And that is what I try to do on the stage. I try to tell the truth. Not with facts, always, but informed by the facts, which are vital and necessary. I try to tell the truth, in a way that expands and ennobles it, I hope. That’s the dream. And I hope that this news cycle dies. I hope that it dies down. And I think, if I can make a compact with the press, which we’re not allowed to do. If they want to keep one person on me, (inaudible) talking about what a shitball I am, forever, if they’ll cover that fucking iPad factory story, if they’ll go back and do the work that needs doing, sitting in front of us, that we know about, that people actually care about (inaudible).Now is the moment. And if people tell themselves that this is over because of this story, because of what I did, they’re forgetting that this would not exist in the way it does, if this story had not gotten out. If it had not gotten out, we would not have hand the emotional landscape that allowed the New York Times piece to land. You know that’s true. That doesn’t excuse me in the least, but that does me that there’s a responsibility for all of us, if you’re a journalist to pursue the story, if you’re not a journalist to read, and discuss, and talk about the issues. It’s so important. It’s so much larger than me, or the show, or anything I have ever done.
Three comments:
-
If what you write or say isn’t “with the facts,” then it’s not “informed by the facts.”
-
The truth doesn’t need to be “expanded” and “ennobled,” least of all by Mike Daisey. It just needs to be told.
3) When I read those New York Times stories about Foxconn, I had no idea who Mike Daisey was. And that’s true of thousands and thousands (millions?) of other people as well. All that reporting did not need Mike Daisey to fabricate an “emotional landscape” in order for it to “land.” Daisey is wildly overestimating his own importance and influence. But he needs to do that in order to execute this little triple-lutz of self-exculpation, self-recrimination, and self-justification.