August 11, 2024

"The one year that Mr. Walz spent teaching English in southern China was the start of what would become a decades-long relationship with the country."

"As high school teachers in Nebraska and Minnesota, Mr. Walz and his wife, Gwen, regularly led trips to China in the 1990s and early 2000s to introduce students to China’s history and culture. Mr. Walz has said that he has traveled to China some 30 times, including for his honeymoon.... But the campaign has so far made little mention of Mr. Walz’s experience there, even as it has leaned into depictions of the Minnesota governor as an avuncular Midwestern dad, coach and teacher. And it has yet to lay out how Vice President Kamala Harris or Mr. Walz would handle China, which both the Biden and Trump administrations have treated with toughness...."


Walz's China experience can be interwoven with the "avuncular Midwestern dad" idea (though I don't like "avuncular" with "dad" (because what is an uncle-like dad?). From the article, there's this:
Students loved their “big-nosed” teacher, giving him the nickname “Fields of China” because his kindness, they explained to him, was so expansive. For Christmas, some of his students and friends cut down a pine tree, decorated it and brought it to his room. “No matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again,” Mr. Walz told the Star-Herald in Scottsbluff, Neb., in 1990.... 
Upon his return to Nebraska in 1990, he told the Star-Herald that going to China was “one of the best things” he had ever done. But he said he also felt that the Chinese people had been mistreated and cheated by their government for years. “If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,” Mr. Walz said at the time. “They are such kind, generous, capable people.” 

81 comments:

Iman said...

Walz and China are asshoe!

rehajm said...

“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish”…safe to assume he believes he’s the proper leadership, ya? I’ve no doubt he identifies with Chinese leadership and that’s what they have in store for us.

Peachy said...

Fawning Democrat Party Media.

Iman said...

Walz and China are asshoe!

Carol said...

Gee, so many Americans have taught in China, I'm not sure what it means, if anything.

rehajm said...

He’s jealous he’s not part of the Chinese ruling elite but no doubt that’s what he has in store for us…and he’s mad I’m allowed to say it…

PB said...

I'm pretty sure China knew exactly who walz was. A military guy and then a politician. I'm sure that was a big part in their desire to subsidize his activities. He is likely compromised and shouldn't be close to the White House

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I wonder if his handlers took him to the parts of China where they collect rainwater in old tires and shit squatting over a hole in the ground.

Wince said...

“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,” Mr. Walz said at the time. “They are such kind, generous, capable people.”

We've heard this "Stalin betrayed true communism" line before from the left.

Iman said...

Walz evidently choked down the snake blood toast his “hosts” gifted him with.

Heartless Aztec said...

Peachy Keenan is bringing the heat on Substack and X.

Temujin said...

He'll probably bring in more campaign dollars from China than anyone since Bill Clinton.

Sally327 said...

He comes across as a bit of a “white savior” with those comments. I don’t think the Chinese would agree with the idea that they haven’t already accomplished a lot.

tcrosse said...

Walz has appropriated the character that Garrison Kiellor used to play.

B. said...

Forget it Jake, it’s China…..

PB said...

I'm pretty sure China knew exactly who Walz was. A military guy and then a politician. I'm sure that was a big part in their desire to subsidize his activities. He is likely compromised and shouldn't be close to the White House.

Ice Nine said...

>Ann Althouse said...
(though I don't like "avuncular" with "dad" (because what is an uncle-like dad?).<

Well, since you asked, a kind or genial dad, apparently - as your dictionary reference explained.

Thesauruses show "fatherly" and "paternal" as synonyms of avuncular.

imTay said...

Nobody asks Santa Claus how he plans to handle China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea, or how he plans to pay for all of the presents without burdening the working classes with even more inflation. Or whether his generosity is going to inevitably destroy the retirement plans of those not solidly in the owning class. C'mon man!

imTay said...

I use the on-line thesaurus often, but with caution, as it is kind of scattershot, which is sometimes an advantage, but it often coughs up words that don't mean the same thing. This is what ChatGPT, which as a large language model, as a pretty solid grasp of English, or almost every other language that is available in quantity on line, says:

The term "avuncular dad" juxtaposes two familial roles: "avuncular," which means "like an uncle," and "dad." This combination might suggest to a reader that the dad in question has qualities typically associated with an uncle, such as being especially kind, understanding, or indulgent.

In other words, more of the Santa Claus gambit.

narciso said...

