Chapel Hill mayoral candidate Gary Kahn calls Indy profile on him a “great work of fiction.”

I don’t normally do this (I know, great way to begin any conversation), but I felt compelled.

On Oct. 3, Chapel Hill mayoral candidate Gary Kahn stated in the N&O that our September profile on the candidate, in which he used the words “ching, ching, ching” to describe the sound of Asians speaking, was a “great work of fiction.”

Kahn was being questioned about this statement: “I was walking around one day, and I realized that no one around me was speaking English. They were all Asians. I heard nothing but ‘ching, ching, ching,’ not a word of English.”

He suggested the quote was taken out of context. I mean no disrespect to Gary, but to provide context, he was responding to me when I asked, quite simply, “Why did you move from your native New York to Chapel Hill?”

Furthermore, none of the story was fictionalized. I will stand by that.