Nicholas
Kristof is a great humanitarian journalist. In his
New York Times columns, Kristof exposes third world famine, sex trafficking, genital mutilation, and genocide. He chides readers for championing human dignity in the abstract, but doing little to advance it in the concrete. He shames us by noting our attention to high-profile tragedies while we ignore more routine and systematic disasters. He doesn't merely report; he promotes Web sites where readers can contribute money, time, or political pressure to combat the suffering and exploitation he has documented.
Mostly, we are well served by Kristof's method-describe individual victims, note the broader forces to which their tragedies are attributable; and then note how easy it would be to ameliorate the problem if only we cared-for example, by contributing to international aid groups.
Yet on one topic-third world sweatshops-the method leads him astray. He rails against those who seek to improve the wag...
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