I feel sad about the Nir Rosen case. The guy is a fabulous, independent reporter with great politics. Look at this piece from 2003; he was the first reporter to see that Muqtada al-Sadr was the person to watch in Iraq. He’s a leftwinger, and fearlessly outspoken about the “rogue” state that is Israel. Did his politics play a part in the attack on him for his vicious and unseemly tweets? Sure.
It’s good that he apologized and quickly, with ashes in his mouth, but, Why did he write such mean, idiotic stuff about a victim of sexual assault? He says it was the black humor of war zone reporting. Also he says this about his sexual politics:
So I need to state that my views on women’s rights have always been quite radical (in defense of women). Moreover the last eight years of working in the Middle East, parts of Africa and Asia (like Afghanistan) and in Mexico only further outraged me, because I have seen first hand how brutally women are treated there….
A part of me was bothered by how celebrities, especially white ones, get so much attention, and before I realized it was a sexual assault I was sort of anticipating a return to the old theme about unleashed brown natives attacking a white woman. … I also let my personal dislike of Ms. Logan’s support for wars that have been very costly in terms of human life, which I have seen first hand, make it seem like I somehow actually think she deserved to be attacked.
There’s a lot of emotion about celebrities in those comments– at a time when we should be thinking about Lara Logan as another human being. My own observation is that Rosen is a big swaggery guy; and I sense that he’s jealous of Logan and also Anderson Cooper. One of his tweets said “it would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too.” So that’s not about sexism, that’s about hostility.