Yves here. I am particularly fond of posts that look at media coverage of important news stories. The aversion by many outlets to providing important details about the alleged Mangione assassination, such as withholding his short manifesto, demonstrates how their class and economic interests are skewing their coverage.
While on this topic, a wee sidetrack. Per the aversion of many in the power structure to give Mangione any more attention than he is already getting, the last thing they want is a trial. But Mangione has the money to hire good legal representation and seems very unlikely to cut a plea deal. I hope he has a food taster.
But assuming Mangione gets his day in court, and if I have it right that his first shot hit Brian Thompson in the calf, he could try claiming that he did not intend to kill him but to kneecap him, to subject him to the same pain that he and his mother had suffered. If he jury bought that, he’d still be likely to found guilty of manslaughter in the first degree. New York sentencing guidelines call for 5 to 25 years in prison.
If he still has regular back pain, those prison beds and chairs will only make it worse.
By Thomas Neuburger. Originally published at God’s Spies
CEOs come and go and one just went
The ingredients you got bake the cake you get
—Jesse Welles
From one point of view, media behavior in the Luigi Mangione case is bizarre. According to journalist Ken Klippenstein (video here), New York Times management has said they don’t want to show photos of Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Klippenstein from his Substack:
NY Times Doesn’t Want You to See Shooter’s Face
Internal New York Times messages about its coverage of alleged gunman Luigi Mangione have been leaked to me and the contents are revealing. On Tuesday, management said “the news value and public service of showing his face is diminishing,” instructing staff to “dial back” its use of such photos.
“News value is diminishing” is the opposite of what’s true. As Klippenstein and the Breaking Points hosts point (see video linked above), big print media today is obsessed with traffic. With this order, they’re cutting their throats (metaphorically) to spite his face.
Klippenstein also notes that not just the Times, but all other media outlets who have Mangione’s “manifesto,” have refused to publish most of it. You can read the full document at Klippenstein’s site. It’s in fact little more than a note of explanation. But why is he alone in presenting it?
Three Reasons
There are three layers of reason for this odd behavior, both with respect to his photo and “manifesto,” each more instructive and important than the last.
The So-Called Copy-Cat Problem
The first and uppermost layer of reasoning is a professed fear of inspiring a copy-cat, someone so craven or weak-willed that they’ll copy the act. Call this the fanboy factor.
“I think we will still not pub the whole thing,[”] editor Andrea Kannapell added, “so as not to provide bullhorn.”
This has not stopped media in the past, however. Any number of killer “manifestos” have seen print, including both Dylann Roof’s and Ted Kazinsky’s in the Times. In addition, this document has been circulated widely but privately in both press and non-press circles. Clearly the copy-cat fear isn’t that strongly held.
The Times justification, according to the chat, is that photographs and words might have the effect of “amplifying the crime and inspiring others,” as reporter Andy Newman said. Besides the New York Times’ inflated view of its ability to de-amplify a crime that practically everyone is already talking about, the internal chat sheds light on the other arguably bigger reason the media shies away from disclosure […]
Captured by Sources or Eager Security Partners?
Klippenstein suspects a deeper reason: “its fear of antagonizing the sources it relies upon for scoops.”
News people clearly need sources among the cops and other “security” forces, and those sources are in position to extract concessions. “By donning the ‘public safety’ hat, the major media is in effect deputizing itself as a branch of the national security state,” writes Klippenstein.
He underplays their current delight in this role, but the observation is spot on. Ever since the summer of 2016 and emergent Trump-Russia allegations, big media, rightly or wrongly, has been gladly on board, seeing its duty as aiding the security state at every turn.
Why would it not do so here? After close to a decade of practice, it’s a well-trod path.
The Class War Comes Home
But the deeper reason, which Klippenstein doesn’t address, is in fact the most obvious. It’s so obvious that everyone but media is pointing it out.
The billionaire class, the maybe 1000 people who run the country plus a bunch of their CEOs, has been milking the country of cash since at least Reagan days, and we’ve been allowing it, willing if not eager participants.
Cows being milked (source)
Humans being milked (from The Matrix)
But the constant advantage-taking has taken its toll. Ever since Obama promised us hope-and-change…
…and failed to deliver, the nation has been pre-revolutionary. Certainly both Sanders campaigns showed that the hunger for relief was not just felt on the Right, but in the whole country.
