- Byron, I believe.

The article doesnt discuss this, but I believe the same effect is at work with TV shows. We’re there with the Losties on the Island in “Lost”, in Dr. Martin Ellingham’s surgery in Portwenn, with Inspectors Morris and Lewis in Oxford, and with Lenny in “Law & Order”‘s Manhattan.

For instance, Pakistan has one of the world’s highest rates of charitable giving. No surprise to anyone whose lived there. The average Pakistani may be poor, but is large hearted: he’ll give you the shirt off his back. The wealthy are another matter….

Here’s more from Tyler Cowen’s account of Anatol Lieven’s “Pakistan, a Hard Country.”

Othere include bloggers in the previous comments, including Noorudin Jalal and Christopher West.

Greg we stand by you and the family.

From where I sit, yes.

But the one thing I’ve learnt from Nassim Hasan Taleb: you can never tell where this thing is headed. So whether or not Peru State rescinds his speaking invitation, I’m optimistic that he and the Central Asia Institute will come through ok. Inshallah.

Which, one you rip apart the pomposity, really means “if Greg Mortenson can’t adhere to some imaginary standard of perfection in my mind, he shouldnt have done anything at all.”

I can’t imagine a worse statement. As John Bogle often notes, the “enemy of the good plan is the perfect plan.”

Mortenson has made a significant difference. He has change the lives of many. Even changing the life of one would have been worth it.

Good luck, Greg. You’re in our prayers.

The name is sui generis. (“One of a kind” to us untutored in Latin). No reader can have any doubt that John Mortimer (QC!) is winking at us. In my experience, Mortimer and Wodehouse readers often overlap, like yours truly, but at least in the United States today, Rumpole is far better known than Bertie Wooster. While Jeeves, like Sherlock Holmes, has risen to sufficiently iconic status that his image emobodies his profession even for those who have never heard of Wodehouse.

Though Wodehouse purists would argue that this image, that of the classic English butler, is egregiously flawed. Or as Jeeves said of Nietsche, “fundamentally unsound.” Jeeves is no butler. He is a valet. The perfect gentleman’s personal gentlemen.

60 Minutes expose on Three Cups of Tea is weak – and wrong.
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I met Greg Mortenson in Pakistan in 1998, years before he hit national headlines… Mortenson was one of the more interesting people I had met in a lifetime of traveling and writing about interesting people. He was humble, dressed in a dirty shalwar kameez, and seemed about as guileless as anybody I had ever met, with an almost monkish disregard for consumerism or popular culture. He was a bit naïve, it seemed to me, but was obviously pleased with the bridge over the Braldu River that he had helped build, as well as the school in Korphe. Haji Ali and the other Baltis treated him with great affection and respect. He returned the gestures in word and deed.

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On the strength of my impressions from that visit alone, I find myself ready to defend Mortenson against what I believe is a seriously deficient 60 Minutes segment, lacking in basic elements of fairness, balance, perspective, insight and context. I was taught in journalism school that if you’re going to take somebody out with a story, do it in a way that you could look that person in the eye in the grocery market the next day. I doubt Steve Kroft – or Jon Krakauer – could do that. Both of them apparently tried to contact Mortenson only at the last minute, which is something that journalists will do when they are after a pro-forma denial, rather than an interview to ascertain truth or even get another side of the story…

I cannot go through the chapter and verse that Krakauer did in his online assassination of Mortenson, and I am certain that he has alienated people and kept bad books. From a few conversations I’ve had today with people who have known Mortenson for years, I have no reason to doubt that Mortenson can be difficult, unconventional, poorly organized, and chronically late to appointments. He is probably ill-suited to run a $20-million-dollar a year non-profit, and seems stubborn enough to ignore good advice from people who otherwise appreciate his work and message. Despite the inference that since he sometimes travels by private jet he must be profligate, there is no evidence I’m aware of that Mortenson lives lavishly. He doesn’t comb his hair much, either, as I recall.

But here’s the crux for me… Mortenson has gone where few others have gone, and has put in incredible time and energy to raise awareness, seed schools, and give girls opportunities for education that would not be theirs otherwise. I have no doubt he has done orders of magnitude more good than harm. The same cannot be said for a lot of NGOs doing development work around the world, much less our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Bottom line: the critical parts of his story: the school and his relationship with the Balti villagers are true. We have it from the mouth of a first hand contemporaneous witness.

