this american life, c/d

"This American Life" is .. hit or miss. They can have some really great, riveting stories on there. And then they can have some inane fluff. It all depends how inspired they are I guess. But yeah, that music blows, would it be so hard to VARY IT once in a while? And Sarah Vowell needs to take a long walk off a short pier. But other than those complaints I'm generally a fan of the show.

I don't hate NPR as a whole. I like WNYC's talk guys (Lehrer and Lopate), and I like Terry Gross's guests even if she herself sometimes drives me up a wall (same reaction I have to Charlie Rose, actually). I understand hating NPR, tho -- it seems both symptom and cause of the general self-satisfied ineffectualism of what passes for current American liberalism (of which "This American Life" is a prime example).

I like NPR's "On the Media" and "On Point" and "The Connection." I really miss DC NPR because it has the Kojo Nnamdi show. "Fresh Air".. usually annoying. I find Charlie Rose to be the second most annoying human being on the planet, right after Peggy Noonan.

xpost

I get what Jody is saying, but I think I get that reaction more from Pacifica than NPR. Good sweet Jesus, I LOATHE Pacifica.

everything else I've heard on this amerikan life (not much) -- DUD. Sarah Vowell has to be the most annoying presence on the airwaves. Just the sound of her voice makes me want to head down to the nearest Starbucks with a machete. I'd like to smash her Jonathan Richman albums and force-feed her some consonants.

but let's stay on topic!!

wbai in particular is pretty awful, but it's so earnest that it's sometimes funny.

There have been some good recent TAL shows. I liked the one just last week about the guy who shouted at Bush I. and the one from a few weeks back about the guy who kidnapped Frank Sinatra Jr. and all the ones from Iraq have been generally really good.

On NPR, I like To the Point and Warren Olney, except the other day he was rather short with a (possibly junior) reporter covering Lebanon for the NYT. Their popular music coverage is stuffy.

Ira Glass's voice takes some getting used to. I don't know if his diction is affected or not, but I really hate it when people start imitating the easily recognizable vocal mannerisms of other hosts or DJs, e.g., Jason Bentley on KCRW. I like Gary Calamar's voice on KCRW, although it does get gravelly at times. I also like Jeff Scott's voice on KUCI. Garth Trinidad on KCRW sounds very cool.

not even! it's like they're saying "this is funny" instead of relating a joke that's just funny.

likewise, one of my pet peeves is when hosts/guests/"experts"/whatever feel they have to explain to their audience WHY something is worthwhile. and i'm not just talking about "artist x plays instrument y in style z"; i'm talking about like how in the tmbg movie all the npr people felt the need to point out that it's AWESOME how tmbg are SO HAPPY AND BOUNCY and SO DEPRESSING AT THE SAME TIME!!!! radical, eh? and there's a song about, like, PARTICLES! look ma, brainfood! you know, for kids!

Let's talk about how Terri Gross is the worst interviewer ever to walk the face of this sad planet, shall we?

also i mean, cmon, the music cues are just unbearably bad much of the time, like ear-breakingly bad. have i mentioned this already?

i liked her interview with bobby womack. he seems very pleased to be there, and willing to just sort of shoot the breeze and tell terri the stories she wanted to hear. also he has a nice voice.

And I feel the same way about most everything on NPR. Yeah yeah, All Things Considered, blah blah.

That's not egghead, that's asking him about his job. Asking him about Angie Dickinson insults his intelligence.

WWMWD

What Would Mike Wallace Do?

Here's a question, though: Do the short stories ever work for anyone? I guess I get easily distracted and bored when someone's reading from a script intended for the page. I mean, one of the great things about TAL is Ira's pseudo-spontaneity, his umms and ahs: the first episode I ever heard, driving in the summer of 1998, caught my ear because it sounded like some dude was sitting in the passenger seat, confiding a secret in me. The short stories are sort of the opposite of this. And half the time, I feel like they're used just to fill time at the end of the show, if there aren't enough reporter- or producer-driven pieces to last a full hour.

I guess this is also where I say that I've met a good number of people who've worked on the show, thanks to a good friend of mine (who sometimes posts here) who interned there last year.

Yeah, me too. I was just being, uh, "funny."

I tire very quickly of commercial radio and all the mile a minute, loud as fuck advertising. I fully realize I'm getting old and descending into middle class complacency blah blah but I simple don't want to be bombarded with non-stop used car ads anymore.

er.

His gf works at the Chicago Reader and is really funny.

the crazy goth Romanian man

Wha? Andrei Codrescu?

A little less self-regard. Personally, I'd be satisfied if the NPR newsreaders would tone down their one-upping proper pronunciation. Today in BaghDAD...but when I'm working at home, WNYC is on all day.

If it would make you feel better to watch people fucking it all up, may I recommend Fox News?

BTW, I have some weird kind of tic where I mispronounce all kinds of simple English words. Imagine the Fox readers mangle "foreign" words as a point of honor.

Wait, but that IS the correct pronunciation!

"Jacques sha-ROCK" just made me think of Human After All

Haha, that song would be be so much better if it just went "JACQUES. JACQUES CHIRAC." over and over.

also "gone nelly" = "Nuclurrr"

xpost
the crazy goth Romanian man
Wha? Andrei Codrescu?

Oh, this must be the commentator whose name I didn't know, and who I thought was Russian. I'm a fan.

she Rahk

Wait, but that IS the correct pronunciation!

?

Nuclear. As in, having a nucleus.

awesome. Is he as sexy as his voice?

I am a dumbo. I read that too quickly.

I like "This American Life", though it's nothing I go out of my way for.

destroy: Jason Bentley and most of the other DJs on KCRW. Hey, different shows with different DJs and allegedly different aesthetics playing the exact same music, how interesting.

Just like Jon Spencer!!

Is this fair? I mean, I'm familiar with the stereotype, because it's more or less the same stereotype Sean Hannity and Karl Rove use to dismiss half the country's concerns (you know, the half the country that lives on the Upper West Side). The whole liberal elitist shtick. But is it fair? I know lots of people who listen to NPR, and I don't think I know any who do it out of some sense of self-importance. They listen to it because for all its flaws -- which are abundant -- it's one of the few reliable sources of information and discussion that doesn't treat its audience like complete idiots, isn't overrun with ear-splitting carpet and garage-door commercials every 17 seconds, and doesn't spend 6 hours on celebrity court dramas for every 30 minutes of actual news. I notice, for example, that a good percentage of the immigrant taxi drivers in New York have NPR on in their cabs -- as one guy explained to me, it's one of the few places they can hear news about what's going on outside the United States. Talk about self-regarding and self-satisfied, most commercial American media is insular to the point of suffocation.

My biggest problem with NPR is that it feels a little stale, it proceeds too much from a sort of generic, almost nostalgic Baby Boomer liberalism that I think is symptomatic of American liberals' failure to really come to terms with the needs and issues of the present moment. But I think the intentions are mostly good, and most of what they do is better than most of what else is available. That's a relativist endorsement, obviously, but it's enough for me to give them 10 bucks a month.

Except for Terri Gross. She's just incompetent.

That's just... EXACTLY right.

Just like Jon Spencer!!

-- jaymc (jmcunnin...) (webmail), February 25th, 2005 9:11 PM. (jaymc) (link)

and todd haynes!

todd haynes >>>>>>> ira glass

I moved my Dial from 90.5 to 91.7 (okay, it's digital) and never looked back

Now, in *print* some of the people who are regular hosts come across as extremely NYURGH, maybe they don't interview well. Sarah Vowell made a good enough goth in The Incredibles though (that was her, right?), and I've briefly met Nic Harcourt and he seemed all right.

Gross isn't entirely incompetent and I thank her for introducing me to many performers, writers, film-makers, etc... but she can be obtuse at times and somewhat humorless at others.

Like I said up above, I usually like her guests. Her interviewing is variable. I think both Lehrer and Lopate on WNYC guys (who sometimes have the same guests she does, often before she does) are better interviewers.

http://tai.ejfox.com/001-new-beginnings/

Ah, gigantic impossible blog projects, how I love you.

looks like it'll be interesting to follow if he keeps it up.

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION ALERT

i suspect TAL fans will like the most recent episode of the Hackney Podcast..

http://www.hackneypodcast.co.uk

Ira Glass - The Worst Boyfriend

i know they do different things but as long as we're talking about american public radio made by geeky jewish guys i prefer listening to radiolab -

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/

not sure if this is quite the thread but recently I've been quite enjoying The Story, with Dick Gordon

ok so this week's ep, the blagojevich juror story was really interesting, but the one about hte guy with the failed internet talk show was just terrible... no story, totally clueless and charmless character, nothing interesting about it at all. i hate that strained tone in the reporters' voices as they try to make something totally banal sound interesting

I actually liked that story, because I find it fascinating that there are actually real life people that think "oh, hmm, I've never done anything ever related to show business so I'm the perfect fit to replace Conan!" and go to work creating a talk show in their bedroom.

it would be interesting as a 5-minute segment maybe but it was like half an hour of the same story beat over and over again.

I think the point was more, let's see just how far down the rabbit hole this deluded guy will chase this dream.

ya but like, he went broke and stopped. it never got too loony.

i dunno, something about it rubbed me the wrong way. like they took the wrong angle or something.

http://img.listal.com/image/1193506/500full.jpg ?

haha kinda

or

http://application.denofgeek.com/images/gb/sein/10.jpg

<3

See, I was listening in the car and never heard the conclusion to that story. I was thinking it would be something dramatic where he breaks into NBC studios or develops a smack habit.

the iphone app for this is essential - if i'm gonna be stuck in a fume hood or something for a few hours very nice to have access to a reservoir of tal. it can be hit or miss, tend to find that somewhat topical plus very focused episodes are reliable fun. i love the ones that are basically supersized planet moneys.

I love those ones too!

I think 80% of what bothers me about this show is (1) Ira Glass's voice and (2) always with the post rock! Like maybe when you've just described atrocities at Abu Ghraib I don't want to hear it tailed by the cool sounds of Karate.

Yeah, their coverage of the financial meltdown was really good. They also did a good job with post-9/11 civil liberty stuff.

Like there's just something very flattening about the post-rock, it has such a chilled-out "Hmm" quality that suits maybe a story about an ambiguous relationship with your formerly estranged dad but not really warzone reporting.

They've used NIN banjo instrumental from "Ghosts" so much its practically their theme song

Ira Glass is my hero. Seriously.

I dig the post rock, it is the only place I ever hear it now tbh

Ira Glass has maybe my favorite voice in radio next to Kai Ryssdal

I do love Marketplace. I listen to that on the daily.

Just goes to show, if you read me economy news in a sexy voice, I *will* pay attention...

I'll do my best

Kai does have a cool voice but Ira's makes me want to smash my radio and then pee on it.

