Lara Logan's inevitable tabloid story

I have in front of me a copy of The Murrow Boys, the excellent book by Stanley Cloud and Lynne Olson that tells the story of the birth of broadcast journalism, at CBS, in the runup to World War II. Once the U.S. got in the war, Mr. Paley sent a raft of CBS talent overseas, where they worked hard and played hard and helped build an industry.

Regarding the play-hard part, the authors write:

For Paley the romantic fatalism and hedonism of wartime London were especially appealing -- he, at least, could eat, drink, and be as merry as he liked, with little chance that tomorrow, or anytime soon, he might have to do. As Harrison Salisbury noted, "Sex hung in the London air like the fog" ... Conventional morality had in many circles been laid to rest for the duration. "The normal barriers ... to having an affair with somebody were thrown to the four winds," recalled Paley, whose marriage at the time was disintegrating.

And when our man in London said good night, he sometimes had good luck:

The fever even affected Ed Murrow. Though he had never seemed much interested in women, he began a passionate affair with Pamela Churchill (later Pamela Harriman), the beautiful, auburn-haired daughter-in-law of the prime minister. ... Murrow was so serious about the affair that for a time he even considered divorcing Janet. ... It was a complicated time.

Complicated, indeed. Except, unlike Murrow's defenders, it seems no one is stepping up to say that "Sex hangs in the air around Baghdad like the ever-present dust" ... and one senses that is because even those who admire Lara Logan are holding her to a different standard than they would someone with Murrow's looks. Too bad she doesn't work for News Corp. -- she might have avoided having her extramarital affairs run through the British laundromat that is the New York Post. Or not. Whether because we've forgotten that what's going on overseas is a real live war, or because of that, um, modeling background, we judge Logan differently than we would if we had learned, say, Richard Engel or Bob Woodruff had been embedding in more than one sense of the word.

If you haven't seen it, or even if you have, here's that video of Logan's appearance on "The Daily Show" a couple of weeks ago, before all this hit the fan. Comedy Central replayed it last week, and with good reason. It's a memorable interview, not just in hindsight, but because Logan speaks with the candor and guts that you'd expect of a person who's taken a direct hit while riding shotgun in a Humvee.

I remember when Logan first splashed — that's the only apt word — onto the news scene a few years ago. You know what people were talking about then. But I have to say, watching this interview, the body parts I find most riveting now are the eyes and the brain. I'm guessing Joe Burkett thought so, too.