Bernie Sanders rally, Minnesota, 2019
Crowd comparisons from the 2016 Democratic Party primary
For a variety of reasons, this discontent has given us President Trump two times out of three, and while many on the Right are best pleased, those on the Left or the silent uncared-about center (voters and non-voters alike) aren’t feeling well served.
Okay, that’s a euphemism. The nation is pissed. Health care in particular is a death trap for many, who pay and never get back, and then often die. UHC in particular is an industry apex predator:
And Thompson is a perfect example of a CEO class that, let’s be honest, kills for profit by aggressive denial of care. His compensation is estimated at $10 million per year and the company’s “hugely profitable 2025 financial outlook [includes] expected revenues upwards of $450 billion.”
People watch people die and the rich grow fat. How else to explain the massive swell of support for Mangione’s deed? It’s hard to find articles documenting it, but the phenomenon itself is rampant on Twitter and TikTok. And it’s not just the kids. Doctors and patients weigh in.
Check it out for yourself. People sing Mangione’s praise and almost literally dance above Thompson’s grave.
So the final reason for media fear is simple: It’s the class war come home.
People see murderers getting their just deserts — put simply, “Jack Reacher-style” (a widely loved hero-avenger, by the way) — and they’re not troubled at all. The fact is, most Americans will justify retribution. Didn’t most of us cheer while watching both Iraq Wars?
So the fear of a copy-cat wave is both wrong and right. It may not be the few and deranged that are inspired, but the many and done-being-had — not a simple repeat of an awful deed, but a sudden Arab Spring. You never know; there really are moments this fraught with radical paths.
I don’t condone murder, and I don’t want to live in a state filled with killing and war. But I do know people, and sometimes, when in Jefferson’s words “a long train of abuses and usurpations” drives people to act, they act regardless of outcome.
We may be watching that now. I think the rich think we are.
As the kid said to the CEO-
‘If third graders can get used to the constant threat of murder, so can you!’
https://xcancel.com/Pinko69420/status/1867561409363537951#m
Shooting drills for CEOs anybody? Bulletproof briefcases? Lessons in how to barricade a door? During the course of this year the media proved themselves to be not only partisan but also prone to censorship such as when they tried to deep-six reports of the Trump assassination attempt. They were all in on a Harris win. Perhaps they hoped that people would forget now that the elections are over but they are doing it all over again with the assassination of this CEO and how they are treating all news about this. They never learn. They will never change. Best that the main stream media be ignored and forgotten. They are not fit for purpose.
Life in corporate America, at least in recent memory from a time spent in the cubicle farm, finance department category, had included “active shooter / incident drills” and how to best behave in accordance with safety guidelines. I know this gets old to point out but it never fails to highlight as a significant change, that after the entirety of the GFC and the aftermath which followed, where the real and allegedly liable perps never saw justice or even a court of law it just is not that shocking to land here some 15 or so years afterwards.
The CEO suite and accompanying executives, as well as board members, just have not paid attention or heed to the overall angst and legitimate anxiety for many Americans. This is not intended to justify the shooter’s actions and conceivably he will be convicted at trial; but I am viewing this murder as a one off until proven otherwise.
Thanks for this item. When I see the mainstream news about the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, I keep comparing with the more subdued coverage for the killing of former “General Hospital” actor Johnny Wactor in downtown Los Angeles. He was not my hero in any way, just a very mild celebrity. He was killed by gunshot in May 2024 and the suspects were arrested in August 2024.
https://apnews.com/article/johnny-wactor-general-hospital-shooting-death-arrests-ecf5119619a1031ed1e860c371704abd
It is interesting to watch the reaction. The woman in Florida with 100,000 bail for saying a few “D” words (like the students protesting vs genocide last year) seem too have gotten the attention of the billionaires.
The lesson learned from the sixties seems to be squash any alternate opposing narratives asap. Remember laws (and rights) only apply to the “little people”. For example, freedom of speech is only allowed if the speach is acceptable.
Looks the same on voting, votes only count if voters vote correctly (hint to Romania: the way it is done is to make sure that only acceptable candidates have the backing of major parties and the attention of the media).
i would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all US citizens for Britain foistering Thompson boss , ‘Sir’ Witty on you. I wonder if he is taking an extended holiday.
Israeli snipers are shooting kids in the head from 500 meters away every day in Gaza and the Minnesota Star Tribune is pretending it’s invisible to us. I cancelled my 50-year subscription three months ago in protest and told them so. No response.
