What I didn't do was push the point any further. Evan Osnos very well explains one reason why many reporters (other than Schmitz) failed to do so: the suspicion that in a place as big, chaotic, contradictory, and surprising as today's China, Daisey could indeed have come across circumstances others had not discovered, or had stopped noticing. I also made a perhaps-craven "life is too short" calculation: I would spend my time trying to explain the China story the way I could, rather than devoting the time to picking apart an account I thought was wrong.

And, finally -- like Osnos, like Schmitz, like everyone else who has seen Chinese factories -- I knew that the main point of Daisey's monologue, that they were dirty and harsh and could be dangerous, was true and worth highlighting. Even if the way he made that point was exaggerated and fictitious and ultimately self-defeating.

What is left to say now? I'll suggest this:

1) Daisey's downfall is the sadder and more infuriating because it was so completely unnecessary and avoidable. If he had even once said that he was presenting a polemic, a metaphor, a dramatization, an "inspired by real events" monologue rather than real "facts," no one could ever have complained. Do we care whether Harriet Beecher Stowe ever saw runaway slaves jumping on ice floes as they fled across a river? (Stowe described Uncle Tom's Cabin as a "series of sketches" conveying the cruelty of slavery.) Do we care whether Upton Sinclair had actually seen the packinghouse cruelties he described in The Jungle? Whether any family exactly like the Joads was known to John Steinbeck -- or exactly like George Bailey's or Mr. Potter to Frank Capra for It's a Wonderful Life? Charles Dickens and Oliver Twist? You get the point. Mike Daisey could have had 98% of the intellectual/social impact of his monologue, and zero % of the dishonesty and now disgrace, if he had described it as an attempt to convey the truth of a situation through imagined details.

2) Daisey's lying will hurt the Western press and international worker-rights groups. When they get all huffy, Chinese nationalists love to present the Western press as being irremediably biased against Chinese achievements and ambitions, and willing to pass along the most outrageous slanders about China without checking them for accuracy or even plausibility. A site called Anti-CNN is a well-known outlet for such views. This is a constant nuisance when you try to write critical assessments. Worse, it gives ammo to those inside China who want to pooh-pooh complaints about safety, pollution, working conditions, and so on. Daisey is everything they warned against, come to life.

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.