Crock Pot Crosspost: A Lie is a Lie is a Lie

Nice try, Mike Daisey, but nobody's buying it. You got caught in a lie, excuse me, LIES. And what you should be doing is apologizing, PROFUSELY, to everyone who's integrity you put on the line with your stories. What you're doing instead is pretending like this was all part of some great plan to highlight a "bigger truth".

Bull merde! Pardon my French.

Daisey's attempts at talking himself out of this corner are about as skillful as what I'd expect a middle schooler, who learned about the art of persuasion yesterday, to come up with when caught behind the baseball fields smoking.

First of all, Daisey's current message is inconsistent. If "it's not journalism, it's theatre," then why would Daisey have participated in a program like This American Life in the first place? And why would he have needed to talk with fact checkers at all, or hide a translator from TAL? He could have simply said, "the details aren't important because this is fiction; I did research to create an air of reality for this work of fiction, but it's not intended to be taken as the truth." Taking "a few shortcuts," which he sooo generously admits to, would have been irrelevant, because art doesn't require substantiation. The reason Daisey never said anything like that, of course, is that he never thought of this as theatre rather than journalism, until he had no other choice.

Second, if veracity does matter (which Daisey seems to half believe), who the balls does Daisey think he is to decide what constitutes the "bigger truth"?  What does "bigger truth" even mean? If it's something other than just plain truth, then I've got another word for it. Young children are generally able to grasp that, when it comes to details, there is truth, and there is un-truth (also known as lies). Of course Daisey's "bigger truth", his narrative, is not a truth at all. It's a subjective, steeped in his imagination, significantly fabricated fable designed to fit his premise. When scientists alter their data to fit their hypotheses it's called fraud. Daisey's story, with the lies added in, might be more interesting and titillating for the lies, but clearly, it's fraud.

That a lot of what Daisey presented did pan out, doesn't change anything either. The scientist who has 90% of the data he needs to substantiate his hypothesis but fabricates the final 10% is not forgiven the deceipt because "a lot" of what he presented was true. One drop of poison spoils the soup. And if we really value journalism we'll not make comments about how Daisey said a lot of truthful things too. It's so plain to me that this isn't important. Most dishonest people still tell the truth a lot of the time, but there's no credit for that. A cheater doesn't get credit for all the games where he didn't cheat, a kidnapper doesn't get props for all the kids he didn't kidnap, and Daisey doesn't get credit for the truthful things he included as part of a fraudulent show.

Daisey's attempt to persuade the public that he didn't intend to mislead, or worse, that he's just above petty little things like truthful details, is an insult. And one that would be dangerous, if anyone was buying it. Fortunately, no one is. And it's a relief that in a world where the silver-tongued serpents of industry, media, and politics rely on the pervasiveness of gullibility, there's still no one stupid enough to buy this bridge.

Today's Crosspost:

Mark Baumgarten of City Art's Magazine shares some thoughts on having been lied to by Daisey in At Large: On Getting Duped by Mike Daisey.

Today's Crock Pot Recipe:

Liar's Tomato Soup by Annie at Tastebook.

This soup can be served chilled, so you can give your crock pot the week off if you want to. And if serving the soup hot, you can heat this soup in a saucepan or use your slow cooker, just keep the temp and time in your slow cooker loooow. This soup shouldn't come to a boil.


Remember, friends: shortcuts are just fine in cooking, but not in journalism.

Happy reading and bon app!