Maggie Shnayerson

Lara Logan, “Drones: America’s New Air Force”

Many, many times, as it turns out! Let’s count, for kicks. From tonight’s ’60 Minutes’ update of Logan’s May 10 story on pilotless drones:

LOGAN (narration): “Colonel Chris Chambliss was one of the top F-16 fighter pilots in the Air Force, a member of the legendary Thunderbirds. Now the unit he commands has no jets—just pilotless planes known as the Reaper and the Predator.”

Did she just say that his unit had no jets? One.

LT. COL CHRIS GOUGH: “I’ve never been more engaged in a conflict in my life.”
LOGAN (narration): “And he’s never been safer. Lt. Col. Gough sits half a world away from the war zone.”

Ouch. Two.

COL. CHRIS CHAMBLISS: “In battle, in combat, in the fog and friction of war, there are always gonna be times that your judgment isn’t with hindsight, you can see things with more clarity.”
LOGAN: “But you’re not there in the fog and friction of war. You’re sitting here in your cockpit in Nevada.”

Anyone else feeling kind of uncomfortable? Three.

CHAMBLISS: “Once you pull the cockpit out of the airplane, then whether you are 50 miles away from the airplane or 5,000 miles away, it really doesn’t matter anymore.”

LOGAN: “Do you think that distance makes it—it’s kind of like a video game and not like real life?”

Seriously, the woman just can’t help herself. Innuendo not intended; Pareene nailed it on the whole Baghdad hanky-panky front.

If Alex Pareene and Doree Shafrir think they can go around taking all the blame for Gawker ignoring the John Edwards story last fall, they’ve got another think coming.

The day the National Enquirer story broke on the Edwards affair (almost two weeks after Mediabistro did a nice pointed little Rielle Roundup), I had this IM conversation with a Beltway reporter:

It went on from there. We dug around a little, but not enough. By the time we started getting anything actually new on the story, Pareene (at the time still mired at swampy Wonkette) was all over it. When you’re working for a stable of niche blogs, the thinking is it doesn’t make sense to have two sites running down the same story when they could be using that time to produce unique content. Seems reasonable, if frustrating and limiting.

Sooooo we let it go, barring the arrival of an email from Rielle Hunter herself delivering photographic evidence of her affair with the senior Senator from North Carolina. Which would have been pretty fucking sweet.

Wait! Could this mean it’s still Pareene’s fault—that speedy little devil—that Gawker didn’t stay on the story? Sigh. No such luck.

So: Why didn’t we or anyone else stalk this juicy, potentially huge story for all it was worth, like the Enquirer? It certainly wasn’t out of party loyalty or our undying John Edwards crush—the guy’s a dick and always has been. Son-of-a-millworker, my foot and ass.

The press is stumbling all over itself to give its readers an explanation (sort of like the one I just gave above!) They run the gamut from diminishing resources and manpower to cutbacks, layoffs, the primaries, the dubious credibility of both Hunter and the Enquirer, and the fact that nobody knows a politician who hasn’t fucked around, so how is that news?

Well, it’s sure as hell news once someone sluttier than you hits it out of the park. The best excuses so far are detailed descriptions of the reporter’s long-standing personal knowledge of Hunter and her flimsy connection to the Edwards campaign. Super job! You tooootally knew! You were on the inside, man! And you did…what? Nothing? Nothing.

The reason we ignored this story is that we are idiots. I even apologize, actually. There. Now (and yes, I am that chick), as Jed Bartlett/Aaron Sorkin used to say: What’s next?

Maybe this is Pareene’s way of cyber-jostling me. “Hey! Maggie, would you sit up and for the love of Mike and your bank account compose something for chrissakes?” Probably not, but if it was, he’d be right. I had the urge the other day to write something about this ridiculous thing and this admirably well-executed damage control session, and then I realized that, you know what? Who the hell am I to judge, at $2 per word and the cover of a 1.6 million-circulation magazine? When The Guardian asked me to write a “first-person account” of being fired from Gawker, was I tempted? Um, yes. I admit it. And then all of a sudden they were discussing sending a photographer to my house to “capture me in all my defenestrated glory,” (I swear, this approximates the phrase used) and I thought to myself, “Wait just a goddamned minute here.“ So really? There but for the grace of God, a hard-up (but also ingenious!) New York Times Magazine editor, and my own bullshit meter go I. Now if I’d known that photog might be toting a check for fifteen grand, that might have been a whole something else. But those Brits are so irritatingly frugal.
Gawker Alum Report: Where Are They Now?