Tim Walz's Careless Whisper
The Veep candidate is getting #MeTooed by the Chinese lady he wouldn't marry.
Back in August, there was a lot of Twitter chatter about how Tim Walz’s many trips to China must be proof of a Manchurian Candidate-level plot on the part of the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate the Nebraska National Guard. After all, as I wrote on August 12, what other reason do young white American guys have to go teach English in East Asia?
Then again,
But doesn’t it seem more likely that the young Walz taught English in a Foshan high school for the same reason lots of normal young American men teach English in East Asia: they have Yellow Fever?
Chinese girls are nice.
Today, in the Daily Mail:
By Ben Ashford For Dailymail.com
Published: 15:58 EDT, 28 October 2024
Tim Walz had a secret fling with the daughter of a high-ranking Communist official during his 1989 teaching stint in China, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.
Jenna Wang, 59, claims the VP hopeful showered her with gifts and seduced her at his poky staff accommodation at No. 1 High School in Foshan, Guangdong Province.
The lovers could not risk holding hands or showing affection in public because Wang's dad was a high-ranking figure in the Chinese Communist Party who would disown her for fraternizing with a westerner.
How high-ranking? My guess: probably not exactly the Politubro.
But their romance blossomed behind closed doors as they sipped tea, made love and listened to George Michael hits – leading the then 24-year-old Wang to dream about marriage and a new life in the United States.
No proposal was forthcoming from the future Minnesota governor, however, and the shame of being treated 'like a prostitute' eventually left Wang feeling angry and suicidal, she claims.
'Tim was very passionate and very romantic. I can still remember dancing with him to our favorite song, Careless Whisper,' she told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.
'The fact we couldn't touch or kiss in public just made it all the more exciting and intense when we were finally alone.
'We were deeply in love and I wanted to marry him and start a family. When it didn't happen, I felt very unhappy and sad. Tim's behavior was very selfish.' …
Walz responded by suggesting that Wang was more interested in a US passport than marriage.
'This was very offensive. I said to him that it is both or nothing,' she said.
'I wasn't giving up my life and my position to move to Nebraska, a cold place in the middle of nowhere that most Chinese people had never heard of.
'I was giving it up to be with Tim, to get married and start a family.
'Knowing now that he wasn't going to marry me made me feel cheap and common, as if I was being treated like a prostitute.'
The next morning Wang slipped out of their hotel and took a taxi to a remote clifftop where she says she contemplated throwing herself off rather than returning to her old life in disgrace. …
The mother-of-one says she is coming forward now because she feels Walz behaved selfishly towards her and put her reputation and career at risk with his fickle behavior.
'Tim lied about Tiananmen Square and he's lied about other things,' she told DailyMail.com
'This is a very crucial moment in history and a man like this does not appear to have the character and integrity to do one of the most important jobs in the world.'
I dunno, Walz’s behavior sounds not too bad.
But I don’t make the rules of the Great Awokening, Democrats do.
And Democrats have elevated to a ruling principle of public life the #MeToo demand that women get to re-litigate in the Court of World Opinion their ancient complaints over their private relationships with men with no statute of limitations.
By the way, whatever happened to all the Twitter experts who were convinced Walz was gay?
I was transfixed by this story when I saw it this morning, in that it parallels (at least for a while) my own experience.
I left a windswept plains state to go live in Hong Kong at around the same time Tim did his year of teaching in China, and I also got involved with a young local woman. There our stories diverge, though, as I married my HK girlfriend (she's still the current, and ever-delightful, Mrs Calvinist), and I stayed put here.
One thing that will not be apparent to many western readers in 2024, given perceptions of the PRC as being a secular moral wasteland, is how deeply conservative Chinese culture was -- and in some respects still is -- when it comes to what Tim did, i.e. sleep with his paramour but then ditch her when she counted on him to marry her. She would have taken a significant risk in carrying on with him as she did, and certainly would not have regarded their relationship as just some casual footsies-and-funsies. If her recollections of their relationship are accurate, he betrayed her deeply, and left her in the lurch, potentially facing serious consequences.
Fortunately for her, however, the late 80s-early 90s are when the PRC started opening up at warp speed. It's not clear from the article what happened to her directly after Tim dumped her, but she ended up living and working in Europe, so it's likely it was nothing too bad. But at the time, of course, she -- and Tim -- would not have known this.
It seems Tim's a multifaceted, holistic, 360-degree liar and loser.
He's not gay?