:(

Recommend unplugging smashed radio before peeing, so as not to electrocute etc

the iphone app for this is essential - if i'm gonna be stuck in a fume hood or something for a few hours

Completely off-topic, but I am in the midst of a crash course on fume hoods for a lab project I am working on.

I ended up behind Ira Glass on an escalator once but I thought if I said anything to him about TAL it would look like I was deliberately stalking him and had followed him on to the escalator. So I just ignored him.

I emailed him once and he emailed me back! also they did a segment on a really good friend of mine who's since passed away, I listen to it sometimes to hear his voice :/

I don't have a problem with the timbre of his voice, but sometimes he rushes through phrases and I can't make out what he just said.

I noticed on one of the live shows that he has beautiful hands.

sounds like you could use a date

I prefer figs

crushing on disembodied voices on the radio c/d

i say CLASSIC...even if it does make me sound desperate & dateless

It wasn't the voices, it was the hands of Ira Glass.

Anyway, I'm only giving you a hard time.

I remember when I first discovered Fresh Air I thought Terry Gross sounded super hot. Man was I disappointed.

hahah yeah Kai Ryssdal was a bit of a downer for me when I finally GIS'd him

i have a sneaking suspicion they picked ryssdal's voice for its similarity to brancachio's (sp?) and they were hoping no one would notice the switcheroo.

btw can y'all draw what you thought terry gross looked like?

I think you're right about the similarity. David Brown (inbetween Brancachio) was somewhat similar too...I think their job posting is 'Male with sexy/cheery/wry voice'

i thought Ira Glass looked like Larry Flynt + Matt Pinfield for a long time.
http://canvaspaint.org/5540.png

"nasal tribute to Abraham Lincoln" lololol

Terry Gross is obvious, but I've always loved Melissa Block's voice too.

Nina Totenberg 4 life

I have mused about writing Totenberg/SCOTUS fanfic, no lie.

Gott in himmel, the Google results for "Nina Totenberg" are depressing.

Really?

appealing radio voices is a subthread waiting to happen, but, voicewise & contentwise, i really like the episodes with alexa junge.

re: Totezberg, bunch of right-wing sites complaining about something NT said about Jesse Helms (getting AIDS) in 2003.

PS VG, I think you're being too harsh on Kai. He's no Ari Shapiro, that's for sure, but I'd never call him an ugmo.

Hes not ugly, its just that his voice raises the anticipated hottness level ridiculously high

I ended up behind Ira Glass on an escalator once but I thought if I said anything to him about TAL it would look like I was deliberately stalking him and had followed him on to the escalator. So I just ignored him.

Ha, right when I first moved to Chicago, I espied him in the aisle at Whole Foods. I didn't say anything, but I made such a big production of trying to silently point him out to my girlfriend that I'm afraid he probably noticed.

Later, said girlfriend became an intern for the show and I met him for real several times.

Sometimes on my local NPR station they play "As It Happens" from the CBC and I have a crush on Barbara Budd's voice.

xpost did you notice his hands y/n

I don't think so!

:(

Oh, a comedy special. Wait for it... wait for it... wait for it. There he is, Mike Birbiglia. Just wouldn't be This American Life without token comedian Mike Birbiglia.

Mike Birbiglia is pretty funny, fuiud.

I wasn't saying he wasn't funny, just interesting that he is Ira's go-to comedian.

I like Birbiglia -- if it was someone as unfunny as Leno or Carlos Mencia I'd have a problem with the ubiquity.

Sorry to hurt the feelings of your bff guys.

I get the impression that TAL latched onto Birbiglia once he started doing material that was more story-based than joke-based. There aren't a whole lot of comedians in that mold, which makes him a perfect fit for the show.

"Hey there, VegemiteGrrrl...

http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/IraGlass/images/ira-1.jpg

"... hey, eyes up here, missy."

Lol Leee :D

But arent they the greatest hands ever????

I dunno, they sort of look like just hands to me.

Grr. Leee, you're not trying.

You have to see him talking with his hands...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4yLIefVu9o

Around 1.45 the magic starts happening (lol Borders Media)

Who's he married to?

Anaheed Alani, a former Chicago Reader editor.

Birbiglia's doing a 1-hr story show at the Sydney Festival in a few weeks - anyone know if he's just like TAL or The Moth bits except longer, or if the live shows are more lolsome?

Around 1.45 the magic starts happening

:D

Birbiglia's bit this past week was pretty good, but it was second to the Julian McCullough story about his Mom's boyfriend Rick, which I found more familiar and relatable than you can probably imagine.

Promises to be worth a listen:

Five reporters stumbled on what seems like a basic question: What is money? The unsettling answer they found: Money is fiction.

Half way through this on the way to work this morning: great stuff.

It looks like Act One is basically a rehash of a Planet Money episode from a couple of months ago.

Or of this poorly animated video from 2007

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#

It looks like Act One is basically a rehash of a Planet Money episode from a couple of months ago.

The one about the island nation of Yap and its ginormous stone money?

Between Planet$$$ and Marketplace, you all are a bunch of capitalist lapdogs! ^_^

I think TAL rehashes Planet Money stuff not as nepotism, but because they realize that Planet Money loses listeners pretty quickly. Imagine that podcast was a freshman class that you had the option to transfer out of.

Slowly been working through the TAL Showtime episodes on Netflix, I can kind of see why they only did 2 seasons. The "John Smith" episode seems promising, though, halfway through.

Planet Money interviews Michael Lewis.

Blatent thievery from 'website Thisamericanlife.org'

This one's incredible.

thanks for that, enjoyed. are there any other notable recent eps?

There was one recently about a guy who spent a few years of his life trying (and ultimately failing) to become a youtube sensation by creating a talkshow in his bedroom. Good piece about obsession and about the classic American myth of perserverence = success.

thanks!, i will try n find. sometimes this show doesn't fit into my head but i listened to the factory one successfully while i was drawing or something.

There was one recently about a guy who spent a few years of his life trying (and ultimately failing) to become a youtube sensation by creating a talkshow in his bedroom. Good piece about obsession and about the classic American myth of perserverence = success.

― Oh shit, that's my bone! (Hurting 2), Wednesday, January 11, 2012 2:24 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah this one is really great

i figured it was this one in case anyone else is interested
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/play_full.php?play=421

will check out later

it was that one. that guy seemed like a total idiot.

I listened to one this weekend about dog poop DNA testing so building managers could determine who wasn't picking up after their dogs. Definite one to file under "white people problems".

There was one recently about a guy who spent a few years of his life trying (and ultimately failing) to become a youtube sensation by creating a talkshow in his bedroom. Good piece about obsession and about the classic American myth of perserverence = success.

I really don't understand how his wife did not end up leaving him or bludgeoning him to death.

Saw Ira Glass live last night - he played Ableton off an iPad.

well this is crazy

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/460/retraction

http://www.chicagopublicmedia.org/sites/default/files/Retraction%20Press%20Release%20Final.pdf

ha, can't wait to listen to this

right

*buys new ipad*

foxconned

Oh man I was hoping it was going to turn that the Dark Shadows fan convention was completely fabricated.

lol

http://www.daily-download.com/120316.489/why-this-american-life-acted_it-wasnt-the-lies-it-.html

Listening now ... this is kind of fascinating.

is it online yet?

is there a scene rip?

http://mikedaiseyisaliar.tumblr.com/

http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m10j9iuJuj1rs0n9to1_500.jpg

It's up, with a transcript, too.

It's up, with a transcript, too.

Daisey (who's a good performer) reminds me so much of Cheney et al--the ones who were so passionately interested in affecting people's emotions that they realized twisting the truth was a more effectively way to do that than sticking to less vivid facts.

I heard one about a crazy turkey on the loose, supposedly attacking people and full of rage. Tera and I haven't laugh that hard along with a radio program ever. really worth finding if it's in the archives.

I heard most of this today while I was out running errands -- riveting stuff, especially the long uncomfortable silences. Glass really does sound ready in some spots to jump across the desk and throttle Daisey.

yeah part of me felt like it was unfair to make a public spectacle of his humiliation; but then he did agree to appear on the show.

all i wanna know is why isnt it showing up in my itunés yet

itunés

Is this yr fancy Quebecois (pardonnez, Québécois) iTunes?

Yes

it usually doesnt show up on itunes until a couple days after it airs, usually on monday iirc

The interview is great. Daisey is now the central character in This American Life's 'This Is How You Fucked Us: a story in three parts'.
"...We called Daisey's mother and asked her 'What's your earliest memory of your son lying to your face?'"

The audio is up at the show's website for people who don't want to wait for the podcast. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

http://www.edrants.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/mikedaisey.jpg

Glass really does sound ready in some spots to jump across the desk and throttle Daisey.

Fitting, as there have been numerous times I've wanted to jump up and throttle Glass and his smug cohorts.

Smugness! Damn him!

Mike Daisey, March 18:

Here's the audio from the prologue I delivered at this afternoon's performance.

He says he has changed the show a little, and also that it addresses the controversy itself.

for me the issue isn't so much the content of the show as the fact that, behind-the-scenes, he lied to the TAL producers. and his claim that theater has different rules is COMPLETELY disingenuous when you listen to the retraction episode where everyone makes pretty clear that they were like "you need to know this is different than theater, this is journalism."

i also found his repeated excuse that it was ok "this was the best work of my career" to be ridic, if quite revealing.

the original story had some details should have come up as questionable, especially if you've ever been to shenzhen or a chinese factory. his account of... guntoting security thugs, cameras in worker dorms, highways exit ramps that terminate 100 feet in the air, gangs of preteens being crushed in machinery, clouds of hexane....

the actual interview between ira and mike daisey is good and excruciating, he's childish and naive, like he doesn't even get why it's wrong to make up stories about meeting 12 year olds working at factories and crazy self-deluded, saying stuff like he wouldn't give his translator's contact information because he "was worried it would unpack the complexities of, like, how the story gets told," and basically saying that it's worth it to lie to make people feel angry about the things he feels angry about.