The carnage has extended to Lebanon and Syria; again no notice paid. I can barely process a hundred thousand civilians indiscriminately murdered. One criminal CEO? I welcome the onslaught of memes, the blacker the humor, the better.
Don’t forget the million ukrainians…
The “we don’t approve of killing people”thing is preposterous
Calf? He aims first shot carefully, and the video shows where the barrel is pointing.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/TegismXArzXT
P.S. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g6pDeGG8oc
I was told by someone who has followed the case carefully that the reported shot to the calf was the first shot. I tried confirming but was unable to either verify or disprove after spending 10 minutes on the task.
If you have ever read any accounts of highly trained police using their weapons, only 15-20% of their shots hit the intended target, regularly resulting in injuries and even deaths of bystanders. Unless Mangione was an avid hunter, he would have little experience with live targets. The idea that people get off clean shots when jacked up with adrenaline is a widespread misperception created by action movies and crime shows.
I know that (and have some experience). Here I’m talking about basic ballistics, and a point-blank shot. There is no bullet drop, nor wind, nor any other factor to make bullet not go straight forward. If we were to draw a cone from the gun, in order to account for blurriness and small movements, legs would be out of it. Following shots are completly different, and they could have gone anywhere.
Lordie. You do watch too many action movies. How many times when cops are called to crime scenes are they shooting at a distance?
One not long ago case was at the Empire State building. The distance was from the curb AT MOST to outside the entrance. If you have been there, it’s not far at all. That was one of those 15% to 20% cases. Several people nearby shot.
Now in fairness, after looking, even though that Empire State case was where I saw the 15% to 20% cited, and I believe they were only afraid of return fire, as opposed to encountered return fire, that result is when cops are being shot at. When they aren’t, the rate is 30%. And this is NYC, so none of your distance factors apply. This is all short range shooting:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9655518/
PS I also pinged a contact who has decades of experience with criminal cases. He agreed that if Mangione’s first shot hit Thompson’s calf, and if Mangione had not said/written close to the time of the shooting that he intended to kill Thompson, it would be a colorable argument.
I remember maybe twenty years ago there was a movement to reset coverage of violent crimes to spotlight the victims rather than the perpetrator, so this is not entirely new. An exception is presumably being made because young Luigi has the “it” factor in spades: all the women and half the men in the land are mesmerized by his stunning good looks. But possibly rather than being a hero he is just another privileged “white“ guy who is stunningly entitled.
Also, I was struck by the reference in the title of this piece to “the Mangione assassination.” Shouldn’t it be the Thompson assassination, or the United Health assassination, as in the Lennon, MLK, Kennedy, Lincoln, etc. assassination? It remains to be seen whether he will go down as a champion of the people or just a kid in a lot of pain who thought the rules didn’t apply to him.
It’s the drones they need to worry about.
Health (like many other things) is a socially complex distribution system and Brian Thompson is not responsible for what we’ve got. Beneficiaries of a system have not necessarily caused the system. They are just people who have managed to thrive in the system, as opposed to us other schmucks who can barely or not at all navigate the system.
Healthcare is so expensive and there are so many different stakeholders, funding streams, gaps in funding, and advocates. You can’t pin that on one man even if he is a CEO.
I do not find main stream media to be huge culprits. They try. It’s how you consume and respond to them that is more of a factor. What did you expect? Omniscent reporting from the eyes of God?
No, Luigi is no hero. He is an immature consumer of ideology that projects culpability indiscriminantly. Life was privileged for him until his first real-life health challenge. He responded by blaming other people (who had no relation or contract with him). I wish he would grow up, but he probably won’t, and there are likely to be copycats. This is life in America: project responsibility, snark, bully, litigate, shoot.
People are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality. So while we see money as signal to save and store, markets need it to circulate. Consequently Econ 101 refers to it as both medium of exchange and store of value. These are not synonymous. Blood is a medium, fat, as well as bone and muscle are store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. If we treated roads like we treat money, everything would be paved over and we would be fighting over lots. So the entire economic paradigm is about making the medium the message.
As a medium, we own money like we own the section of road we are on, or the air and water flowing through our body. It functions as a public utility.
As it is, what we have now amounts to the heart telling the hands and feet to go suck dirt, because it’s keeping all the blood for itself.
So yes, Mangione is a doer not a thinker, but he is indicative of much deeper issues the supposed thinkers are not looking at.
