Applebaum's 'Live 8' Idiocy

Anne Applebaum used her column in today's Washington Post to launch a petty, mean-spirited, and entirely unoriginal attack on the organizers and participants in the recent 'Live 8' concert, and worst of all, she got her basic facts all wrong. I realize that do-gooder celebrities and musicians, as well as the concert-goers themselves, are relatively easy targets for ridicule. But if you're going to criticize people who are, at the very least, well-intentioned, have the decency to do your homework first.

After a few unoriginal jabs at Madonna and other Live 8 celebs, Applebaum notes (with clear condescension) that "among those who work seriously on Africa, it has long been clear that what Africans need isn't only cash, which can be stolen or wasted, but the opportunity to trade their way out of poverty." She goes on to discuss the issue of agricultural protectionism, explaining how the European and U.S. governments subsidize their own farmers, thereby preventing Third World countries from competing fairly in the world agriculural market and trading their way out of poverty. Applebaum then concludes with this statement:

"[W]hile the need to open up agriculture to trade is so
obvious to development economists that it hardly bears
repeating, the message seems not to have reached the
Live 8 crowds. On the contrary, most of the concertgoers'
somewhat inchoate demands revolved around the much
more appealing and, frankly, much simpler idea that the
rich should give more money to the poor."

That's quite a swipe at that stupid know-nothing Live 8 crowd. But guess what, it's totally bogus. Applebaum clearly didn't even bother to read the official demands of the Live 8 organizers (a list that was printed in most papers). Third from the top on the list of demands is the following:

"On trade justice, the campaign demands trade barriers
be eliminated and that the European Union end
agricultural export subsidies, blamed for squeezing
African growers out of world markets for their goods."

What do you know, the organizers of Live 8 want exactly what Applebaum wants: the elimination of agricultural subsidies. Indeed, in an op-ed in yesterday's Chicago Sun-Times which is otherwise entirely critical of the 'Live 8' platform, John O'Sullivan notes what he sees as the one bright point:

"[The list of demands] has one very good idea -- that
the United States and western Europe should stop
agricultural export subsidies that destroy the markets
for poor Third World farmers. That is not, of course,
charity since it would also benefit the taxpayers of the
rich West. Still, it is a good idea -- if a very limited one."

If Applebaum had watched any part of the actual concert, she would have heard musicians and celebrities repeatedly making the very point she discusses in her column, and often much more eloquently. Applebaum should be ashamed of herself. She has the privilege of writing for one of the most influential editorial pages in the world, and she can't even bother to do basic fact-checking. So instead she devotes an entire column to criticizing a charitable group over perhaps the one issue on which they actually agree with her. That's simply inexcusable incompetence. The same is true for her editors. How do they let rubbish like this go to print?