[Marxism] Jared Diamond, the New Yorker, and PNG blood feuds: part 1

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

When news about the New Yorker Magazine being sued by a Papuan New 
Guinean for $10 million broke on April 22nd, I was ecstatic. A year 
earlier the magazine had published an article by Jared Diamond about 
blood feuds in PNG (Papua New Guinea) that had identified Daniel Wemp, 
his main interviewee and former driver, as a self-confessed rapist and 
murderer. Wemp was not informed in advance that the magazine would 
identify him by name. But, more to the point, the crimes he supposedly 
confessed to in the article never happened.

Rhonda Shearer, the widow of Stephen Jay Gould, was instrumental in 
setting the wheels in motion that would finally lead to the magazine and 
Jared Diamond being exposed. As reported in the New Zealand Herald on 
May 2nd, Shearer became suspicious over the reference to one of Wemp’s 
victims being restricted to a wheelchair as a result of Wemp’s arrow 
lodging in his neck:

"Her initial response on reading Diamond’s piece was, 'how do you keep 
someone with likely not the best medical care alive as a paraplegic in a 
wheelchair in that area? We can’t keep Superman [Christopher Reeve] 
alive in New Jersey with millions of dollars? … It just didn’t make sense.'"

After she made an inquiry to the New Yorker about this and other glaring 
inconsistencies in the article, she was brushed off. After all, they 
were the New Yorker and she was just an ordinary mortal. Eventually she 
hired investigators, including a PNG scholar who lived in the area where 
the blood feud took place, and discovered that Daniel Wemp’s “victim” 
was getting about on two feet with no problem. The only victims in this 
case unfortunately were the libeled Daniel Wemp and journalistic standards.

full: 
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/jared-diamond-the-new-yorker-magazine-and-blood-feuds-in-png-part-1/

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