(I just want to point out that whoever Photoshopped the above graphic swiped the screengrab I made of Michael for the front page of my site. Kinda nervy, under the circumstances!)
Well, I imagine some of you have been wondering what I might have to say about the rather entertaining gossip of the past week.
The basics of the story were old news to me: a post on a conservative blog on December 3 of last year originally made the allegations, although in a form you would not recognize if you just read the articles this week.
The original tale had Michael Ware walking in on Lara Logan "entertaining" an unnamed State Department employee in the CBS house in Baghdad. There was no proof, of course; just some supposed water-cooler gossip from CBS, written up by a self-described neocon, and conveniently about two reporters that the neocons just love to hate. The story went nowhere.
Fast-forward to June 17, when Lara appeared on The Daily Show. Among other things discussed, she lobbed some very harsh criticism at the American media coverage of the war, including making a joke about having to threaten to shoot her bureau chief with an RPG to get CBS to agree to run her pieces. (Personally, I thought the joke was pretty tasteless, considering the amount of violence directed at the media over there, but whatever.)
Eight days later, The National Enquirer runs a two-page spread about Lara (since when did she become a celeb?) which quotes the divorce lawyer of the wife of the man with whom Lara was supposedly having an affair.
So the first question is, who tipped the lawyer off to the stale blogpost (which didn't even name her client's husband)?
Second: did you follow that trail? A supermarket tabloid quoted a divorce lawyer citing an anonymous blog post about some office gossip… and we're supposed to assume it's true? Hello?
So how come the rest of the media did? The New York Post isn't surprising, it's a tabloid itself. But HuffPo? WaPo? Network television affiliates? When did the pesky matter of checking facts become such a quaint notion? Oh, wait… as long as you can point to a prior "source" it's okay?
Granted, the affair itself has apparently been confirmed (supposedly Joe Burkett -- the State Department guy -- named Lara during the divorce hearing) but Michael's role in all of this was solely based on that blogpost. Could it have happened? Sure. Did it? Who knows? Not me. Not the original blog poster, who claimed to have heard it from CBS staff. Not anyone who based their story on that original one. It's not exactly "fruit of the poisoned tree," but it also doesn't pass the whiff test, either.
And y'all do recall that childhood game of Telephone, do you not? What started as Michael and Lara having a "loud and public fight" in the CBS house somehow morphed into "a very Dynasty-like moment" in which the two men "reportedly duked it out at the Baghdad airport!" Uh… wha--?!? Another writer, in a virtual explosion of hyperbole, breathlessly wrote about a fistfight in a foxhole as bullets whizzed by overhead. Mm-hmm.
The whole thing would just be silly except for the fact that there is a young child involved (the Burketts have a daughter); the entire story spotlights a growing trend of treating random blogs and what used to be called "scandal sheets" as credible equals to established print, electronic, and online media outlets that actually vet their sources (the divorce lawyer even says she intends to introduce the blog post in court!); and the mere possibility that Lara was targeted by her co-workers or employers for being outspoken about the lack of coverage of the Iraq war.
Also, as far as who was or wasn't married or separated … none of my business. (Nor that of anyone other than the parties involved and their spouses.)
But there is the question of whether this would have been such a big deal if the "homewrecker" had been a male reporter. Granted, Lara makes for a gorgeous pin-up, but we've also seen photos of male reporters and anchors in the tabloids. If, say, Matt Lauer was named as the third party in a divorce case, you think it wouldn't make the Enquirer? (You think they wouldn't pull file photos of him shirtless on a beach and run those with the story?)
Still, if you want evidence of sexism in this case, I suspect you would find it… in the high-fives that Michael is no doubt being offered by his male co-workers these days!
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I'm only including this so you don't spend $3.95 to buy the stupid thing. Be sure to read the last paragraph, you don't want to miss the oh-so-sincere concern the divorce lawyer has for Lara's welfare:
I also have three clips of Lara on my site: in December of 2005 she interviewed Michael for a CBS News story about the Iraqi elections; she also interviewed him as part of her 60 Minutes piece on the Battle of Tal'Afar; and she appeared on Reliable Sources last June to discuss the difficulty she had getting a story about Iraqi orphanages aired.
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