I'm astounded that Apple is sitting on a cash pile of $100bn which it made on the back of paying Chinese workers $150 a month for working 16 hour days and the guy caught telling a few porkies on the radio is the one getting it in the neck.

otm

well, yeah, obvs. but this dude deserves to be called out too.

just a few porkies, let's be cool

Foxconn said that salaries for many workers would immediately jump by 16 to 25 percent, to about $400 a month, before overtime.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-workers-by-up-to-25.html

that's 2530 rmb a month, and average salary in shenzhen is 3326 rmb a month.

many migrant workers in shenzhen are from henan, and you can get an idea of average salaries for skilled trades here, but a welder is making about 1200 rmb a month.

but why am i calling out internet poster james mitchell on "telling a few porkies" when the apple is forcing workers to take hexane bong rips

so, if foxconn is fucking people over and hiring underage workers and you've put in the time and effort to go to china, why not find them, instead of hanging around in a hawaiian shirt making up stories and breathing heavy.

the last segment of this american life did make the realities pretty clear -- including our culpability in them (i'm typing this on a macbook right now). so i think they covered that angle rather than just slamming mike dailey or whatever his name is.

yes, why would it matter to ppl who care about this issue that this dude is single-handedly discrediting your cause

also james mitchell you seem more concerned than making weirdly bitter comments about jon gruber than about the actual foxconn situation tbh

this is just the other side of the karmic coin to the KONY guy's public masturbation scandal. like, for every reprehensible organization that gets the righteous humiliation it deserves another gets off the hook

^^ typed that shit on a compaq

i dont think this gets anyone off the hook but if you're not appalled by people on 'your side' making up shit to support their arguments you're screwed.

typing this on samsung galaxy nexus, made in a south korean carbon neutral factory built out of flax linen and adobe by a worker who went and shot hoops in the factory gym at the end of a four hour workday

yeah i don't know that this dude ultimately helped the cause of trying to improve labor practices among apple (etc.) contractors in china.

it's possible that now, whenever accused of bad labor practices, foxconn will just point to this incident and shrug.

though honestly i don't think that's really going to be effective; i think the reality of this stuff is pretty clear to everyone and the narrative of exploitation is strong enough to withstand this guy's lies.

this reminds me a little of the whole rigoberta menchu thing, but with a key difference. menchu claimed that certain things happened to her and her family that did not happen. but they did happen to other people, and although perhaps a bit sensationalized, her account was a broadly accurate depiction of what had happened in guatemala. and one trusts that menchu did know whereof they spoke, in a general sense.

this guy is on shakier ground because it's not clear he had a good sense of the lay of the land before he decided to create this work of half-fiction. and some things he describes could not possibly be true.

xpost

it's ironic that out of all the menial labor factories in china, the conditions at foxconn are probably pretty ahead of the curve

it also bothers me that this will prob be used a stick to beat public radio with, even though the way they handled it is pretty exemplary reflects pretty well on them

like even if foxconn starts magically paying all their workers by US labor standards, that's cool, and the dudes sitting in 120 degree heat in the neighboring nokia factory are still gonna be working 16 hour days and living 24 to a room

it also bothers me that this will prob be used a stick to beat public radio with, even though the way they handled it is pretty exemplary reflects pretty well on them

^ this. but it bothers me more that this will be a quick-n-easy defense for apple apologists / exploiters of substandard labor conditions / NIDL proponents / whatever really. i hope that the actual FACTS uncovered by the ~awareness~ (that word makes me wanna hurl after the whole kony thing btw) brought by the original episode aren't overlooked b/c of this retraction shit.

i think the reality of this stuff is pretty clear to everyone and the narrative of exploitation is strong enough to withstand this guy's lies.

i wish i was this optimistic

it also bothers me that this will prob be used a stick to beat public radio with, even though the way they handled it is pretty exemplary reflects pretty well on them

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Sunday, March 18, 2012 4:08 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm sure the way they handled it has something to do with recognizing how this would be used by the enemies of public radio if they hadn't dealth with it at length and in no uncertain terms.

mostly shocked mr. i-do-theatre-not-journalism actually consented to appear on the show. did he think he was going to exonerate himself?

Narcissist, no such thing as bad attention

mostly shocked mr. i-do-theatre-not-journalism actually consented to appear on the show. did he think he was going to exonerate himself?

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Sunday, March 18, 2012 5:23 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it was crazy how he CAME BACK to be like OH AND ANOTHER THING IM STILL RIGHT

it's ironic that out of all the menial labor factories in china, the conditions at foxconn are probably pretty ahead of the curve

― flagp∞st (dayo), Sunday, March 18, 2012 5:05 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

not among ODMs - they've always been considered the worst of a bad lot, and their china factory has been referred to as 'mordor' by their foreign partners since it opened.

yeah, hope this doesn't trump the labor-conditions cause; whatta dope.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/technology/foxconn-to-raise-salaries-for-workers-by-up-to-25.html

that's 2530 rmb a month, and average salary in shenzhen is 3326 rmb a month.

many migrant workers in shenzhen are from henan, and you can get an idea of average salaries for skilled trades here, but a welder is making about 1200 rmb a month.

but why am i calling out internet poster james mitchell on "telling a few porkies" when the apple is forcing workers to take hexane bong rips

― dylannn, Sunday, March 18, 2012 8:44 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lil disingenuous to ignore that the raised salary is part of the response to the public outcry & worker action this story spurred that took on a life of its own

it was crazy how he CAME BACK to be like OH AND ANOTHER THING IM STILL RIGHT

my experience on ilx/the internet suggests this is a fairly common thing.

It fucks me off so much, why even bother fabricating a story like this when the ACTUAL story is sad and terrible. I mean, the hubris here is just unfuckingbelievable to me.

As pointed out upthread, which I am just restating for good measure :/

Yeah, that's the most frustrating thing about this. The meat of the story, the basic facts, are/were sound and damning. But that wasn't enough for this toad, who felt he needed to embellish and fabricate to make his "story" better.

FUCKING ARTSY FARTSY KNOBS RUINING EVERYTHING RAGH

not among ODMs - they've always been considered the worst of a bad lot, and their china factory has been referred to as 'mordor' by their foreign partners since it opened.

― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, March 18, 2012 7:22 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol, cite your sources

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=foxconn+mordor

all that tells me is that apple internally refers to foxconn as 'mordor' - doesn't tell me anything about how foxconn stands in relation to other chinese and taiwanese ODMs

get this: they're all shit

even better than googling links: reading them.

http://www.salon.com/2007/09/14/sent_to_mordor/

which basically points out the only source for the mordor thing is a gossip item in popbitch which kottke sent viral. so, uh.

get this: they're all shit

― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, March 18, 2012 8:45 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

cite yr sources

You mean to say that Hungry4Ass may not be making the most well-considered arguments? Well, shit.

dayo, im not sure if you think you're putting the screws to me or something? or that you think my position of 'sweatshops are horrible' is based on hearsay? i honestly don't know where you're coming from, but i'm losing respect for you by the second! here: http://chinalaborwatch.org/pdf/20110712.pdf

You mean to say that Hungry4Ass may not be making the most well-considered arguments? Well, shit.

― s.clover, Sunday, March 18, 2012 9:03 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

stfu retard

oh ilx, you loveable scamps

*ruffles hair*

H4A, I agree with you on all that, but you called me out for saying that foxconn has comparatively better conditions for its factory workers than most other factories in the same line of business, which you haven't proven - in fact the report you link to shows that foxconn scored relatively better than all the other ODMs listed

I'm really heartened by the turn of heart you've shown for the chinese people since the time when you started this thread chinese ppl are the most disgusting savages in all the world imo

did you really perceive it as me trying to 'call you out'

:)

^^ typed that shit on a compaq

― flopson, Sunday, March 18, 2012 4:52 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

compaq computers are made in conditions as bad as or worse than macs ; )

i posted that link in response to you asking for evidence re: all of them being shit!

i did fuck up by saying foxconn was the worst, because shaping the narrative around foxconn being this one bad apple that needs to clean up its act takes the focus off the bigger picture of global exploitation, and it also sort of implies that if there's 'bad' exploiters there can be 'good' ones too - it lets the system off the hook

My computer is made out of elephant tusk and baby tears

stfu retard

― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Monday, March 19, 2012 1:15 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

flagged this worthless post & hope others will too. it bums me out that people who use "retard" as an insult are allowed to post here. I hope earnestly that anybody who does so gets banned as quickly as possible; people who use "retard" as an insult are a detriment to any conversation, whatever else they might bring to that conversation

I like how daisey went full douche with that anecdote about the crippled old man scrolling the iPad and saying it's magic. Why hold back, you know

clover was baiting me and i got angry, but its fair to call me out for that. i'm sorry. ive been trying to nix it from my vocab and im not always successful. i suspect you're bringing some other baggage to the table in calling for my banning, but whatever.

i did fuck up by saying foxconn was the worst, because shaping the narrative around foxconn being this one bad apple that needs to clean up its act takes the focus off the bigger picture of global exploitation, and it also sort of implies that if there's 'bad' exploiters there can be 'good' ones too - it lets the system off the hook

― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Sunday, March 18, 2012 9:51 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, this is why I was pointing it out - pretty much every electronic product whether it be a PC, flip phone RAZR, etc. that people on this board have used or been using for the past 20 years has been made in conditions as bad as or worse than foxconn is atm - focusing the attention on apple exclusively kind of misses the larger point

i loved at the end of this episode where the nyt guy is explaining what we Actually Know and ira glass (anxiously stroking his ipad -- it's a kind of magic!) says, well, sounds like these people want to work hard, right? i don't really feel bad! should i feel bad? and dude was like "it's not my job to tell you whether you should feel bad. i'm a reporter for the new york times."

i also never lost respect for you dayo i was just lashing out.. im sorry man... i shouldnt have gone there... hugs

i loved at the end of this episode where the nyt guy is explaining what we Actually Know and ira glass (anxiously stroking his ipad -- it's a kind of magic!) says, well, sounds like these people want to work hard, right? i don't really feel bad! should i feel bad? and dude was like "it's not my job to tell you whether you should feel bad. i'm a reporter for the new york times."

