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Nir Rosen joked that the sexual assaults on CBS chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan "would have been funny" if they happened to Anderson Cooper. He piled on other stupid over-reaches trying to be Twitter clever. Rosen came under tweet attack yesterday, and now has resigned as a fellow at New York University's Center on Law and Security and posted that "I know that in a matter of seconds with a thoughtless joke, I brought shame upon myself and my family and added insult to Ms. Logan's injury." Rosen also tweeted:
# i apologize and take it back. joking with friends got out of line when i didnt want to back down. forgot twitter is not exactly private# As someone who's devoted his career to defending victims and supporting justice, I'm very ashamed for my insensitive and offensive comments about 16 hours ago via web
# on the job you get used to making jokes about our own death, other people's deaths, horrors, you forget that you sound like a dick at home about 15 hours ago via web
# to the 500 people new twitter followers and the old ones. I did not mean it and i apologize again. it was an inappropriate unaccetable joke about 9 hours ago via web
# but there is no point following me, i am done tweeting. too ashamed of how i have hurt others and the false impression i gave of who i am about 9 hours ago via web
# I feel I should make one last statement. I offer my deepest apologies to Ms. Logan, her friends and her family. I never meant to hurt anyone about 5 hours ago via web
Correction suggestion: Twitter is not private at all. It is a broadcast to the world at large, same as a blog.
Meanwhile: Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams skewered Rosen in a piece yesterday but singled out for special scorn the LA Weekly's Simone Wilson for "a stunningly offensive blog post" that "managed to mention Logan’s 'shocking good looks and ballsy knack for pushing her way to the heart of the action' before getting to the assault itself." Says Williams: "A hideously twisted bit of commentary on an assault victim, one that repulsively mingles the woman's attractiveness and sexual history with a violent crime, and ends with the brutally off-key observation that 'nobody’s invincible.'" Wilson, it should be noted, also made the leap from "sexual assault" to "rape" apparently on her own.