How to say hes lesuo (compromised) with out saying it

BUMBLE BEE said...

Wait... The Chinese Leaders haven't done socialism right?
Lefties always say that 'They' didn't do socialism right.

imTay said...

Whenever you give a leader total power, a sociopathic megalomaniac is going to find a way to become that leader. That's why I am worried about the neocon plan to make the position of US President "World Emperor," especially when our elections are on the honor system and the results may never be audited, except at the consent of the winner. It's not the economic system, it's the power.

Mikey NTH said...

Four American professors were recently stabbed in China. The situation there is a bit different from when Walz was there.

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

"avuncular Midwestern dad"

Editors must've had the weekend off.

Drago said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Drago said...

"I'm pretty sure China knew exactly who Walz was. A military guy..."

LOL

JK Brown said...

"avuncular dad"

More with the creep vibes on Waltz. He reminds me of Jerry Sandusky of Penn State fame. But now this, he does look like the head of my high school English department who taught the 9th grade college prep class. I was new to the school but got myself transferred to the that class from regular English. Small, crowded room where the period seemed more about him hugging on giggling 9th grade girls more than anything. After a week, I transferred back to be with the normal kids. I took up college-prep English in 19th grade in a larger room with a young woman teacher.

Really, the way Walz keeps getting described gives me creepy teacher/coach vibes.

Ice Nine said...

>This combination might suggest to a reader that the dad in question has qualities typically associated with an uncle, such as being especially kind, understanding, or indulgent.<

Precisely the point, isn't it. Those last three words, or variants, are given by most dictionaries as definitions of "avuncular," along with the uncle stuff. IOW, don't limit yourself to "uncle" when contemplating "avuncular" - unless you are specifically looking for a supposed contradiction (with "dad").

Hmm, I never thought of using ChatGPT as a thesaurus. I'll give it a try. Although, Power Thesaurus, which I have always used, gives very comprehensive replies to all queries.

Bob Boyd said...

If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish
Maybe that's why he left his Guard unit when he did.

FullMoon said...

"As high school teachers in Nebraska and Minnesota, Mr. Walz and his wife, Gwen, regularly led trips to China in the 1990s and early 2000s to introduce students to China’s history and culture."

How many students went with them, and what was the attraction? Were the kids Chinese? Black? White? Hispanic? Boys? Girls? Ages?

hombre said...

"Avuncular dad?" Good lord! NYT, the paper for intellectuals. Althouse NYT days are so cheesy. I like them even less than the new comment format.

Two-eyed Jack said...

Tim Walz is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most avuncular Dad I’ve ever known in my life.

Dave Begley said...

Walz is a Chinese mole. At the Graham Nash concert in Omaha on Friday night, Nash said, “Isn’t Walz from Nebraska?” Nearly wrecked the concert for me. Not the same without David Crosby and Stephen Stills. Nash is 82 and his wife is in her 40s.

Inga said...

So now the new smear is that Walz is the Manchurian candidate. What next? So far the smears aren’t sticking, the Harris/Walz ticket keeps going up in the polls while Trump is left behind with his bone spurs.

Big Mike said...

The basic question is, if China invades Taiwan whose side will CSM Chickenshit be on?

Tom T. said...

Meanwhile the Trump campaign gets criminally investigated just for talking to a Russian.

effinayright said...

I wonder how many million fellow Chinese those "kind, generous, capable people" killed during the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.....

Lem Vibe Bandit said...

"the campaign has so far made little mention of Mr. Walz’s experience there, even as it has leaned into depictions of the Minnesota governor as an avuncular Midwestern dad, coach and teacher."

Is that a Bull in the China Shop or are we just happy to see anything that could possibly help Trump?

wildswan said...

Perhaps "maternal dad" should have been used to avoid privileging an essentialist interpretation of a "dad" as a man. I'm not a biologist so I can't say what a man is. Can Walz? There may be a rigid MidWestern interpretation of "gender." Can a Mid-Western "man" just waltz away when his Army unit has to go to war?

effinayright said...

For some reason this "avuncular-dad" thing reminds me of the Simpsons, where hillbilly Brandine says to her gap-toothed spouse: "Cletus, you are the best husband and son a woman could ask for."

john mosby said...

I offered this in one of the cafe threads, but I’ll say it again: the China connection may be one of rhe reasons Walz retired early from the Guard. He needed a TS clearance for his CSM position, and he knew that the upcoming deployment would make it happen faster, leading to inconvenient questions just as he was about to run for office.