― the "intenterface" (difficult listening hour), Sunday, March 18, 2012 9:59 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah ira glass earnestly asking 'if we should feel bad' just, like, sums up so many things for me

people frequently tell me that i look like ira glass, should i feel bad?

nope

but I like him, so

clover was baiting me and i got angry, but its fair to call me out for that. i'm sorry. ive been trying to nix it from my vocab and im not always successful. i suspect you're bringing some other baggage to the table in calling for my banning, but whatever.

it's cool & I appreciate the apology - I would post the exact same post on any thread I was reading where somebody posted "stfu retard" fyi, any baggage I have here is that you have often posted similar things & it always sucks, even/especially when you're making good, nuanced arguments as elsewhere in the thread. I don't imagine you'll be able to find a thread where I give somebody a pass on "retard" because I think he's cool or whatever.

yeah, fair enough. it's shitty and i admit i often give myself a pass 'because i was angry' and that's not cool - i need to make a real effort to clamp down, not a for-show one.

yeah ira glass earnestly asking 'if we should feel bad' just, like, sums up so many things for me

― these pretzels are makeing me horney (Hungry4Ass), Monday, March 19, 2012 2:00 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes

"clearly these people on some level want to allow me to live my insane lifestyle so like....it's ok if we can sleep at night, right? for WBEZ, this is ira glass"

i have to give the guy props for being honest about his mixed feelings, also he is clearly working pretty hard to figure this show out and present it to thousands of americans who would have never given it a second thought, so what im saying is, give ira a break bros

i lost a lot of respect for the show with all that hedging at the end. i've heard those "welp it's better than being a peasant farmer" type arguments but... argh! there is so much more to the story than this! why does it have to be the lesser of two megaexploitations, why can't one of the options be... idk... not deplorable? why couldn't they end on a different yet still critical note? what about the gender dimensions of all this shit?

sorry for ranting but this whole thing is infuriating. being pissed at daisey and focusing on the particulars of his story provides a bit of insight but ultimately gets everyone nowhere imo

lil disingenuous to ignore that the raised salary is part of the response to the public outcry & worker action this story spurred that took on a life of its own

^ absolutely. hoos and h4a otm itt (except for the 'retard' stuff of course)

i think the point at the end was that there are lots of people working to improve this kind of stuff but

they don't have one man shows

that make shit up

except about wearing hawaiian shirts

but the one dude making shit up in the hawaiian shirt sparked a chain of events that led to higher wages for foxconn workers

i guess i never take 'journalism', even npr journalism, at face level, ever. this doesn't excuse daisey's actions, but why didn't glass use this as an opportunity to hear from a more robust variety of perspectives and not just that marketplace correspondent guy?

there are a lot of tragic things about daisey's embellishments but honestly glass' reputation taking a ding is by far the least interesting or important. it would've been much more legitimate to use this debacle as an excuse to have a more informed dialogue about... idk, the difference btwn storytelling and objective truth? the truths of global labor exploitation that reach beyond what happens or does not happen in the foxconn plant? perhaps that wouldn't be as riveting as listening to ira chew this dude out but still

all of that might be true but i think it's easy to think of all the things the show could've been when it's not your reputation and/or the reputation of your massively successful show that's on the line

if i was in ira's position i would've done more or less the exact same thing, more "valuable" discussion be damned

i see yr point. but if he is truly worried about his reputation wouldn't he want to cover his ass as much as possible? and, yknow, still be transparent

sure... it's def a lesson learned for them, but this kinda shit just happens. i think it's a fool me once etc situation.

being reasoned >>> being reactionary as a form of saving one's rep. imo

it was cool to catch a glimpse of ira as an angry egotistical bossman tho. i love how he just couldn't find it in him to include a witty quote at the end lol

i heard foxconn workers pasted over the cameras watching them as they sleep with pictures of mike daisey.

thank you based god

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a7599b30-15c7-11e1-a691-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1pXxVhVYy
https://chinastrikes.crowdmap.com/index.php/main

relax, workers of china. i heard mike daisey's got a one man show coming that's going to change everything.

but the one dude making shit up in the hawaiian shirt sparked a chain of events that led to higher wages for foxconn workers

you know what that chain of events would be, right?

...a decade of labour unrest and demands for better working conditions in china that involved millions of thousands of workers across the country
...as well as increasing average wages for factory workers in the pearl river delta
...and the attention of chinese citizens and the media (mainland, taiwan, hk) to chinese labour conditions
...and recent legislation (wen jiabao's one man show about the 2008 labour contract law of the people's republic of china woefully underlooked) and attitudes about enforcing it (see above elliptical point thing)

i can't even find any mention of mike daisey's involvement in the china labour bulletin, their work to monitor labour unrest, or even their probono litigation work on behalf of workers in china as they fight for their legal rights. he doesn't seem to be mentioned by any other activist groups in china, either. and he doesn't come up much in coverage of labour unrest over the last couple years.

lol, despite all appearances i'm no daisey stan. and i honestly didn't mean to imply that he was solely responsible either, so srsly - apologies for that. my main pt was that the hedging at the end of the show was doing a disservice to the fact that, despite serious advancements, there is still serious exploitation taking place deserving of further activism etc etc

i think you're def right about the swell of interest having nothing to do with the wage hikes but it's hard not to think there's some pressure coming from the apple-owned end of this shit. fuck me if i can prove that tho. i have no illusions of daisey being actually involved in any serious way in the chinese labor struggle

why didn't glass use this as an opportunity to hear from a more robust variety of perspectives and not just that marketplace correspondent guy?

because the whole point was "here is a guy whose every statement has been resolutely fact-checked by a number of news organisations"

rather than "here are a bunch of other people who will all need fact-checking by us"

also, idk, Ira Glass sounded less angry-bossman and more disappointed-dad to me? made it v painful to hear.

plus, the ending stuff? maybe it's just that I'd been reading too much of the "exploitative working conditions are how countries get economically strong, stop holding China back with your liberal paternalism" line, but Duhigg's 'here is how you should feel bad' is actually a pretty strong argument:

"rather than exporting that standard of life [where harsh working conditions are considered unacceptable and made unlawful], which is within our capacity to do, we have exported harsh working conditions to another nation"
(that's from the transcript but my emphasis obv)

i lost a lot of respect for the show with all that hedging at the end. i've heard those "welp it's better than being a peasant farmer" type arguments but... argh! there is so much more to the story than this! why does it have to be the lesser of two megaexploitations, why can't one of the options be... idk... not deplorable? why couldn't they end on a different yet still critical note? what about the gender dimensions of all this shit?

idk do you have a better way to pull half a billion people out of rural poverty?

why can't one of the options be... idk... not deplorable?

don't ask this question on the politics thread fwiw

there are a lot of tragic things about daisey's embellishments but honestly glass' reputation taking a ding is by far the least interesting or important. it would've been much more legitimate to use this debacle as an excuse to have a more informed dialogue about... idk, the difference btwn storytelling and objective truth?

this would literally have been the WORST thing TAL could have done in this situation ffs

"we aired a story full of lies last week, so we're devoting this hour to discussing... what exactly is 'truth,' anyway?"

What intrigues me about this whole story is that someone can apparently make a living as a monologist.

you can if your story is on the most-downloaded-TAL-ever and you get billions of invitations from theaters & speaking groups to give it

Yeah but he's been doing this for years, apparently!

p sure this is the second-oldest profession in the world

i have monologed a couple time, i should get into this racket. maybe there's room for a NEW apple monologist now that the big dog has been kicked out

or maybe i should focus on a new market, like dell

they make their products in china too. 'the agony and the ecstasy of michael dell'

idk do you have a better way to pull half a billion people out of rural poverty?

― young drometheus (dayo), Monday, 19 March 2012 11:52 (2 hours ago) Permalink

Dayo, since you make this argument a lot and since you seem pretty knowledgable on this subject, I'm wondering -- do you think that workers in the United States and Europe would have been "pulled out of rural poverty" after the industrial revolution had there never been unionization and labor struggles? I'm not being rhetorical -- do you think the improvement in workers' lives came primarily from economic growth or from agitation for better conditions, or is that a false dichotomy, or what?

hueg difference between unionization + labor struggles and "apple should be making things in america. usa #1!!1!!"

well it's not the same issue, working conditions for chinese workers would not be better if they did not have those jobs

the industrial revolution coincided with enclosure wherein a lot of agricultural labourers and tenant farmers were being forced out of work also

and one of those 'tenant farmers' grew up to be steve jobs, so

god, that makes you think.

the industrial revolution coincided with enclosure wherein a lot of agricultural labourers and tenant farmers were being forced out of work also

― red is hungry green is jawless (Noodle Vague), Monday, March 19, 2012 10:06 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No problems like that in China.

http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=1109&catid=9&subcatid=63

hurting, I think the population dynamics between what happend in the US/Europe in the early 1900s and the population dynamics in China atm are vastly different. foxconn employs, what, 100,000 workers? there are at least 500 million people in China who are classified as rural residents which means, more or less, they are of the rural poor. I feel that people focused on this issue have blinders on - people in the US agitate for better conditions for Foxconn workers, or more specifically, the Foxconn workers who make Apple products (ignoring all the other Foxconn workers who make XBoxes, Playstations, Sony products, etc.)

I'm all for unionization and labor struggles and all that - but the path towards that in the US was accomplished through reform that came from the government...social attitudes were shifting, the Depression hit...

I have very little faith that the Chinese government would be willing to commit to this kind of reform at the moment. and socially, most people in China still view factory conditions as acceptable - the notion of 'fair labor practice' in China is very different from what Americans conceive of. I mean I just don't think you're gonna get the broad social support for factory working conditions reform that you had in the_west at the turn of the century. not in 2012, anyway.

http://gawker.com/5894216/

"The talk turned eventually to the press, which Daisey has relentlessly criticized for not being able to turn up the kinds of stories about Foxconn that he'd made up." zing!

and the point I was trying to make earlier is that, comparatively, working conditions at Foxconn are pretty good relatively speaking. reform will have to start with migrant workers and workers in domestic factories and other industries like coal-mining and fabric manufacturing &c. you don't start at the top.

'reform' is also a more attractive concept when the economy doesn't seem to be growing at a breakneck pace anymore

yeah - the depression was a big part of the supreme court moving away from laissez-faire economics etc. and permitting labor-reform laws to stay on the books

it's interesting how the whole 'sweatshop' issue sorta left the popular dialogue for what, 15 years? and really it's *only* an issue for iphones and not, idk, the clock on my wall because of the extremely personal attachment people have w/ apple products. in an alternate universe where apple didn't exist and a few other companies took its place, I don't think there'd be much discussion of sweatshops in 2012.

prediction: apple starts a green/fair trade factory and you can buy a green-colored iphone for like $600 that goes well w/ your prius and whole foods grocery bag.

powered by smug

IDK I think it might actually be that Apple makes a good example company, especially considering a lot of its target market is liberal and somewhat amenable to caring about this sort of thing, and also that it is particularly ripe for skewering because of the seemingly unshakable and wholly irrational idea people have that it's somehow a nobler, more ethical company than other consumer electronics makers.

i think its because if this were about dell, no one would admit to owning one

it's not *completely* irrational that people think that apple is nobler or more ethical

a. played the underdog for decades
b. good design can be a 'virtue'
c. company's associated w/ a *visionary* and *ideas* instead of money or profits, unless you pay attention to its stock price. "money? what money?" (sits on biggest pile of money in the world)

this is a pretty good read: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-sad-and-infuriating-mike-daisey-case/254661/

lots of luxury goods have good design. you pay more, you get better design.

not rly in the case of phones

have you seen those gross jewel-encrusted razor-like phones for rich oligarchs?

IDK I think it might actually be that Apple makes a good example company, especially considering a lot of its target market is liberal and somewhat amenable to caring about this sort of thing, and also that it is particularly ripe for skewering because of the seemingly unshakable and wholly irrational idea people have that it's somehow a nobler, more ethical company than other consumer electronics makers.

― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Monday, March 19, 2012 10:28 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

good example for whom? good example for domestic chinese companies? good example for other international companies who wield the same kind of general goodwill that Apple has?

like the chinese side of the argument is - if you want to stan for labor reform in China, you don't start with foxconn - you start with those companies further down the chain that are treating their workers much shittier than Apple is

"The talk turned eventually to the press, which Daisey has relentlessly criticized for not being able to turn up the kinds of stories about Foxconn that he'd made up." zing!

― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki)

lol this is hi-quality zing imo

wouldn't he want to cover his ass as much as possible? and, yknow, still be transparent

if i had a transparent ass i'd keep it covered as much as possible imo

like the chinese side of the argument is - if you want to stan for labor reform in China, you don't start with foxconn - you start with those companies further down the chain that are treating their workers much shittier than Apple is

― dayo, Monday, March 19, 2012 10:51 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this argument spelled out in more detail anywhere in print that you could point me to? I'm not sure why labor reform would have to "start" only with certain kinds of factories and not be across the board, or why any minimum standards fought for would necessarily have to be below or at Foxconn's level.

Apple is a high profile target that attracts attention. No reason you can't use that to say "and by the way, now that you bothered to notice, shit is even more fucked up in other Chinese factories."

hah if you want I could start going into chinese forums where people shrug when others point to the supposed inhumane conditions in chinese factories

what "people" -- chinese factory workers?

what does outrage chinese netizens - migrant workers who are denied pay, who live in squalid conditions, who can't travel home for the spring festival

don't assume that all chinese people, or even the chinese people who are working in the factories, share the same values as people who happened to have been born into and socialized into america and american cultural values

chinese factory workers, for a whole host of political reasons, are not gonna feel empowered to all of a sudden take a stand for their own rights

In case not already linked:

http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/03/reports-of-my-death-have-been-greatly.html

To my audiences: It’s you that I owe the most to. I want you all to know that I will not go silent—I will be making a full accounting of this work, shining a light through this monologue and telling the story of its origins, construction, and details.

TS Eliot's "Notes on 'The Waste Land'" this won't be.

I thought the dead air was a nice touch, and finishing the episode with audio pulled out of context from my performance was masterful.

God how dare Ira use quotes OUT OF CONTEXT. He should just have made them up wholesale instead.

guys i just GISed james frey for lols and WTF HE IS LOUIS C.K.

good example for whom? good example for domestic chinese companies? good example for other international companies who wield the same kind of general goodwill that Apple has?

...like the chinese side of the argument is - if you want to stan for labor reform in China, you don't start with foxconn - you start with those companies further down the chain that are treating their workers much shittier than Apple is

― dayo, Monday, March 19, 2012 7:51 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i honestly think that it's in america's own best interest for american consumers to actively demand that products made for the american market be manufactured in accordance with american expectations and standards regarding worker rights, environmental protection, workplace safety, pay & job security, etc. when we allow goods manufactured to lower standards to be sold in america, we effectively price well-paid and well-protected american workers out of the resulting market. if we only accepted imports of goods manufactured according to something like our own internal standards, this would not only significantly improve the lot of workers who provided us with goods, it would keep our own workforce competitive in the markets in which we participate.

sure contenderizer, but america has been consuming products made in poor conditions for the past 20 years, and afaict they only care when the manufacture is connected with a cool brand like apple - all of this controversy so far has only centered around apple and it'll stop with apple. that's my big beef.

like, where are the shockinge exposes that DELL and COMPAQ and HP have been using the same manufacturers. like, after nike and adidas were called out in the 90s, they raised their labor standards, but hundreds of other shoe manufacturers and clothing manufacturers in general continue to use garment factories w/ sweatshop like conditions, whether they are in china, vietnam, the Philippines, south america..

...america has been consuming products made in poor conditions for the past 20 years, and afaict they only care when the manufacture is connected with a cool brand like apple - all of this controversy so far has only centered around apple and it'll stop with apple.

perhaps. hard to say from here. i mostly just wanted to wave my placard for a moment. fwiw, there have been rumblings from both the right and the left lately about the negative consequences of the fact that, over the last few decades, we've outsourced so much of our manufacturing to countries with much lower labor costs/standards. i agree that this is a real problem, and to the extent that the case can be made in a manner that isn't ugly, jingoistic rabble-rousing, i'm on board. ideally, it's apple today, the rest tomorrow.

i mean, of course the distribution of outrage isn't perfect. nothing is perfect. the fact that an argument or position isn't perfect doesn't mean that it's invalid. small steps, right?

of course it's not invalid - everybody here agrees 100% with what you said - but it's easy to construct paper utopias

*waves placard*

it's easy to construct paper utopias

yeah, but it's damn hard to get people to make the sacrifices required to move those paper utopias into the real world. that's why i generally support progressive efforts to reform the way product (like ipods or nikes or whatever) are made. these sorts of campaigns do or at least can help. they aren't a panacea, but nor are they totally without value.

they can also have negative value by obscuring the larger issues and concerns that animate it - which is the concern here, that by focusing the pressure point on apple, all the other exploitation happening in china is flying well below the radar - nokia and HTC, for example, are ecstatic that only apple is getting fallout for this

yeah, but that's a destructive argument. if 1) there were a long-running popular effort in america focused on improving working conditions for overseas suppliers, and if 2) this movement were suddenly being marginalized by a rush to focus exclusively on apple, then i'd agree with you. but there is no popular reform effort of that sort. the attention being focused on apple, is, for the moment, all we've got. and it's worth supporting for that reason alone. better, in this case, to do something that to do nothing simply because the "something" in question isn't everything.

and i really doubt that anyone doing electronics manufacturing in china is "ecstatic" about this. rather, i imagine that they're worried. they'd rather that the issue were not raised at all. what happens to apple today may well happen to nokia tomorrow, after all.

I mean, if this anti-apple criticism broadens into an anti-overseas exploitation movement in general, then I'll be ecstatic - good luck, though

I was really thrilled how the american public's concern over #KONY broadened to include all the issues facing africa atm

yeah I was gonna say ctzers argument is about 3 word replacements away from being a kony video

the nike backlash actually did lead to wider concern about sweatshop labor!

yeah but by getting 'resolved' it made americans forget about all the other sweatshop labor that's been supplying america for the 20 years since the nike incident

I was really thrilled how the american public's concern over #KONY broadened to include all the issues facing africa atm

that's not how things work, though. the perfect cure, the perfect awareness never comes along, and if you insist on waiting for it, you'll wait forever. in the here and now, things happen as a result of the interaction of a thousand, small, imperfect ideas & powers jostling for space. and "the here and now" is what expands forward to make the future. if apple is forced to provide better conditions for its workers and absolutely nothing else is done, even this will accomplish some small net good as i see it. a few chinese workers will take home more pay, will be happier and more secure. but seriously i doubt that this will be the world's final reform effort focused on the way products are manufactured for first world markets. one thing leads to another...

yeah but by getting 'resolved' it made americans forget about all the other sweatshop labor that's been supplying america for the 20 years since the nike incident

i don't think that this is the case at all. it brought the issue to national attention. it did a small bit of good. that it didn't fix the world is not the fault of the reform effort. that other people didn't pick up the ball and run with it isn't the fault of the reform effort. yes, sometimes when you raise an issue and deal with it, it convinces people that the problem is "over", allowing them to go back to sleep. but most people would rather sleep anyway. and if we rejected every reform attempt that wasn't comprehensive and perfectly constructed, we'd never engage with anything.

contenderizet, stop strawmanning me - nobody is rejecting the reform movement - but there are good and bad ways to go about doing it

save the foxconn, save the world

they can also have negative value by obscuring the larger issues and concerns that animate it - which is the concern here, that by focusing the pressure point on apple, all the other exploitation happening in china is flying well below the radar - nokia and HTC, for example, are ecstatic that only apple is getting fallout for this

maybe. but I mean...let's be honest: people are apathetic. getting people to give a shit about the bigger picture? good luck. getting people to care about some human interest story that might impact a small piece of the bigger picture, and doing that one company at a time? clearer way forward to actually changing the big picture, maybe.

like, not to rile A HOOS up, but the problem with Occupy is it wants to change The Power Structure. Most people are never going to give a shit about The Power Structure and the ones who do will forever be on the margins imo. But you can get people to give a shit about B of A fucking over the people they loaned money to.

aero otm. i don't think i'm strawmanning you, dayo. i'm simply admitting that partial, imperfect, emotional responses to small issues are what we generally get instead of comprehensive, informed commitment to dealing with vast social problems. and that's okay. it's as a result of many such small responses that real change eventually occurs.

getting people to care about some human interest story that might impact a small piece of the bigger picture, and doing that one company at a time? clearer way forward to actually changing the big picture, maybe.

― plastic surgery dizbusters (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, March 19, 2012 6:12 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's a way, sure. it worked well in the late 90s/early aughts with students against sweatshops when student agitation played a big part in schools changing the way they made a lot of their own memorabilia--one way forward is making The Right Way also be The Profitable Way.

'most people are not gonna give a shit about the power structure' for the same reason that most people don't care thattt much about how much someone in an iphone factory gets paid. some people 'do care', and those people will get to shop at the american apparel for electronics one day even tho the marginal money they will spend helping someone get a 'fair wage' could prob go to a starving person instead.

those small responses can reach a critical mass, the question is how you movement-build to get to that point--and i think this whole kerfuffle is a part of that movement-building.

hoos otm too

all this makes me think how little i know about global supply chains for anything. floods in thailand stopped anyone from getting a new hard drive for a year. best buy's reputation was ruined and it was basically a huge surprise to the consumer.

i think some kind of work needs to be done just to get basics like that out of the business-page zone and into the left-activist media space (ugh the language here i know). seems like those who know don't care and those who care don't know.

^^^ for sure

getting people to give a shit about the bigger picture? good luck.

