{"id":6852,"date":"2012-11-12T15:03:24","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T20:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6852"},"modified":"2012-11-13T09:23:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T14:23:26","slug":"a-fallen-general-scarlet-letter-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/11\/12\/a-fallen-general-scarlet-letter-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"A fallen general, scarlet letter journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I’ve been absolutely creeped out the last seventy-two hours by the ridiculous, 19th-century tone of the reporting about the scandal that brought down former General David Petraeus, who was serving as CIA director until he abruptly resigned last week.<\/p>\n

A mystifying amount of the reporting has been leveled at the question of whether Petraeus’s purported mistress, Paula Broadwell, was a temptress, a seductress, a siren, or an outright harlot.\u00a0 (Those appear to be our options.)<\/p>\n

“The battle over the reputation of Paula Broadwell, who had an affair with General David Petraeus, might as well be taking place on some fifteen-year-old\u2019s Facebook page,” Slate magazine reported, before indulging in much the same gossip through an entire article.<\/p>\n

At the same time, a huge amount of ink is being spilled over the mysterious, mystifying, astonishing fact that a powerful man serving his country in the emotional crucible of wartime, while surrounded by admirers — had a sexual affair.<\/p>\n

I know, right?\u00a0 Shocking.<\/p>\n

Fred Kaplan, a writer at Slate who I usually admire, indulges in this bit of tomfoolery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The key to this initial attraction was probably not sexual but rather biographical. Broadwell had once been a West Point cadet, like Petraeus. She’d had training as a parachutist, as Petraeus had in his youth.*<\/a><\/p>\n

She was obsessed with physical fitness, especially running, as was Petraeus. In short, regardless of gender, Broadwell was exactly the sort of aspiring officer-intellectual that Petraeus was keen to mentor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uh-huh.<\/p>\n

A report in the Washington Post, meanwhile,<\/a> spills a lot of ink over the question of Broadwell’s attire, referencing her “usually tight shirts and pants” and suggesting that she was “seemingly immune to the notion of modesty.”<\/p>\n

The woman in the affair is portrayed as a corrupting influence who “appeared willing to take full advantage” of Petraeus’s trust, while the general simply “let his guard down.”<\/p>\n

So let me get this straight.\u00a0 Petraeus, one of the most powerful men on the planet, invites a woman to accompany him all over the globe — inviting her on his private plane, allowing her unprecedented access.<\/p>\n

He then apparently has consensual (albeit adulterous) sex with said woman.\u00a0 And the best we can do is suggest that he’s a virtuous warrior and she’s a corrupting whore?<\/p>\n

The man who led America’s war-fighting effort in the Near East and chiefed our most important espionage agency was in fact a vulnerable naif, who couldn’t resist the charms of a wily admirer?<\/p>\n

It is, not to put too fine a point on it adolescent, sexist and puerile.<\/p>\n

There are, of course, some legitimate questions to be asked here.\u00a0 Did Petraeus or his mistress(es) violate any laws or betray any national security rules?<\/p>\n

Did he lie to the oversight panels that are charged with making sure that the nation’s top security officials aren’t vulnerable to blackmail and other skulduggery?<\/p>\n

What’s not legitimate is to suggest that this is a tale out of the Old Testament, in which a virtuous and principled man was brought low by a woman of ill-repute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been absolutely creeped out the last seventy-two hours by the ridiculous, 19th-century tone of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[19,4838],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6854,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6852\/revisions\/6854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}