The Poetic Justice Warrior Society Manifesto declares that “If you believe that your success and happiness are the result of your vision, attitude, and determination, not the favors of others, then you are an individualist.” Another way to communicate abstract concepts is to simplify them, to reduce them to their essentials. Who better than Poetic Justice Warrior Lara Logan herself?
I’m always gonna be crazy about dishes in the sink. Crazy! Because it’s a sign of disrespect. It says that you think someone else is going to clean up after you: that you’re not prepared to do it yourself.
In a society dominated by institutions that march to the beat of politically correct speech, egalitarianism, and mediocrity worship, finding an individualist among the ranks of politicians, professors, and journalists is a bit of a challenge.
Yet there was one at the icon of progressive ideology, CBS News, and their flagship news magazine, 60 Minutes. Logan was hired by CBS as an international correspondent in 2002, and quickly developed a reputation for her fearless reporting. Her professionalism was rewarded with a promotion to Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent in 2006, and Lara eventually became a regular contributor on 60 Minutes II.
Political Correctness
Another tenet of Poetic Justice Warriors is “Our lives are spent accumulating knowledge, learning from mistakes, and establishing principles for living that can only be altered through rational consideration, empirical evidence, and solving contradictions.” In November 2013, Logan was forced to take a leave of absence from CBS News after publicly apologizing for a 60 Minutes report that relied, in part, on an unreliable source.
After the segment aired that October, it was learned that a primary source, a member of the US Consulate security force in Benghazi, had lied. In response, Logan maintained her rectitude and owned it,
Today, we made a mistake, and that’s very disappointing for any journalist. That’s very disappointing for me. Nobody likes to admit they made a mistake. But you have to stand up and take responsibility, and you have to say you were wrong.
Of course Ms. Logan’s graciousness – praising the integrity of the journalist profession in her public apology, did not go unpunished. As social justice would have it, CBS News initiated her leave of absence about three weeks later, despite the fact that another CBS property, Simon and Schuster, published a book by the same source with the same lies. The CBS rationale was a Logan speech that was critical of the Obama administration’s response to the attack and murders at the Benghazi consulate.
Egalitarianism
Our Society also believes that “The unifying force for human flourishing is trust, which comes from commonly shared values and beliefs. Reason, individualism, and equal justice under law are the integrated system of values that maximizes trust.” Lara Logan adds,
If you care about injustice, and if you care about freedom, and you care about human rights, then you care about them everywhere.
The same cannot be said for the decivilizing force of New Journalism, which according to Wikipedia “is characterized by a subjective perspective, a literary style emphasizing “truth” over “facts,” and practiced at publications like New York magazine. The very idea of ‘subjective truth’ is a contradiction in terms, yet in logic, there can be no contradictions. It is a useless term meant to crush a legitimate concept – truth.
In postmodern groupthink, all “truth” carries equal merit. Until it doesn’t. There are no principles. As such, it makes sense that New York magazine would defame Logan’s fidelity to rational consideration of empirical evidence, and publish an article in May 2014 titled Benghazi and the Bombshell. It alleged that “Logan’s star power blinded her superiors to her flaws.” The writer also claimed “one way of looking at Lara Logan’s rise at CBS is as an antidote to the network’s perceived bias.”
Mediocrity Worship
So then, the subjective magazine published a subjective article by a subjective reporter about a subjective network who hired an objective reporter. Naturally, 60 Minutes scuttled their plans for returning Logan to the broadcast. As she explained last year,
If there are any independent journalists who are not beating the same drum, then we pay the price. If they can’t take down the substance, they smear you personally. They go after your integrity.
In contrast, the Poetic Justice Society rewards integrity, “We are optimists who are grateful for the personal liberties and leisure we enjoy today, and we know from whence it came.” When her contract with CBS expired in 2018, Logan walked away and explained,
What I can control is the work that I do. To date nobody has tried to make me do anything other than that. Nobody. I want to say this loudly and clearly to anybody who is listening. Nobody owns me. I’m not owned by the left. I’m not owned by the right.
If independence is a virtue to be punished, mediocrity is the vice to be rewarded. Mediocrity is not just average ability, but average intelligence mixed with envy, and it festers in today’s newsrooms, legislatures, and universities. As economist Friedrich Hayek explains about the authoritarian state, “Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts.”
Bias Has Victims
Earlier this year she landed a new gig under the banner of Fox Nation, the paid subscription service of Fox News, including 16 new episodes titled Lara Logan Has No Agenda. She now describes much of the American news media as ‘political activists’ and ‘propagandists,’ particularly over the election of President Trump. In an interview with Joe Concha in The Hill she says about the new show,
It’s classic storytelling. It’s a journalism show, not an opinion show. And that was the purpose of the title, to cut through some of that spin so that people could see it for what it is, and not how it might be cast.
Logan describes the 20 – 30 minute episodes as “Going out there, reporting, having conversations. It’s the back-and-forth that I love so much. I’m naturally and instinctively drawn to that.” Some of them will investigate America’s southern border crisis – Two Sides to Every Story and North of the Border, as well as subjective media activism – Bias Has Victims and The Hidden Faces of Hate.
In the Hidden Face of Hate, Logan interviews Trevor Fitzgibbon, a one-time major consultant for the progressive left’s media war machine, until he crossed the wrong people on the left, and got smeared into lawsuits and bankruptcy. Logan reports, “He learned how the left leverages media, Hollywood, and civil society, including advocacy groups, watchdogs, and charitable foundations.” In Bias Has Victims, Logan airs a disturbing montage of progressive national broadcasters promoting violence, on prime-time air, for the cause of anti-fascism, by their own black-shirt fascists.
As philosopher Ayn Rand explained in her epic novel Atlas Shrugged, “There is no escape from justice, neither in matter nor in spirit. If the guilty do not pay, then the innocent have to pay it.” Joe Concha tells us “Journalism needs Lara Logan.” Our Manifesto declares, “We are producers who sanction the well-being of all, but not our own victimhood.”
Of course Lara Logan says it best, “I’m high maintenance. But I’m worth it.”
