hurt he inflicted on a number of women is not minor or something that gets buried or forgotten.
Unlike _______ and her fixation on Julian Assange? I know Bob and have known him for years and years. It breaks my heart, his crimes break my heart. I really wanted him to be innocent. But, unlike _____ Jessie, I don't attack women or men who state they've been victims. I don't pretend to know what happened in rooms I was not in. Bob has a very sweet and caring side. He's a great liberal. But that didn't mean he wasn't guilty of harassment.
Now a big 'lefty' in the press tried to rape me. And he had a book that was praised and he was doing all the right things for the left and he pinned me down and attempted to rape me while I said "no" and then screamed "no". At which point, I stopped screaming and talking and instead inflicted incredible pain on him.
Maybe that's why I'm not so quick to believe that a 'good lefty' wouldn't rape or harass. (A lefty raped a woman in a DC hotel room in 1999 and his pundit career ended over it. It's not a story that was ever told by the media, but it happened and revenge was extracted.)
I have no idea if Julian Assange is guilty of any charges. I have not called him a "rapist."
But I've also not attacked two women who may have been raped.
Michael Moore did.
He did so infamously.
And then he found out that his sexism that had long been present could bury him and that his attack on the women was resulting in people noting realities about Mikey.
Michael's decided to try humor again, "You can tell the media is liberal by the way CBS fired Lara Logan but never did anything to Dan Rather."
Dan Rather was part of a report.
Lara Logan was part of a report.
That's where the similarities end.
Dan and his producer were in hot water not for making a mistake.
Mistakes happen all the time.
Greg Mitchell makes them all the time. Of course, Greg (at Third we busted him for doing this, the only ones who have ever called him on his s**t apparently) makes a mistake and then corrects it without noting he's corrected it.
But mistakes happen all the time.
Do you own it? CBS has. And correct it? CBS has. If you do, that's it, end of story.
Dan Rather's problem did not just go to a 'mistake.' Forget that his entire career was one unowned mistake after another.
Rather and his producer did a report on Bully Boy Bush which was negative and which relied on what may have been questionable documents.
Lara and her producer did a report on Benghazi which Barack Whores took offense to and which had one source who is questionable.
Those aren't the same, they aren't identical.
But more to the point, Logan and her producer were not in contact with John Kerry's campaign.
That's what buried Dan Rather and why he lost support among his peers. John Kerry was running for president and Rather's producer was in contact with the Kerry campaign about the story they would air regarding Bully Boy Bush's war records.
It is not the same damn thing.
Some will say, 'There was no wrong doing!' I've not accused Mary Mapes of a nefarious plot. I think their report stands.
But people -- especially the Michael Moores and Digbys and Bob Somerbys -- don't understand conflict of interest. Mapes created the appearance of a conflict of interest by contacting the campaign of Bully Boy's rival and by scheduling a meet up between her source and the campaign.
Once that got out, the report was always going to be in doubt. That's why you never do that. It was against CBS rules and policies.
If Michael Moore can't understand that it just demonstrates that Pauline Kael nailed his lying ass when she reviewed his 'documentary' Roger & Me.
In fact, considering all the lying and reassembling of 'facts' Moore did in that film, he should probably sit his fat ass down and not saying anything else.
Greg Mitchell is a hack and he collects other hacks for his Circle Jerk.
There's Frank Rich. Ha! He couldn't even get facts right in his theater critiques. There's Michael Signorile who's grasp of facts have never made it beyond Diana Ross. (He wrote great reviews of her albums -- his piece on Swept Away for US magazine, for instance.) But he's a known sexist who spent hours on MSNBC trashing women in the most vile terms.
There's David Corn with, "60 Minutes also notes its report that Barack Obama was the Umbrella Man in Dallas on 11/22/63 was a mistake."
David's got no room for jokes.
He doesn't correct his own mistakes.
When he was braying about a pardon Bill Clinton never issued, he blogged about it three times at Mother Jones.
Only because Mother Jones was under pressure from readers and also threatened with a loss of money was a correction finally issued. One of Corn's three posts on the matter acknowledged that Bill never pardoned the two women -- but Corn then rushed to crack wise about Marc Rich. As if that had anything to do with the lies Corn put into print.
So for Corn to think he can criticize anyone for mistakes? Get real.
Then there's Eric Boehlert.
I'm sorry when you work for the man who lied about Michelle Obama, don't try to lecture others. David Brock spread the lies about the so-called 'Whitey' tape, insisting he knew it was true, he'd seen it, he'd blah blah blah. Anyone working for Media Matters today is the equivalent of a Lyndon La Rouche. I'm sorry, Brock's had five years to take accountability and he never has. That means Media Matters is a joke.
There's Will Bunch? Bunches is a bad, bad liar.
But let's leave laughable Greg and his cast of cut-ups to note the really stupid.
Over at Bob Somerby's Daily Howler, as they 'address' the situation?
You get this from his flock:
Clinton didn't have oral sex with the intern, she had oral sex with him. By her own account, she was the agressor.
I'm sorry, is this some sort of top-bottom gay male thing I'm missing?
(Seriously, I have suggested for years to SNL friends that they needed to do a top or bottom skit -- as a game show.)
She had oral sex with him?
The vile, evil woman!
Are you getting it? Are you getting how this is rooted in many things but journalism isn't what's going on here.
Digby feels the need to offer a speech by Lara and her interps of the speech. I'm glad for the latter because I'm not in the damn mood to stream a speech on what was supposed to be a day of very light posting here.
But so what?
Lara has strong opinions.
So does a certain correspondent on CNN who embarrassed herself by nearly screaming on air during a roundtable (on Syria) about how the reporting they do on this still can't rally the American public!
I was on the phone with an editor for a daily newspaper (NYT) and we both couldn't believe how crazy that played out.
But that's what happens with foreign correspondents.
They take on a missionary zeal.
They pursue stories. They feel that the public doesn't pay attention to reports.
At the end of the day, CBS News included one source that they shouldn't have. They've apologized for it.
I've already suggested to CBS News friends that if these attacks continue, they need to respond.
They failed to do so in the past.
If the attacks continue, they need to start walking people through the sexist attacks that all these 'fine' critics have engaged in over the years.
And maybe it's time for everyone to start demanding that David Brock apologize publicly to the country and to Michelle Obama for lying about the 'Whitey' tape?
Two closing thoughts, the left is as disgusting as the right when it comes to sexism and lying and you're seeing that before your eyes as they try to destroy Logan. Second, assholes should probably shut up about Michael Hastings. You clearly don't know his work. (I am not insulting Michael Hastings -- I've never done so. We defended him here repeatedly. And defended him long before the Stanley M story.)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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