JSM

Wa St Blogger said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dave Begley said...

Great point!

Wa St Blogger said...

So now the new smear...

How many "new smears" have you pulled from your...uh...bag of tricks regarding Trump? You are hardly in a position to get the vapors here.

Inga said...

I don’t need to invent smears in regard to Trump, he does that all by himself, I just observe.

TosaGuy said...

If the campaign thought these trips helped it would highlight them. Probably just another worthless junket paid with school tax dollars.

walter said...

"“If they had the proper leadership, there are no limits on what they could accomplish,”
Calm down there Tiger.

gilbar said...

Walz's China experience can be interwoven with the "avuncular Midwestern dad" idea

still waiting for any evidence that it "can be interwoven"..
perhaps someone can post some?

imTay said...

At least Trump is not on the side of fighting more wars, which seems to be the primary focus of the Biden/Harris Administration, you know, stirring up wars.

imTay said...

How about this? How about we not get involved in a decades old Chinese civil war?

imTay said...

"Those last three words, or variants, are given by most dictionaries as definitions of "avuncular," "

Those are connotations of avuncular, not definitions. That's what I mean about thesauruses, they present connotations as synonyms. Like I said, they are great tools, but should be used with caution, extreme caution, really. While looking for "the lightening" you are presented with a lot of "lightening bugs."

Inga said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Clyde said...

Honeymooned in China. Bernie Sanders honeymooned in Russia. What is it with these leftists anyway? Niagara Falls or Hawaii not good enough for them?

TosaGuy said...

Next time Walz is mentioned with Carharts remember that there are carharts for those who do physical work and carharts for people who don’t do physical work, but think it makes them look cool.

Rusty said...

Westerners who work in China are called ,"White monkeys".

Dr Weevil said...

Just to be pedantic, 'avuncular' comes from a Latin adjective specifically referring to an uncle on the mother's side. Like many languages, Latin had different words for mother's brother and father's brother, and for mother's sister and father's sister, and the different kinds of uncle and aunt had very different stereotypes attached. (See Maurizio Bettini, Anthropology and Roman Culture, 1988, English translation 1991, Chapter I = pp. 5-112 for the details.)
As the name implies, a father's brother, patruus, was a second father (pater), stern and authoritarian. A mother's brother, avunculus, was a little grandfather (avus), kind and gentle, always buying you Colosseum tickets or slipping you a little spending money. If you needed bail money, or a place to stay after being kicked out of the house, you would definitely call your avunculus, not your patruus or pater.
Similarly, your father's sister (amita, etymology not obvious) was strict and unbending, like her brother, while your mother's sister (matertera, from mater, 'mother') was the one who was always baking cookies and patting you on the head.

Inevitability said...

Walz supported the ‘One Child Policy’ . It never occurred to him that governments could make horrible mistakes.

Harun said...

It's very common for English teachers in China to have high hopes for the country. Chinese students are dedicated, work hard, and you can feel the vibes of a country growing 7% per year. Students studying English are not the dum-dums and they are the most curious about the outside world. I actually think being exposed to China as a resident/teacher could be useful, if he didn't get totally in the tank and idealistic about it. (Remember the part about meeting and teacher the best students...it sure makes teaching easier)

Harun said...

That only applies to weird jobs where you're just supposed to make a company look cool, or trick people into thinking that they have advanced foreign employees. Marketing and hype. English teachers are pretty standard and they do real work.

Bob Boyd said...

Uncle dads...is that anything like sister wives?

~ Gordon Pasha said...

What level of security clearance would a highly ranked NCO have and would/should that be a concern if he's been traveling to China on a routine basis?

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2018/04/20/military-occupation-specialties-security-clearances/

Wa St Blogger said...

I don’t need to invent smears in regard to Trump, he does that all by himself, I just observe.

Aaaaaaaaaaand Inga proves my point in the other post. She is truly in thrall to her cult and cannot see what everyone else can.

tcrosse said...

The Vice Presidency is not a stepping stone to higher office for Minnesota politicians. Just ask Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale.

Sebastian said...

I've seen it reported that he deliberately got married on a Tienanmen anniversary. If so, talk about weird.

Leora said...

So who paid for the 30 trips to China? Confucius Institute? A rural school district in Minnesota? A state program? A federal program? How many students went?

rhhardin said...

