12/05/2004
Reading press accounts, you would think that immigrant Chai Vang was a candidate for sainthood rather than the accused mass murderer of six. Many glowing interviews with Hmong from California to Minnesota have appeared in print apparently to humanize the stone-cold killer.
Early out of the chute was "A spiritual leader, jailed in killings" published in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov. 25. In it, we read that Vang was considered an honored shaman in the community: "One time he remembers the [Vang] family slaughtering a goat in their yard, another shaman practice that is common before traditional Hmong funerals."
In Stockton, where Vang had attended high school, accolades were warm and plentiful. Classmate Bee Vang said, "He was a peace maker. He was a leader. He was my role model."
The AP, which I criticized earlier for a gross inaccuracy, soft-peddled Vang’s threat to kill his wife with a gun as "a Christmas Eve 2001 argument." In the same article ("Chai Vang’s relatives remember him as role model"), the self-serving Vang version of the murders is repeated in great detail.
The nanny press believes that its constant nagging on the joys of multiculturalism is all that keeps millions of Red State nativists from running wild in the streets, lynching any annoying immigrants from the nearest tree. And since American anger is genuine and appropriate over the social experiment that has resulted mass murder, the press has gone into diversity overdrive with behavior-shaping journalism.
But the drumbeat of Hmong race victimhood is revolting and insults the genuine pain of the real victims and their families.
Besides, does the press believe they are doing the accused a favor by all these positive stories? On the contrary, if the cold-blooded back-shooter Chai Vang represents the Hmong best and brightest, then what does that say about the ordinary ones?
Vang’s parentage activities remain somewhat difficult to quantify. One report had him producing seven children with initial wife Say Xiong (whom he married when he was 14) and another newspaper noted, "Court records suggest Chai Vang has 10 children with four women." A life history timeline in the Minneapolis Star Tribune noted that he defaulted on child support for the three kiddies he sired with Youa Lee in Stockton. (Six months later, he put $5000 cash down on 40 acres in Kanabec County, Minnesota, with payments of $1260/mo., doubtless due to his lessened financial responsibilities.)
The most recent birth in the Chai Vang familial assortment occurred Oct. 6 to "new wife" Due Khang. She had referred to herself in earlier article as his "cultural wife," presumably the accepted "Hmong-American" euphemismfor the polygamous spare.
To download the 14-page criminal complaint against Chai Vang in PDF, click here. It is disturbing reading.
Respectful attention is paid to the victims at ImmigrationsHumanCost.org.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.