Lara Logan, Nir Rosen, Debbie Schlussel and the age of exposure

I expected you've heard the hideous news that Lara Logan of CBS News, above, was sexually assaulted in Cairo. And I expect you've heard that Nir Rosen, the left-leaning journalist who is like Logan a war correspondent, distastefully joked about it on Twitter. You're probably less likely to have heard about Debbie Schlussel's comments, more on which later.

Rosen, who has written for Rolling Stone, the New Yorker and various other publications, lost a prestigious fellowship at the New York University Center for Law and Security because of his tweets. He has been issuing apologies left and right, most notably in this interview with Media Bistro, where he went far beyond the usual bromides:

I heard that Ms. Logan was roughed up like many other journalists, I had not realized it was something more serious. I thought I would provoke a friend on Twitter, childishly, and then the exchange grew and suddenly statements that I could not possibly mean were being taken seriously and I was hurting people I didnt even know without any intention. I am not suggesting that making such jokes are ever okay. I have known women, and actually quite a few men, who have been sexually assaulted, and in the last eight years I have often reported on such abuses. When you're in war zones you develop a black humor and make jokes about your death, other people's deaths, other terrible things, writers and photographers do it, as of course do Bosnians, Iraqis, Somalis and others as a coping mechanism. But taken out of context this can be deeply hurtful, especially when made by a man. A man should never joke about women being abused or harassed.

There's a great deal more in that vein. A great deal.

Rosen has some controversial views, but he is a reporter who goes into war zones. Schlussel is a right-wing blogger whose specialty is fulmination, I believe from Michigan, about the subhuman qualities of Arabs. And she does up clever things like this.

She wrote that she was glad Logan was attacked:

So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. Or so we'd hope. But in the case of the media vis-a-vis Islam, that's a hope that's generally unanswered.

This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled.

Now that's all gone. How fitting that Lara Logan was "liberated" by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the "liberation."

Rosen (whom I know very slightly, and ran into in the BBC Washington office not long ago) said some deeply unconscionable things and deserves a healthy stretch in the penalty box. But at least he's remorseful about what he said. Schlussel is plainly an egomaniac and in an update to her original post just laid it on even more thickly:

As I've noted before, it bothers me not a lick when mainstream media reporters who keep telling us Muslims and Islam are peaceful get a taste of just how "peaceful" Muslims and Islam really are. In fact, it kinda warms my heart. Still, it's also a great reminder of just how "civilized" these "people" (or, as I like to call them in Arabic, "Bahai'im" [Animals]) are...

We live in an age in which every instant thought can be sent out into the world. Some people try to learn from it. Others take advantage of it for the purpose of spreading their name. What odds should I lay down that Murdoch properties Fox News or the New York Post, where Schlussel appears, will make her submit to any penalty?