Wm. Empson teaching English lit. in China

I remember a Chinese student who put in an essay on the Scotch ballads "The ballad must be simple and vulgar." Most of the essay was spent in laborious praise of the Scotch ballads, which he felt to be required of him, but I gather he felt they were like popular works in China which a proud scholar would despise. That is, he knew the word had two meanings, and wanted to use it to drop an insinuation. The mistake was, therefore, an extremely marginal one; it was merely that he took "of the common people" to be the head sense, under which "coarse" could insinuate itself as an Implication (equated to the head sense, perhaps). But this is a definite mistake; whatever the political or literary views of the reader, he will feel that there has been a ridiculous collapse of an attempt at tact.

_The Structure of Complex Words_, p.404

Lazarus said...

The "dad jokes" that one hears so much about nowadays are the kind of jokes uncles told when they came for visits. Fathers and uncles are more alike than they used to be. Fathers aren't the stern disciplinarians they once were but are more like the uncles who dropped in from time to time and tried to amuse the kids.

walter said...

Flight alone pricey. Do tell.

Michael K said...

For In-ga observing is an activity, not passive at all.

JIM said...

Why no mention of Harris' husbands long Communist China leadership adjacent financial dealings?
Biden's son also had extensive financial dealings with the CC.
Clinton sold access to the White House to the CC.
I know why.
Same reason they won't stick a microphone in her face and ask her to defend her far left radical policies.

Gospace said...

The Chinese trips are really a much bigger question.

He was military. ANG when he went. Did he seek permission to go there? When I was active duty, travel to any Communist country for any unofficial reasons was severely restricted. Any contacts with any citizens of those countries had to be reported. Did that once after a buddy and I ended up in a bar with some Russian merchant sailors... Don't know whatever happened to that report, but it was made.

With a secret clearance- what I had- according to debriefings I am still required to report such contacts. And still require permission to travel to "hostile" countries.

I wonder if he ever sought that permission and reported contacts...

Drago said...

There is nothing "smearish" about calling Stolen Valor / Blue Falcon Coward Liar Walz out for his Stolen Valor, Blue Falcon, Coward Lying behavior.

That buffoon even claimed to have PTSD! Why? Was the pesto too spicy in Italy for the 6 months he was there?

Drago said...

LOL
We have 9+ years of your hoaxes, lies and smears to reference with regard to Trump, no matter how desperate you are to pretend you never wrote the things you did or pushed the lies you pushed.

Rocco said...

From the post…
“Waltz’s China experience can be interwoven with the ‘avuncular Midwestern dad’ idea…”

You misspelled carbuncular.

Rusty said...

I smell a shill.

Marc in Eugene said...

Dr Weevil wrote, less confusedly I would have done, I'm sure, about maternal uncles etc. The OED adds a second meaning: of a pawnbroker, and as a substantive e.g. James Joyce: "Avuncular's got my timepiece".

gadfly said...

And then Tim Walz—center of the road, steady as she goes, gee-whillickers Tim Walz—shows up, and gets accused of socialism, and his simple response appears to be well sure, I used government to help feed hungry kids; food is just the thing for hungry kids, what the hell is wrong with you weirdos? and the explosion of impotent vitriol from the overcoddled right and the explosion of ... I suppose you'd have to say grateful relief? ... from the near-totally ignored left, simply due to a glimpse of a politician who had seemingly no interest in currying the fascist vote, was an amazing thing to see.

Craig Mc said...

Shorter NYT: Sluuuuuuuurrrrrrp!

One Fine Day said...

America-hating, totalitarian-loving Inga doesn't have to invent smears, she is told what to say by her overlords in the Democrat Socialist Party and repeats it here faithfully. Inga isn't smart enough to invent a useful smear by herself.

One Fine Day said...

Epic lack of understanding by commie Gadfly today. He of course ignores that the commie pedo enabler Walz's socialism also included creating a stasi-like snitch line for his totalitarian fellow travelers, looked the other way while his supporters stole $250 million from those government funds that were supposed to feed the overweight kids of Minnesota's urban government schools, and laughed while his government supported urban fanbois destroyed millions of dollars and people's livlihoods because a Walz supporter died of an ill-timed drug overdose.

The funniest part of Gadfly's bloviated repetition of Dem talking points is the idea that the Left has been "near-totally ignored" in the current Biden regime. Nothing at all could be further from the truth - which of course is why truth-challenged pedo supporter Gadfly repeated the lies.

Inga said...

Ivanka also had extensive financial dealings with the Chinese.