Tiger mom's 'apology' lost in translation

Everybody's been ragging "Tiger Mom" Amy Chua for so long that it's just not fun anymore. The Wall Street Journal did it. Disgrasian.com did it (recently posting a photo of her daughter Sophia sporting a tiger tattoo for Mother's Day). Even I did it. Meanwhile, Time magazine made Chua senior a cover girl, and all it forgot to add were the tar and feathers.

Popular media, influential bloggers and behavioral psychologists alike have massed to label the woman as a psychopath masquerading as a parent. In reality, arguably the biggest crime she was guilty of was hubris - for wanting to publish the book in the first place, and have everyone agree on just how witty and well structured it was. She certainly wasn't expecting the literary equivalent of a public stoning.

"I love books with unreliable narrators," says Chua on today's episode of Culture Matters on ICS, mentioning David Sedaris as one of her muses. "I actually hoped there would be more of a literary acceptance of the book it's purposely full of contradictions."