“Well, I don’t know that I would say in a theatrical context that it isn’t true. I believe that when I perform it in a theatrical context in the theater that when people hear the story in those terms that we have different languages for what the truth means.”

—Actor, writer, activist Mike Daisey, in an interview with NPR’s Ira Glass, exploring how Daisey was able to justify fabricating facts and accounts for the earlier aired—and just retracted—“American Life” installment called “Mr. Daisy  Goes To The Apple Factory.” NPR checked the particulars of Daisey’s first hand account of the human rights and labor violations he claimed to witness at Apple’s factory in China, and found that the writer had embellished, exaggerated,  and misrepresented much of what he reported. What NPR had broadcast as journalistic reporting was an excerpt from Daisey’s acclaimed touring one-man stage show, “The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”

Mike Daisey, lying to us for our own enlightenment

Daisey’s quote, which is both illuminating and chilling, argues that using made-up stories and personal accounts in a theatrical context qualifies as truth, even if the same misrepresentations in a journalistic context are inappropriately false. The problem with his argument, and the flawed ethical theory behind it, is that both the NPR audience and his theater audience believe that Daisey is telling the truth. Daisey’s solution to the problem is simple: his one-man show does tell the truth…it just uses lies to do it.

That is what art does, of course, at least in theory: it reveals truth through artifice, imagination and illusion. Daisey, however, wants us to embrace the ethical fallacy of political artists and activists—that the truth is served by using falsehoods to persuade. To his credit, Ira Glass, who was the one most directly duped by Daisey and who feels that he was lied to by the actor, challenges him. Daisey adamantly refuses to admit that he lied:

Mike Daisey: …I stand by it as a theatrical work. I stand by how it makes people see and care about the situation that’s happening there. I stand by it in the theater. And I regret, deeply, that it was put into this context on your show.

Ira Glass: Are you going to change the way that you label this in the theater, so that the audience in the theater knows that this isn’t strictly speaking a work of truth but in fact what they’re seeing really is a work of fiction that has some true elements in it.

Mike Daisey: Well, I don’t know that I would say in a theatrical context that it isn’t true. I believe that when I perform it in a theatrical context in the theater that when people hear the story in those terms that we have different languages for what the truth means.

Ira Glass: I understand that you believe that but I think you’re kidding yourself in the way that normal people who go to see a person talk – people take it as a literal truth. I thought that the story was literally true seeing it in the theater. Brian, who’s seen other shows of yours, thought all of them were true. I saw your nuclear show, I thought that was completely true. I thought it was true because you were on stage saying ‘this happened to me.’ I took you at your word.

Mike Daisey: I think you can trust my word in the context of the theater.

The entire interview is full of double-talk from Daisey like this.  Glass raises the example of James Frey, who published a fictional account of his life and called it a memoir, and whose work was briefly defended by Oprah Winfrey (who had recommended it for her book club) because it “connected” with people and carried a “greater truth” beyond its literal accuracy. He might just as well have cited Dan Rather’s continuing defense of his use of a forged document to prove what he fervently believes is the truth of George W. Bush’s special treatment by the National Guard, or Al Gore’s misleading use of photographs to “prove” global warming in “An Inconvenient Truth”, or Oliver Stone’s disorienting mixture of real and imaginary evidence in “J.F.K.”….or Andrew Breitbart’s misleading editing of James O’Keefe’s “sting” video of ACORN offices. This cynical and self-serving, flexible definition of “truth,” which has its roots in totalitarian ideology, is increasingly celebrated by the Left and the Right in the United States today, to our increasing detriment. Since they believe the public is presumptively too fickle, trivial, stupid and apathetic to sort out the real-life complexities of controversial issues, Daisey and the rest believe that their “truth” is served by doing the public;s work for them, by lying. Make no mistake about it: when Daisey goes on stage in what is advertised as an honest account of his experiences, and passes along falsehoods and fabrications as real, he is deceiving his audiences. He is lying.

There is nothing about a stage that magically makes a lie ethically acceptable. Stage performances are, it is true, usually assumed to contain material manipulated for artistic effect, but that means that the audiences know that what is being communicated by the playwright and actors is not literally true—hence, no lying is taking place. But when an actor named Mike Daisey stands on stage as Mike Daisy and says that this is what happened when I went to China, and you, the audience, should adjust your beliefs and conduct accordingly, the audience does not know that. As Glass accurately says, the audience is trusting the individual standing on stage before them to tell the truth–the real truth, not some imaginary, existential, post-modern rationalization of how the truth can be served by falsity.

Daisey tries to justify this elsewhere in the interview because he says it is essential to make the audience care. This is also the rationalization for politicians to tell us half-truths about the bills they want to pass, how journalists justify burying unpleasant facts about leaders they support and causes they like, and how teachers manipulate what students read to create their own political and ideological clones. They are all so sure they are right, that they know “the truth,” that even lies and misrepresentations are not merely justified but virtuous if they make that truth evident to others.

“War is Peace”; “Freedom is Slavery”; “Ignorance is Strength.” I wonder why George Orwell neglected to add “Lies are Truth” to his “1984” party mottos? People like Mike Daisey are profoundly dangerous to democracy and the culture. They endanger the former because they believe it is virtuous to manipulate public opinion using lies, and they are dangerous to the culture because they advocate lying as a legitimate tool of social and political debate. Daisey’s “theater” rationalization is just camouflage.He is one of a large and growing number of activists, ideologues, journalists and political leaders who believe deception is justified in the pursuit of goals and objectives they believe are essential.

Every single one of them should be shunned, rejected and ignored—permanently—once this proclivity has been sufficiently demonstrated.

[You can read the transcript of the retracted NPR broadcast here; Ira Glass’s explanation of the retraction here; and the follow-up interviews with Daisey here.]

[Ethics Alarms Update here]