I never finished that Economist blog item, nor, I believe, even told my editors I was working on it. But neither did I try to call Mike out. I had a strong inductive supposition, but I didn't have affirmative evidence. And it was theatre. Do I really need to fact-check theatre? Not really. (Alex Heard David Sedaris' embroidery of reality in his allegedly "true" radio stories and books for , but Sedaris doesn't pretend his work is reportage.)

When "Agony" came to Seattle, I received a few emails from Mike, with whom I hadn't corresponded or seen in a while. I believe he sent three, and each one caused me paroxysms of agony. I did not want to see the show, and did not want to confront the fact that my logic insisted that Daisey had made up incidents he had now spent a year outside the theatre claiming as true in countless print and televised interviews. He had taken a theatrical work and turned it inside out, perhaps never evaluating whether the reality of what he experienced as a performer inside the show could be matched by objective reality.

He , even after apparently being contrite to Ira Glass. On his website, he says he stands by his work and regrets letting air an excerpt. He omits the fact that he worked closely with the show to tailor his monologue to fit its parameters and lied to them directly about facts and factchecking. It's a shame that he can't own up directly to that on his own. (At least two theatres stand by his performance, which makes perfect sense: They are his current venue and an upcoming one, the same that launched the show in the Bay Area.)

What's terrible is, of course, that conditions in Chinese manufacturing plants are not wonderful, or, at the very least, are not uniformly safe and good workplaces. I do not believe I could work a 40-hour week in a hog-rendering plant in the United States nor a 60-hour or more week in a Foxconn factory in China. I do not have the stamina, but such work is prized in China for the relatively high pay and good conditions. That's the tragedy. A multi-part New York Times series in the current system, and the level of complaint seems to have--in aggregate--prompted Apple to step up its oversight. We hear crickets from Apple's competitors and consumer-electronics makers, not to mention other manufacturing industries, of course. (David Gallagher, a editor, Friday morning that the series wasn't prompted by Daisey's monologue.)

Daisey could have saved himself all this trouble by having a disclaimer in his program or at the start of his show. "I'm telling a story that mixes accounts from people I've met and those in the news and through others to help you understand. Everything I'm telling you is true, but the circumstances are not."