TO THE EDITOR:
When I first heard that Mike Daisey would be coming to campus this last week to perform his new show, “The Story of The Gun,” I was immediately surprised that PlayMakers would affiliate with a man like Daisey. For those readers not familiar with Daisey, he performed a segment on the radio show “This American Life” back in February 2012 about his heart-wrenching experiences at a factory in China.
However, the controversy arose in that the story was largely fabricated. While Daisey did travel to China and had gone to a factory, many of the scenes and details from the story were completely made up. In a subsequent retraction episode, it became clear that Daisey had also deliberately lied to the reporters at “This American Life” during the fact-checking process leading up to the show in order to mask his story’s inaccuracies.
While I do not deny that Daisey is a truly gifted storyteller, I know that if I were to be a member of the audience for his new monologue, I would not be able to trust any of his performance. Personally, I cannot rationalize spending money on a ticket that supports someone who has so readily lied in the past. As both a university and a society, we need to question if this is the kind of behavior that we want to support.
Thomas Bruce ’16
Political science
Molly Bruce ’16
Geography
Global studies
