The ‘Greater Truth’ Defense: Mike Daisey is the latest to pull out that shopworn canard in an effort to justify fabrication.
The Greater Truth.
That’s so often the explanation, the defense, the justification when someone is caught fabricating.
Sure, I played a little fast and loose with the facts. Sure, I made some things up to make the narrative more dramatic. But, hey, what’s the big deal? It was all in the service of The Greater Truth.
It’s one of the most pernicious doctrines out there.
The latest liar to rest upon this slender reed is Mike Daisey, the off-Broadway performer and crusader against the evils of the Chinese manufacturing system and its assembling of Apple products. Daisey got into trouble when he left the safer confines of the theater and took his act to Ira Glass’ acclaimed public radio show, “This American Life.”
Many of the details Daisey offered up unraveled rapidly under the aggressive scrutiny of “Marketplace” China correspondent Rob Schmitz. To his credit, Glass quickly retracted the episode and aired another that showcased how things had gone terribly wrong.
But Daisey has learned nothing from the episode, judging by his blog post Monday, one that is off the charts in both self pity and shamelessness.
“Given the tenor of the condemnation,” he whined, “you would think I had concocted an elaborate, fanciful universe filled with furnaces in which babies are burned to make iPhone components, or that I never went to China, never stood outside the gates of Foxconn, never pretended to be a businessman to get inside of factories, never spoke to any workers.”
“Given the tone,” he goes on to say, “you would think I fabulated an elaborate hoax, filled with astonishing horrors that no one had ever seen before.”
No, many of those horrors are there, as the New York Times, among others, has reported. And, no, Daisey didn’t pull a Jayson Blair and pretend he had gone to China when he hadn’t left his apartment.
But that’s what makes his fabrications all the more galling. They were completely unnecessary. The material was there. He didn’t need to make up the maimed factory worker, purportedly injured while making iPhones, seeing one for the first time. Or pretend that he had interviewed workers poisoned on an iPhone assembly line when he hadn’t.