― plastic surgery dizbusters (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, March 19, 2012 6:12 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and like, right, you're not gonna be able to discuss the finer points of chinese labor's struggles with most people. you don't have to. all you have to do is make your target afraid that a damaging amount of people will give enough of a shit to abandon them if they don't shape up. and if that target happens to be an ostensible trendsetting industry leader like apple, you've suddenly got more than a single win on your hands.

this was mostly on other stuff and is pretty econ-y but I think this paragraph has some good places to start for a more nuanced critique of sweatshops: http://www.interfluidity.com/v2/3008.html

I’m sure that some anti-sweatshop sentiment is more about the narcissistic self-regard of the liberal rich than improving the welfare of the global poor. But the better hippies have thought these issues through and are not idiotically trying to remove workers’ best available option in the name of guilt-free lattes. Organized sweatshop labor displaces other arrangements, some of which may not be as miserable as stereotypes of “subsistence farming” suggest. If there are economies of scale to participation in traditional ways of life (and there almost certainly are), then the fact that people are willing to abandon their villages for sweatshop work tells us very little about whether welfare has been improved or harmed by its introduction. Further, the crappiness of the alternatives faced by potential workers is not independent of the existence of sweatshop work. In countries whose elites do well by arranging the provision of “flexible” labor, the awfulness of alternatives to sweatshop work might be contrived. The notion of an “oil curse” leading to corrupt political arrangements is uncontroversial. Surely a “labor curse” is just as plausible, and the details of its operation would be more pernicious. Arguably, China has done well with sweatshop labor because its elites have perceived “social stability” to be fragile, and have worked to deliver economic development rapidly and broadly to keep the revolutionaries at bay. The sweatshop model might not deliver the goods so well in countries whose leaders are less wary of their publics.

and like, right, you're not gonna be able to discuss the finer points of chinese labor's struggles with most people. you don't have to. all you have to do is make your target afraid that a damaging amount of people will give enough of a shit to abandon them if they don't shape up. and if that target happens to be an ostensible trendsetting industry leader like apple, you've suddenly got more than a single win on your hands.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, March 19, 2012 2:39 PM (40 minutes ago) Bookmark

the way I see it is that apple, and only apple, is gonna get implicated here because of their 'sterling reputation' and the space they occupy in the public consciousness. people only care about the sweatshop issue insofar as it makes them a tiny less comfortable in displaying their badge of middle or upper class liberal breeding.

like I think OWS valuable because it shifted the media attention to matters outside of wall street in general - tax rates on the rich, for example. citizens united. so far the brouhaha over APPLE SWEATSHOPS has broadened the media discourse to include... Apple.

only apple, is gonna get implicated here because of their 'sterling reputation' and the space they occupy in the public consciousness. people only care about the sweatshop issue insofar as it makes them a tiny less comfortable in displaying their badge of middle or upper class liberal breeding.

― dayo, Monday, March 19, 2012 7:24 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fair point

well I think you could make a more abstract argument about how it kind of helps to crack this 21st century psychic illusion of guilt-free upper middle class consumption

it's pretty staggering how much america depends on imports produced in extremely substandard labor conditions. like... all sugar production from the carribbean. coffee beans. bananas and other produce from central and south america. everything you find in a wal-mart. the way that companies can slap a 'made in the USA' sticker on products that were only assembled here on american shores, as a way of hiding where the components came from. (hint: china).

I get that foxconn-gate could be an opportunity for the media to build on. and when it does, I'll be unfurling the red carpet! but as it stands right now, it's an extremely narrow issue about one company: apple. I don't think that when it gets 'fixed' people will go on to care more about exploitation of overseas labor in general. they'll just stop caring, period.

and, the inside china viewpoint is this: there are approx. 1 million more pressing issues to deal with internally than how much money a foxconn worker makes. for example, as alluded to above, land seizure! and the complete lack of a reliable rule of law when it comes to human rights issues. from the inside china perspective, workers at foxconn have it pretty damn good compared to the working conditions of other migrant workers.

in my darker speculative moods, I wonder if it's actually impossible to have progress without oppression

well there are lots of types of progress and lots of types of opression. for a place like china they can be one and the same.

er by that I mean 'making progress' and 'fighting oppression'

anyway, here's a good james fallow post, and I'll give his take on what we're arguing about here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-sad-and-infuriating-mike-daisey-case/254661/

3) The Apple obsession is weirdly narcissistic. For Americans, the conditions in Apple supply-chain factories are vivid and symbolic, because of the amazing human connection they create. Today I open a box containing an elegant new Steve Jobs-inspired, Jony Ive-designed iPad or other icon. A week ago, who knows what hellish conditions were giving birth to this very machine? Dramatic connections like that are important -- and the leverage they create, across borders of nation and language and class, can make a difference. Orville Schell has explained how Wal-Mart has become an important force for environmental improvement in China. International firms like Apple can and should become a force for workplace and environmental improvement in China -- showing the way, as Wal-Mart is, for domestic Chinese firms. Of course, it's not just "firms like Apple" that should do this. Especially Apple should, given its prestige and iconography. (Just as "especially Google" had an obligation to stand up to Chinese censorship.) Steve Jobs was renowned for emphasizing "purity" of design. That concept should spread to his supply chain as well.

But Apple is not the main worker-safety problem in China. Nor even Foxconn. Not even close. Internationally owned factories are at the better end of the Chinese spectrum in wages, working conditions, safety, and (usually) environmental policies. Foxconn's wages are higher, and its accident rate is lower, than for Chinese-based factories as a whole -- and Chinese manufacturing overall is much safer than the Chinese mining or metals industries. (Back in 2007, I saw an item in a Chinese paper saying that 32 metal workers had been horrifically boiled to death, when a giant ladle full of molten steel slipped off its hoist and spilled onto them. The episode got almost no international attention.) Pressure on the Apple supply chain is sensible and valuable if it always presented as a lever for raising Chinese safety and environmental standards generally -- and as an ever-ascending standard that the rest of them should meet.

I'm just going to pause on this

Back in 2007, I saw an item in a Chinese paper saying that 32 metal workers had been horrifically boiled to death, when a giant ladle full of molten steel slipped off its hoist and spilled onto them.

because damn, that is a shitty way to die - might beat out drowning in pig shit as has happened on american shores

I do think Daisey's situation is more like Yellowcake than Sedaris, but this is interesting:

http://www.tnr.com/print/article/american-lie-midget-guitar-teacher-macys-elf-and-thetruth-about-david-sedaris

An unlikely defender.

No sane person reading David Sedaris' books thinks they are reading an unembellished autobiography no matter what line of bullshit he peddles to get it placed the NYT non-fiction list.

Yeah, I always treated his stuff like a stand-up comedian's monologue. 10% true, 90% embellishment.

It's fine to use absurdly embellished descriptions for laughs--this is an essential tool for any humorist. If I write, "I was so hung over, I threw up my own skeleton," you know I'm kidding. It's not fine to pretend--in a long and detailed scene--that you performed outlandish, dangerous tasks at a mental hospital when you didn't.

Why is it not fine? BECAUSE I SAID SO!

Maybe because letting dopey teenagers perform outlandish, dangerous tasks may not reflect well on a hospital, especially if a reader had a friend/relative who died in that hospital.

wow the guy who wrote that article sounds like the worst kind of bore,

I sincerely hope that relatives/friends of people who died in that hospital aren't reading David Sedaris for a stunning expose of the aforementioned facility.

No sane person reading David Sedaris' books thinks they are reading an unembellished autobiography no matter what line of bullshit he peddles to get it placed the NYT non-fiction list.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Monday, March 19, 2012 10:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well there's "embellishment" and then there's falsely accusing people of being homophobes.

And falsely accusing hospitals of malfeasance.

lol so foxconn gets to play the victim:

http://www.businessinsider.com/foxconn-wont-take-legal-action-for-the-inaccurate-radio-story-2012-3

Have you even read the story??!?! It doesn't exactly track as an expose of hospital malfeasance.

http://www.artsjournal.com/newbeans/2012/03/this-is-a-work-of-non-fiction.html

Wow.

I read the expose - untrained teenager helps move invalid elderly woman. Would you want your sick mother/father to be "cared for" by an untrained teenager? (Versus what these teens really did, such as set up chairs for parties, etc.)

This really does remind me of folks making up things related to terrorism to make sure we all understand the grave danger of terrorism.

http://mikedaisey.blogspot.com/2012/03/reports-of-my-death-have-been-greatly.html

"Would you want your sick mother/father to be "cared for" by an untrained teenager?"

This is so point missing... I am just... Okay I have actually read the story and while admittedly none of my relatives were "being cared for" at this particular facility, I find it hard to believe that anyone besides the humorless bore who wrote the above article (and apparently you) would think that it was anything other than a fanciful tale regardless of the NF on the cover and it's placement on the New York Times bestseller list. But your concern trolling for the family members of persons at this particular facility who might be reading the story is noted.

exactly j FUCKING c

While I don't believe anyone reads Sedaris to investigate hospitals, presenting it as factual (when it could just as easily be presented as simply humour) can lead to misconceptions in the general public. Likewise with the music teacher story, for what that's worth - sign up for music lessons, get hit on by sexual predators!

I think that article kind of touches on what I never liked about David Sedaris. It's not just that he makes stuff up -he makes up derogatory things about other people so it's easier to laugh at them. It's pandering. He makes people into the easy targets that others would like them to be.
There is nothing funny about having a little person as a music teacher. But by making the music teacher creepy and a homophobic weirdo, it just becomes part of a comic package and people feel okay laughing at it.
And because it's presented as truth, it's more easily accepted than what amounts to fiction making fun of stereotyped "weirdos".

He makes people into the easy targets that others would like them to be.

Definitely why I've never taken his stories as fact.

those animal stories DEFINITELY arent true

there's this thing called spinning a yarn

unless it's ACTUAL yarn it's a goddamn LIE

:)

I mean IDK, I've never read an entire David Sedaris book. I've basically read a handful of things, all published in the New Yorker. They're usually pretty funny. They're definitely written in a larger-than-life, non-literal style in a pretty glaring way such that I'd never rely on them for fact. But they don't fit the genre of fiction at all, they're definitely essays, and I guess if that's hard for people to get I'm overestimating the average literacy level of people who read his books.

I guess "they're definitely essays" isn't exactly right, but they're definitely non-fiction in style and structure.

They just seem like a rather low form of humor to me, whatever they are.

