Serving the High Plains

Take care in how you use, read labels

Warning: the following contains satirical material that may be offensive to sensitive readers.

It’s easy to write real news using the same facts as the fake news media.

Here’s how fake-news Associated Press covered a murder case involving an immigrant father and son:

“A former Ivy League student whose murder trial in the slaying of his father ended in a mistrial has pleaded guilty to federal gun charges.

“Charles Tan pleaded guilty on Friday to three gun charges, including having someone buy the murder weapon at a Walmart. Tan was a 19-year-old student at Cornell University when his father was killed with a shotgun in the family’s suburban Rochester home in February 2015.

“His murder trial ended in a mistrial in October 2015 when jurors failed to reach a verdict. Soon afterward, Judge James Piampiano dismissed the charges after ruling there was no evidence Tan used the weapon.

“The federal gun charges could send Tan to prison for up to 25 years. U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin will sentence him in October.”

And here’s how the fake-news National Post described the family background.

“Tan’s family had moved to the United States from Canada several years earlier and his father, Liang ‘Jim’ Tan, set up a successful imaging sensor company, called Dynamex, near Rochester. Court records show it was worth more than $2 million.”

Now, here’s how real patriots would tell this tale of rampant, unchecked immigration, which the fake news failed to mention due to its anti-gun hysteria:

“The case of Charlie Tan, a foreign immigrant who murdered his own immigrant father, is a cautionary tale for the liberals who think our border with Canada should not be defended with a wall.

“Tan’s family eased over the Canadian border as legal, yes legal, immigrants a few years before 2013 under the ‘America last’ Obama regime, when the U.S. was at it weakest point in history.

“Tan’s father was the mastermind behind an obscure ‘sensor imaging’ company called “Dynamex” that mysteriously garnered $2 million in assets. The sources of the family wealth are sheltered by Eastern elites.”

The National Post described Charlie Tan this way:

“Tan, though technically a Canadian, (w)as a model of the American dream. He was a high school class president and a football player. He served on the board of the local YMCA.

“In 2013, Tan was admitted to Cornell … He joined a fraternity there and the sprint football team. (A variant of the classic American game, played by lighter, faster athletes.)”

Now, here’s how a real American would tell that story:

“Tan’s shady connections got him elected high school class president and a place on the football team, and even placed him on the board of a local Christian organization.

“He wheedled his way into elitist, liberal Cornell while native-born Americans were denied. Cornell’s ‘hate America’ agenda included a corrupted version of football, America’s favorite sport.”

OK, satire is over.

Seriously, any over-use of characterizations and labels as shown here, should be considered suspicious, and it pays to double check this kind of information against credible sources.

Enough said.

Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at:

[email protected]