Do you remember the exciting drama that unfolded in the summer of 2007, when a small group of anti-communist protesters began to make life a living hell for the publishers of two Little Saigon newspapers, Viet Weekly and Nguoi Viet Daily News? No? What, did the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the election of Barack Obama, and the world economic cataclysm distract you from this important controversy?
If so, you could be forgiven for forgetting the mortal sins committed by the two media outlets accused of being agents of Hanoi: Viet Weekly ran an editorial celebrating the communist victory in the Vietnam War–alongside one defending America's war against communism in that country–and Nguoi Viet Daily News made the mistake of running a photograph of a foot-bathing bin painted in the colors of the South Vietnamese flag (a tribute to the artist's immigrant mother-in-law, who put her kids through college thanks to her nail salon business.
Some folks haven't forgotten. A handful of protesters lead by Ngo Ky, a former aide to legendarily-anti-communist congressman Robert K. Dornan, and Trung Doan, a former South Vietnamese military official, spent months picketing Nguoi Viet Daily News. Their protest lead to the dismissal of the editor who approved the supposedly offensive photograph — that'd be Hao-Nhien Vu of Bolsavik fame — but even that move wasn't enough to get the protesters to withdraw their demand that the paper acknowledge its communist leanings.
Finally Nguoi Viet sought an injunction against the demonstrators, which led to a civil trial, which the paper finally won yesterday. No word yet on what the protesters will be sentenced to, but one has to wonder what kind of punishment will bother a group of folks who don't mind sitting on the same street-corner in a little-traveled cul-de-sac for months on end, waving placards at the few passing motorists who've long forgotten what their beef is.
Award-winning investigative journalist Nick Schou is Editor of OC Weekly. He is the author of Kill the Messenger: How the CIA’s Crack Cocaine Controversy Destroyed Journalist Gary Webb (Nation Books 2006), which provided the basis for the 2014 Focus Features release starring Jeremy Renner and the L.A. Times-bestseller Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love’s Quest to bring Peace, Love and Acid to the World, (Thomas Dunne 2009). He is also the author of The Weed Runners (2013) and Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood (2016).