There is nothing in this controversy that contests the facts in my work about the nature of Chinese manufacturing. Nothing. I think we all know if there was, Ira would have brought it up.

um.

ha i think he's ambitiously hanging on to "if things are true there's no reason they couldn't have been true for me". because hawaiian shirts are available to buy there is no reason to assume i am not wearing one right now.

i am enjoying reading this thread & have been trying not to derail it with my trivial thoughts because the apple debate is really good. but i thought it was so interesting just hearing someone grilled. it reminded me of being told off at school. like you can hear his brain working, making those desperate moves - so working out when he can try to hit a note of noble failure or humility that might help; or when he tries to lexically weasel out of something by pedantically suggesting a skewed definition of terms, or hazily invoking some weird much grander nebulous distinction "tools" of "theatre", "codes" of "journalism", &c; or when he slyly phrases something to obfuscate, not quite repeating the relevant charge, or saying that he would not perceive the facts to support that interpretation instead of saying "no". the silences, the pauses, all of the same kinda tricks that lend the guy his gravitas as a storyteller, intoning & underlining the weight of what he's saying about apple. it was interesting.

anyway here's someone assembling an electrical component in a factory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrplvHS2Uf8

http://thenewinquiry.com/blogs/zunguzungu/the-jimmy-mcnulty-gambit/

not to be all morbius about this but it's kind of sad that the most memorable american journalistic grilling of 2012 will probably turn out to be ira glass getting revenge on a dud low-level source

Well, yeah, Tracer, but you're ignoring the Apple hook, which is the only reason this whole story had that much traction in the first place.

that article sort of doesn't understand the wire at all.

dude wasn't a "low-level source," he was pretty much the SUBJECT of one of the most downloaded/talked about/written about stories of the year!

but yes, i do kind of agree haha.

okay i finally listened to the mike daisey retraction show. i had also heard the tal that excerpted his theater show. i basically think dylannn is otm itt, and i want to respond to people upthread who were saying things like, it's a shame to criticize mike daisey when the real issue is exploitative labor conditions in china. of course that is the issue at hand but if you give a shit about people being exploited show them the elementary respect of representing them, not some imaginary chinese people you made up and i'm not inclined to cut you any slack considering the bullshit patronizing anecdote about the elderly broken chinese man struck dumb with wonder at the "magic" of the ipad. i understand why the interview went the way it did, but i couldn't help wishing someone would call daisey on his savior rhetoric more pointedly along those lines.

also i actually loled when ira glass was like, "did you think if you gave us kathy's number...did you think we'd find something out?" and daisey's like, [dramatic pause] "well i didn't think you would unpack the complexities of, like, how the story gets told." like, what an unbelievable fool.

And when he says this, I reach into my satchel, and I take out my iPad. And when he sees it, his eyes widen, because one of the ultimate ironies of globalism, at this point there are no iPads in China. He's never actually seen one on, this thing that took his hand. I turn it on, unlock the screen, and pass it to him. He takes it. The icons flare into view, and he strokes the screen
with his ruined hand, and the icons slide back and forth. And he says something to Cathy, and Cathy says, "He says it's a kind of magic."

just so everyone knows...

chinese people do not think touchscreens are magic.

and the idea that mike daisey was holding the only ipad in shenzhen when he made up that story...

ty

didn't want anyone to make the same mistake i did

the chinese characters for "iPad" literally mean "running fire water sand"

chinese people do not think touchscreens are magic.

― dylannn, Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:40 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

most chinese people I know who have used apple products have a hard time understanding what all the fuss is about

but if you give a shit about people being exploited show them the elementary respect of representing them,

I've posted this elsewhere and haven't been able to track down the full version but I thought the excerpt was good

http://vimeo.com/27982653

http://gawker.com/5894913/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-larger-truth-this-american-lifes-rich-history-of-embellishment

that is fucking idiotic! this guy gets paid to write! for the new republic! and he doesn't see the difference between embellishing funny details about a tacky cruise ship experience and making up stories about labor exploitation in a long-form expose!

im pretty sure he can see the difference. and whats at stake is more than "embellishing funny details" -- according to franzen DFW wholesale made stuff up.

isn't the difference more: misrepresenting personal experience for comedic/evocative effect vs misrepresenting personal experience in order to encourage outrage and anger in yr audience?

Seemed like concern trolling.

also i actually loled when ira glass was like, "did you think if you gave us kathy's number...did you think we'd find something out?" and daisey's like, [dramatic pause] "well i didn't think you would unpack the complexities of, like, how the story gets told." like, what an unbelievable fool.

yeah this was the sort of nonsense that we pay politicians to come up with, not performance artists.

lol @ ppl trying to take a dead stylist down over this

it's not really daisey or the dead stylist at issue imo, it's TAL's journalism

im pretty sure he can see the difference. and whats at stake is more than "embellishing funny details" -- according to franzen DFW wholesale made stuff up.

― max, Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:02 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what is at stake in made-up cruise ship dialogue?

im pretty sure he can see the difference. and whats at stake is more than "embellishing funny details" -- according to franzen DFW wholesale made stuff up.

DFW wrote a piece, lied and made up some of it. So what? Readers got a slightly warped view about what goes on when you take a cruise. DFW does not once ask his readership to boycott cruise ships. The warped facts are presented to make the piece itself extra hilarious and interesting, not to convince the reader to never go on a cruise ship.

Daisey lies in a "reported" piece about exploiting factory workers, it's broadcast on NPR, he does a one-man show, provides handouts after the show with Steve Jobs email address, asks people to take action. . . there's an ocean of difference between the two things.

You really can't see the difference?

the integrity of the outlet and writer xp

i can see the difference, yes

I'm 100% with you on the integrity of the outlet, for sure.

But I mean even the example cited by the TNR guy: "12 alpha-male political reporters who all wore uniforms of crisp blue blazers and Cole Haan loafers and who repeatedly mistook Wallace for a hotel bellman."

It's just so screamingly obviously the kind of detail that is not to be taken as literally true, and also it does not matter if it's literally true.

if it's reported as literally true then there is a problem

right. the title of the piece is "This American Life’s Rich History of Embellishment" -- the outlet's integrity is what's being questioned

i think there's a lot of retconning going on with the "i NEVER took sedaris's or DFW's pieces to be literally true"

btw i'd like to see glass, or really anybody on NPR, go after an actually powerful person with a tenth of the zeal reserved for the guy who made them look foolish

that's the title of the piece, sure, so why bring up the Harper's stuff if the piece is just "about" TAL?

to bolster the evidence that DFW's TAL piece was cooked too

Who are all these people who consider TAL legitimate, wholly accurate, journalism in the first place?

the made up stuff in the Apple piece was used to "convince" the listener that conditions were worse than they are.

the made up stuff in DFW's piece was used to convince the listener. . .

that the media pack following McCain was dressed identically when they really weren't?
that the media pack were all men when they weren't?

Who are all these people who consider TAL legitimate, wholly accurate, journalism in the first place?

seriously.

yeah that piece reeked of concern trolling to me too, thought it was overall pretty dumb

i mean, ill bite, ive always thought of TAL as journalism. TAL thinks of itself as journalism. media commentators think of TAL as journalism. and maybe this makes me shockingly naive but i always took those DFW stories at face value. theyre presented as non-fiction, collected in non-fiction collections. same goes for sedaris.

believe me, i understand that daisey's piece and fabrications were "morally" worse, but i don't really think that matters. "fabrications are okay as long as they're not political" or "as long as theyre funny" is... not a rule im comfortable with

that's cool, i get that

The difference (in Daisey and DFW) is that DFW was a true creative genius and I was far more interested in what he imagined than what he happened to overhear, than what Daisey, who seems to be a lamo who got famous off of his subject matter, decides to. The fact that so many elevate the essays over Infinite Jest because they just lurve facts and reality is sickening to me. But, yeah, if DFW had done a political advocacy piece that turned out to be 45%+ false then I would have problems with that.

I'd like to see TAL go full on self-jihad and prove whether the stories about the gangster chickens and the Rutgers guy who goes to beat up the Princeton guy (or whatever) are 100% true.

i've worked on radio pieces that are more like impressionist art than journalism but even then we would never make up details, or pretend something had happened that hadn't - *shrugs*

Think of it this way: if you were writing an academic paper on I dunno, lobster or tennis or cruises or whatever, would you cite a DFW essay as a reliable primary source? I probably wouldn't have, and would have looked askance at somebody who did (although I would tend to trust his Lynch essay, so I dunno?) On the other hand, would you tend to think it would be legit to cite daisey? That seems more likely.

or would the nyt have invited DFW to write a scathing op-ed about the cruise industry

I know it's being brought up but there's a nice discussion of this type of thing in a new book by a dude I went to school with: The Lifespan of a Fact http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/02/the_lifespan_of_a_fact_essayist_john_d_agata_defends_his_right_to_fudge_the_truth_.html

And Here he is talking about Daisey:

http://www.dailyiowan.com/2012/03/22/Metro/27536.html

But I mean even the example cited by the TNR guy: "12 alpha-male political reporters who all wore uniforms of crisp blue blazers and Cole Haan loafers and who repeatedly mistook Wallace for a hotel bellman."

It's just so screamingly obviously the kind of detail that is not to be taken as literally true, and also it does not matter if it's literally true.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:30 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if it's reported as literally true then there is a problem

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But that kind of detail is in itself "reporting" the way you mean it. It's hyperbole that is meant to give a sense of DFW's experience of the event. I'm not saying "it's ok because he's DFW and it's funny" I'm saying that is a categorically different kind of detail/writing.

And honestly would you read that sentence and think "Oh, he literally means that there were 12 reporters who all wore the exact same brand of loafers and literally identical blue blazers"

(is NOT in itself reporting)

x-post ugh 2nd link not right

Compare hunter s thompson's fear and loathing on the campaign trail?

ehh you know whether or not dfw was entertainment some peoples actual opinions on the cruise ship industry are going to be shaped by that entertainment. maybe that's less important because it's a less important subject, but people get information from a lot of things that aren't nyt articles.

And honestly would you read that sentence and think "Oh, he literally means that there were 12 reporters who all wore the exact same brand of loafers and literally identical blue blazers"

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2), Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:05 PM (45 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

when i read it i literally believed that one of those reporters had mistaken him for a bellhop

you know whether or not dfw was entertainment some peoples actual opinions on the cruise ship industry are going to be shaped by that entertainment.

But the "facts" he's making up are not what's shaping peoples' opinions. He's not saying the food was poisoned when it wasn't, or that the ship was unsafe when it wasn't. He's giving an impressionistic view of the tackiness of the experience. What "trudy" said or didn't say doesn't really bear on whether he's somehow fucking defaming the cruise ship industry for god sakes the world has gone concern troll.

when i read it i literally believed that one of those reporters had mistaken him for a bellhop

― max, Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:07 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And if they didn't?

what do you mean, if they didn't?

"people might get the impression that professional journalists are actually careless in their observations, which could hurt their reputation"

do I need to read the Gawker piece before I share my fascinating opinions on the phrase "concern trolling" or should I just go for it

hurting you're making the same argument that mike daisey is. "so what if he didnt *actually* meet a chinese man who thought the ipad was magic -- it was an impressionistic view of the experience"

No guts, no glory xp

(ps I do not mean that literally)

But Mike Daisey's work was presented very differently from DFW's, and for the record, yes I think that making up something racist and condescending with no basis in reality is a little worse than the DFW example.

again, i understand why mike daisey is morally worse than DFW. i just dont see how or where we draw the line.

