Here's Your Crucial Reminder That Lara Logan Has Breasts
Joe Hagan's new New York profile of 60 Minutes reporter Lara Logan is literally called "Benghazi and the Bombshell." In it, Hagan attempts to determine whether Logan is "too toxic" to return to the show after her faulty Benghazi report, but most of the time, it seems like he's trying to figure out whether she's too hot.
CBS executives have said that Logan will eventually return from her leave of absence, despite the fact that some of her colleagues want her fired. Hagan notes:
A common view among current and former colleagues (keeping in mind that not-for-attribution backbiting and Schadenfreude are a stock-in-trade of TV news) is that Logan’s star power blinded her superiors to her flaws. "She got everything she wanted, always, even when she was wrong, and that’s been going on since the beginning," says a former CBS News producer who worked with her.
Logan's good looks are well-known, and obviously, they don't have any bearing on whether she's still a good reporter. But Hagan helpfully reminds us that she's sexy, anyway. Many, many times.
The Time Lara Logan Did Not Know How Hot She Was
Logan often flouted traditional Islamic dress codes: At an Afghan election rally for Hamid Karzai, Logan wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt in the makeshift press cordon, which was surrounded by mobs of men. Her crew became nervous, afraid she was attracting undue attention from the aggressive and all-male crowd. Logan herself seemed oblivious.
The Times Lara Logan Did Know How Hot She Was
This would be a theme in Logan’s career, how her beauty cut several ways. ... She deployed her beauty to charm and persuade colleagues and sources to great effect—but the effectiveness didn’t prevent co-workers and competitors from calling her a lightweight.
She was also open-eyed about the uses of sex in her profession — it was a tactic, and not to use it would be stupid. “Men play on the military thing, they play on the macho thing, they play on the brotherhood thing,” she told a reporter. “No one accuses them of using gender to their advantage. The fact is that sometimes being a woman can open doors for you, but more often than not it makes things more difficult.”
The Times Other People Called Lara Logan Hot
CBS chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves, from his perch in Los Angeles, viewed her steely eyes, breathless delivery, and exotic accent as the raw material of a future star.
From the start, she had two qualities that seemed to mix profitably, if uneasily: exceptional courage — and, of course, her looks. In London, she’d become a local sensation when the tabloids published swimsuit pictures of her and dubbed her “34D Lara.” In 2002, British newspapers claimed she wore a low-cut top and “flashed her cleavage” at soldiers in Afghanistan. One story was titled “Put Those Bazookas Away, Lara.”
As Ed Bradley, the late 60 Minutes correspondent and a strong advocate of Logan’s, memorably if crudely observed, “She’s got tits and balls.”
Her reputation began to precede her, not only within CBS, where she offended sensibilities by once showing up in a black bustier, but in the military camps where she courted sources. On a list of the top ten reasons to be deployed in Iraq that circulated among soldiers, “Lara Logan in a T-shirt” was ranked high.
General David Petraeus had a picture of her in his office.
When the news of her Baghdad affairs was trumpeted in the New York Post under the headline “Sexty Minutes,” [Jeff] Fager hung a framed copy in his office.
Here Are Some Hot Things About Lara Logan
[Logan] happened to have a telegenic sexual charisma, a highly useful attribute for a woman who wants to succeed in TV journalism.
She got her college degree in South Africa while working part time as a newspaper reporter and also earning money as a swimsuit model.
The last couple pages of Hagan's profile deal exclusively with the Benghazi report, and funnily enough, Hagan stops mentioning Logan's looks. Maybe that's because they have nothing to do with how or why she got misled by a source.
RELATED: Meet Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the New Benghazi Special Committee
Then, amazingly, Hagan ends the profile with this:
So Lara Logan may, or may not, return in the fall season. Either way, the show must go on. Waiting in the wings is a new up-and-comer. Attractive, blonde, fluent in three foreign languages. Everybody is talking about 34-year-old Clarissa Ward. "Jeff’s very high on her," says a 60 Minutes producer.
Godspeed to Ward if Hagan ever decides to write a profile about her.
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/politics/2014/05/heres-your-crucial-reminder-that-lara-logan-has-breasts/361733/
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