Greg Mortenson and the Central Asia Institute have done a staggering amount of good. And this attack cannot detract from that, but it can and likely will dampen their support. With any luck, the lull will be temporary.

Full Story here.

Briefly summarized, after the terror attacks, a German Naval vessel conducted a “man the rails” ceremony, and signalled the U.S.S. Winston Churchill “We Stand By You.”

Greg Mortenson, in the wake of the 60 Minutes attack on you and the Central Asia Institute, as an American and a Pakistani, we stand by you. I don’t know if you’re going to take a hit in your fundraising – unfortunately I suspect you will – but I will do my little bit to offset that.

To any reader who is having doubts about Greg or the Central Asia Institute: I’m from Pakistan. I read the entire book. I’ve read both books. I’ve seen every Greg Mortenson interview I could on C-SPAN etc.

Believe me, the stories ring true. There has been a fair bit of international writing about Pakistan in the past 60 years that sends my BS-detector ringing. His account wasn’t one of them. And if I’m gullible, thats been the reaction of every Pakistani I know. That group includes some of the most hardbitten and cynical folk on the planet.

I understand that critics are carping about his explanations and denials as being less unequivocal and categorical than they would like. Well gee, do you think the experience of being skewered on prime time TV for alleged inaccuracies – and the distinct risk that it will wreck your life’s work – might make a man cautious with his words?

Certain details don’t match up with what others say? Really?

Well, lets see what the main point of the book is:

The man climbed K2. He promised to build a school in the area. He kept his word. And then some. He is building to this day.

Those facts are not in dispute. What is in dispute: the exact sequence of when, if ever, he got lost? Did he get kidnapped in Waziristan? And does he spend too much on himself?

Lets take the first two first. He climbed K-2. So some accounts of his getting lost cannot be reconciled with some witnesses on TV. Eighteen years later, with some of the key witnesses gone or displaced, thats supposed to be damning evidence? And when Greg points out, correctly, that time in a remote Himalayan mountain village doesnt exactly mean the same thing that it does in Washington D.C., (which explains some of the confusion), that is supposed to be splitting straws aka “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is?”

As for the kidnapping, anyone with even a glancing acquaintance with the tribal badlands will find that story ringing true. And to treat the denial of a purported kidnapper as conclusive impeachment of the victim is enough to make the head spin.

The most hideous attack though, is that he’s in it for the money. The man spent years toiling in obscurity, living in conditions that most english speaking Pakistanis (myself included) would recoil in, to make money? (A diesel truck ride wrapped in sheeps’ offal comes to mind) – because of the money?

The man suffers from agoraphobia and goes on tours, and that is supposed to be high living?

The man who won’t ink a movie deal with Hollywood because he’s protecting his students and people on the ground is a jet setter in it for the money?

He works 365 days a year, the vast bulk of it away from his family, in incredibly squalid and dangerous conditions for 180K a year – probably what his smirking inquisitor spends on make up – and its all about the money?

Hang in there Greg. Like Dale Carnegie wrote, “remember, no one ever kicks a dead dog.” You’re a moral giant. The people attacking you are… not.

Hang in there. And yes, I contributed today, and I hope readers do likewise.

A better and fuller response, courtesy Ethan Casey:

“ The fact that I don’t have to worry about fundraising twenty years from now, because Greg is worrying about it now – that is genius. He still lives in that two-bedroom house. He still wears the same suit he wore a decade ago, and a tie that has the fashion sense of 1992. He wears an old pair of loafers that are worn down. Every single dollar that CAI earns is because of the outreach that Greg does. He spends 200 days a year away from his family, because he truly believes in the empowerment of women and girls.”

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Then there’s the matter of the accuracy of portions of Three Cups of Tea. We could argue about where to draw the line between “a compressed version of events” (Greg’s words in the Bozeman Chronicle) and “a lie” (Jon Krakauer on 60 Minutes), but let’s note the double standard that’s too often applied to books and authors. A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an article about journalist Bill Steigerwald’s exposure of inaccuracies in John Steinbeck’s ostensible nonfiction classic Travels with Charley. It turns out it wasn’t just Steinbeck and his dog driving across America; Mrs. Steinbeck was with them much of the time. And he didn’t sleep in his pickup truck after all, but in hotels, sometimes nice ones. As Steigerwald pithily put it, “If scholars aren’t concerned about this, what are they scholaring about?”
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Greg Mortenson, we stand by you.