"fabrications are okay when..." what? when the writer is really good? when s/he's funny? when s/he's giving an impressionistic view of events? when they comprise less than X% of the piece?

what if instead of dfw we were talking about an author who wrote similar pieces and there was a political side to it? or even just dfw's articles about the mccain campaign? how much can he add for flavor before that becomes dishonest?

okay, here goes:

it is NOT "concern-trolling" to say that it's not good for journalism to contain made-up sections

it IS "concern-trolling" to wholesale make up characters and situations in order to push an agenda

based on the commentary here, the argument shouldn't be that ppl criticizing TAL are "concern-trolling", it should be about whether TAL presents itself as a forum for journalism or a forum for essay, and if the answer is "both" if the tonal shifts are clear enough for the audience to know which is fact and which is fiction

when Daisey was asked by the people at TAL for contact details for Cathy so they could fact-check (because they felt that his was an appropriate piece to fact-check in such a way), he lied to them so that they would not be able to submit his monologue to the scrutiny they felt appropriate.

so you could draw the line there -- intentional obfuscation of attempts to fact-check one's statements.

well that's basically saying that fabrications are not okay, isnt it?

DJP otm w/r/t tonal shifts. max meanwhile is really gunning for this slippery slope thing, about which, eh.

Yeah, I don't mean to troll w/r/t not thinking of TAL as legit, but I've just ... never been a fan? never been all that impressed with their content?

Maybe I'm entirely wrong in this, but I've always thought of Glass & co. as more interested in the evocation of a tone/mood/theme than in strict journalistic practice (whatever that means). The 'tonal shifts' w/in a specific episode of the program aren't really markable if you're casually listening (or not particularly news savvy, which IME describes a large portion of TAL's audience), and so the show has always seemed a little more puffy-entetaining than news-lite.

compare to the infamous N1ck Sylv3ster VV piece on the game, which, arguably was a satirical/fictionalized piece in intention which got terribly mishandled until the tonal signifiers were totally wrong/lost.

are people actually upset that such a literary demigod as dfw is being lumped together with sedaris?

like, if TAL is supposed to be factual journalism 100% of the time, max's argument makes sense

if it's supposed to be an essay presentation, some of which are journalism and some of which are based on/inspired by real life but with artistic liberties taken to showcase the writers' talents, max's argument doesn't make sense

is dfw allowed to fabricate events wholesale because he's the 'better artist' or something? idgi xp

right. my understanding is that TAL thinks of itself, presents itself, and is generally understood to be journalism.

same goes for harper's and rolling stone.

Rolling Stone is not and never has been 100% journalism AFAICT

people def treat taibbi as 100% journalism

oh lord are we going to have 200 posts about tom wolfe now

well, we're getting a little bit away from the issue. TAL presented mike daisey, david sedaris, and DFW pieces all in more or less exactly the same way.

in a tote bag?

DJP otm w/r/t tonal shifts. max meanwhile is really gunning for this slippery slope thing, about which, eh.

― s.clover, Thursday, March 22, 2012 12:21 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think these are two different parts of an argument. i agree with dan. but it sounds to me like hurting is arguing that a certain level or kind of embellishment is okay in journalism, and i want to figure out what it is

I thought Hurting was arguing that the pieces under the microscope that TAL presented from Sedaris and DFW weren't journalism

oh, then i misunderstood

goldman not actually in molluscan class Cephalopoda, taibbi to be raked over the coals by ira glass and jann wenner in an exclusive podcast. more on this story as it develops.

based on the commentary here, the argument shouldn't be that ppl criticizing TAL are "concern-trolling", it should be about whether TAL presents itself as a forum for journalism or a forum for essay, and if the answer is "both" if the tonal shifts are clear enough for the audience to know which is fact and which is fiction

You have to consider the source, though. I don't find John Cook questioning of TAL's journalism sincere at all.

why? john is a serious and sincere journalist. gawker as an outlet maybe suffers from a 'tonal' problem but not john

Honestly, it seemed like another grab for pageviews/comments. If he was sincere, fair enough.

heh, long articles about NPR and david sedaris arent really linkbait

?????????

"what is this public radio station that nobody cares about"

dfw + npr + sedaris + controversy does seem to hit the core demo pretty tightly...

no way

40k uniques is pretty low for a story thats been splashed on the front page

i mean, ill bite, ive always thought of TAL as journalism. TAL thinks of itself as journalism. media commentators think of TAL as journalism. and maybe this makes me shockingly naive but i always took those DFW stories at face value. theyre presented as non-fiction, collected in non-fiction collections. same goes for sedaris.

― max, Thursday, March 22, 2012 10:42 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ditto

well ya, take the new yorker, nobody would say it is 'hard news,' there's tons of variations on nonfic, but you imagine even the personal essay-ish stuff in it isn't made up, 'shouts & murmurs' besides

yeah. sedaris's NYer stuff gets published under "personal histories," not "shouts and murmurs"

shouts & murmurs is the worst

no the worst, is that shopping column that i can never figure out if it's supposed to be satire or not

Daisey finally apologizes - http://idealab.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/mike-daisey-apology-apple-this-american-life.php

more like this american LIE amirite?

no the worst, is that shopping column that i can never figure out if it's supposed to be satire or not

this is how i feel about the theatre reviews

hilton als not even comparable to that terrible 'on and off the avenue' column

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/30/apple-foxconn-workers-idUSL3E8EU4I820120330

*throws up hands*

I'll rep for all of the New Yorker except the shopping column I can't stand.

Daisey shut down his blog and twitter account

Daisey, Daisey, give me your answer do...

(sung in the dying voice of HAL)

btw, on the off chance people are interested in this beyond throwing eggs at mike daisey, heard about a new documentary about factory workers' rights in china

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stx-0eHb5zo

Wow, this Dos Erres episode is crushing. 23 minutes in and I'm not sure if I can keep going.

waht is

Anyone else having trouble these past few days with TAL and other NPR podcasts downloading incredibly slow through iTunes?

Hmm, was hoping unsubscribing and resubscribing would do it, but still taking, apparently, 84 minutes to download. For comparisons sake, just downloaded the latest WTF in the usual 15 seconds and about the same for a soccer podcast. Apparently its just the NPR ones.

I'm months behind on the podcasts. The Taylor Dayne story had me laughing maniacally while driving to school this morning.

the fuck? still. saying 17+ hours to download NPR podcasts.

Anybody have any ideas? I figured forgetting about it and coming back to it the next day would help, but no. And still, only the NPR podcasts.

DOS attack? or just lousy IT?

I don't know, no one else seems to be complaining about issues with slow downloads. But I just tried subscribing to non NPR podcasts and they all download as fast as usual and I'm not having any trouble with download speeds for anything else. Just these two podcasts. So weird.

get them from the site or feeds, I had an NPR thing come down in the usual few seconds yesterday

Ok, this is weird as hell. Even trying to just download the files from the sites or from a feed are taking forever and timing out too. WTF I've had no problem downloading other files or accessing anything else. Just NPR podcasts.

This is beyond me. Same problems downloading on my wife's laptop as well, but she isn't having any other problems either.

Tried downloading from feeds and from the actual show websites from three different computers and multiple browsers now and same insanely low speeds and timeout errors, but only for these two podcasts. No speed issues doing anything else. I'd write this off as just a problem on NPR's end, but apparently no one else is having issues.

I had a similar thing with iphone app store at home for months - changing the dns settings did the trick. Might be worth trying google/opendns...?

I'll give that a shot tonight, thanks.

rolling FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS thread

Ok so the story about the woman who swallowed knives and stuff gave me a near freaking panic attack at work.

Still quite a bit behind in the podcasts, but the Piers Anthony one was terrific. Also, quite heart wrenching to hear what I can only assume was David Rakoff's final appearance on the show (followed by Ira's excited announcement that "he has a new book coming out next year!")

that last rakoff piece - his rhyming story - was really beautiful, & so affecting in its voice

any more like "the house at loon lake"? i loved that but a lot of the others kinda bore me. the one with the prisoners staging hamlet is good though.

the one about princeton and people getting wasted was really weird, they came across as so whiney and weird, even in the face of these awful jocks.

are there any shows similar to this in concept, but better? i like the idea of a story-based radio show but i find the tone and often the people involved in this show sort of irritating.

http://thestory.org/

A little slow-moving, but not bad on the dozen or so times I've heard it.

yeah i like 'the story'

dick gordon is the most canadian sounding person ever

ah cool, must check it out. I like American Life but it is sort of indie or yuppie-ish or something, and kinda smug.

Also, "The Story" isn't confined to U.S.-based stories like TAL.

The Story is good.

LocalGarda, you might like The Moth, which is people telling their own stories, with no interviewers/commentators in the ones I've heard: taped on stage at a little club or something, without much audience noise, just occasional laughter, and clapping at the end of each segment. You can look up the stations carrying it, or listen here: http://themoth.org/radio It's been around several years, but I don't know how far back their archives go. Only thing that seemed like it might get problematic: occasionally they have professional comendians or actors, who are good, but wonder if it might not get too slick eventually.

To me the Moth is more smug and irritating than TAL.

the moth introduced me to this super weirdo

http://youtu.be/qaaf6CGvy28

but i haven't heard it much other than that

haven't heard it this year, but the past couple years were pretty good.

To me the Moth is more smug and irritating than TAL.

i feel this way about Radiolab.

love the moth though, and i feel like TAL is way less smug that it might have once been.

Yeah it's not insufferable, I guess I just don't relate to the hosts and stuff much, or the people that seem like them. Not just cos of the continental gap either.

are there any shows similar to this in concept, but better? i like the idea of a story-based radio show but i find the tone and often the people involved in this show sort of irritating.

― Ballboy to Afghanistan (LocalGarda), Wednesday, February 13, 2013 9:46 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

kinda have to lol at this sorry

its kinda like being "are there any bands similar in concept to the beatles, but better?"

i don't mean the interviewees, if that clarifies it. more the hosts and the occasions where it feels like the guests are their friends.

like often it's good stories and people but their spin or intro annoys me, along with their music choices, editorial decisions, blurbs in between guests, and the times when the reporters are the guests are pretty cringey too.

i know, it's just that TAL basically invented and popularized and are so identified with their specific format that asking for something like it... but better! is... well, i don't think you're going to find it.

I have always felt the same way about that show
Also, the monkees

Also, "The Story" isn't confined to U.S.-based stories like TAL.

I feel like half of This American Life's stories from the past 10 years have taken place in Afghanistan or Egypt or Iraq or Iran or Yemen or Pakistan or some place that is not the US.

i know, it's just that TAL basically invented and popularized and are so identified with their specific format that asking for something like it... but better! is... well, i don't think you're going to find it.

I did wonder that, but it's not as if "it tells interesting stories" is some revolutionary idea, I thought other shows might have done it, it's not like they've hit the ball out of the park or something.

hey LocalGarda have you heard Lives in a Landscape by the totally, totally brilliant Alan Dein?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/lial

Go! Go now! strange but true stories played out in seemingly real-time in people's own words with no extra layers of smug superciliousness slathered on top

Huh...I hadn't noticed that, but I catch TAL less often than The Story. (5x weeknights vs. 1x Saturday afternoon, and neither one is must listening for me) xxp