Sunday, February 20, 2011

Media's Blinkered M.O. Re Egypt: See No Misogyny, Hear No Misogyny, Report No Misogyny

Caroline Glick shines a light on a glaring double standard:
...This week, a group of female US soldiers filed a class action lawsuit against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld. The plaintiffs allege that both men and the US defense establishment are responsible for the sexual assaults they suffered during their military service. They claim that the men who abused them were a product of US military culture.

The US media has provided blanket coverage of the story, which effectively places the entire US military on trial for rape.

What is interesting about the lawsuit story is that it highlights the alleged perpetrator. Coverage of the lawsuit has been heavy on details about the alleged misogyny of US military culture.

In stark contrast, coverage of Logan’s sexual assault makes almost no mention of the perpetrators.

Certainly the issue of Egypt’s societal misogyny has been ignored.

What makes the distinction between coverage of the two stores so remarkable is that there is there is no comparison between the alleged anti-female bias in the US military and the actual misogyny of Egyptian society.

According to a 1999 report from the World Health Organization, 97 percent of Egyptian women and girls have undergone the barbaric practice of genital mutilation. A 2005 report by the Cairo-based Association for Legal Rights of Women submitted to the UN explained that Egyptian women are constitutionally deprived of their basic rights, including their rights to control their bodies and property. Males who murder their female relatives are often unpunished.

When they are tried and convicted for premeditated murder, their sentences average from two to four years in prison.

So far the only culprit the US media have managed to find for the sexual assault perpetrated against Lara Logan by a mob of Egyptian men has been a radical leftist reporter named Nir Rosen...
Thereby scapegoating Rosen and absolving the "freedom" lovers in Egypt--and keeping the media delusion romance alive.

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