Baloney, it’s not hapless actors doing their best in a system which fell from the sky.
A corporation can make money without viciously denying care that customers paid for. The ‘leaders’ of almost all of our ‘health’ corporations instead choose to go for the throat in every enterprise.
The media should be holding their feet to the fire right now and talking about reforms. Instead they paint the shooter as evil and deranged, and anyone who agrees with his ideas, well, can’t even read his statement about them, because the media is hiding it, censoring, on behalf of their and our overlords.
Sounds like LAS may agree with Bret Stephan’s NYT 12/10 op ed headline “Brian Thompson, Not Luigi Mangione, Is the Real Working-Class Hero,” referred to in an article by Ken Silverstein in todays links – https://www.washingtonbabylondc.com/p/bret-stephens-a-real-upper-class
Curious, isn’t that a pretty good description of the US foreign policy?
There’s such a thing as “Setting the tone from the top.” Thompson was almost certainly aware of where his company placed in industry KPI’s, and was likely bright enough to grasp what it meant to be the industry leader in claims denial.
The annoying thing about this story is that everyone who might matter is now focused on CEO safety and not so much on running businesses that follow the old Capitalist maxim of free and fair trade with their customers.
The insurance exec ‘adjuster’ in Cory Doctorow’s Radicalized did spawn a movement of copycats. It seems his somewhat prophetic short story is currently missing its 15 minutes for some reason.
I’m in the camp of those who aren’t sure why it has taken so long for the consumer backlash to become physical.
Considering all the threating letters all people who owe some company some money, and how the arrogance of the corporate masters drips from the legalistic bombast directed at anyone some company wants something from. Whereas, when people want something from these faceless corporate screws, they get nothing.
I have long thought that it is a shame for all the senseless violence we see on a daily basis in this world, when if people want to go out an hurt someone… there are so many “guilty” people. And these corporate stooges… are REALLY guilty. Throw in congress,judges, and all other enablers of the class war.
Too bad , this would also be a bad tactic. the police state is just cringing for an excuse to further degrade the bill of rights, and impose martial law . It would spiral downward. To bad these days, when we see the inevitable spiral; we just see the need to not wait. it really is too bad for everyone.
re: tactics.
Given that the people who ultimately enforce the degradation of rights have the same crap health insurance as the population at large, and may have loved ones who have suffered under the current health care system, how enthusiastic will the enforcement be? We’ll know the oligarchy is really serious if the pay and benefits of the enforcement cohort increase signifinly.
The feedback loops need circuit breakers.
Debt jubilees were a circuit breaker to the feedback loop of compound interest and yet here we are, stuck in basically the same doom loop, 3000 years later. Sometimes history repeats itself, because we didn’t learn the lesson the first time.
“both Dylann Roof’s and Ted Kazinsky’s”
But the victims of those two weren’t allies of the shareholder class who regularly walk the streets of NYC.
Unlike, oh say, NY Times editors.
One may analogize the situation to the Oklahoma City bombing versus 9/11. The former 1990s terror attack also took down an entire building with many victims. But they were “somewhere out there in flyover” victims and so the story faded quickly in comparison to the Trade Center/DC destruction whose aftermath we are still enduring. As with the current situation in Israel, some victims are a lot more important to the media than others. They really do think it’s all about them which is what makes the MSM different from several decades ago when the networks and big city papers were more important to the public but also a bit less self important since they catered to a much wider audience.
ive seen a lot of interesting takes regarding mangione’s profile. ‘ah, he’s rich, hot, smart, from a well off family.’ and it’s like yeah. yeah he is. it’s because he’s privileged and intelligent that he managed to pull this off.
i do think the classic ‘white man entitlement’ played into this somehow. dude had crippling back pain, felt he deserved a normal life, needed something to get angry at. and mangione was smart enough to realize the healthcare system was the guy to get angry at. but it’s also the classic ‘lone white guy with a gun’ narrative that you see in a lot of movies. guy who externalizes his own internal struggles. both ideas can coexist, that he was right about the healthcare system being parasites, and that he was taking out his anger at being deprived of what he felt he deserved.
of course, how do you go about fixing the healthcare system? there are no clear answers. logically, things like this take time, but also it would be nice if people stopped dying now. thanks. i commend people who take action purely because it takes guts to take action. but what action is the right action? no idea! life is terrible like that.
No clear answers? Medicare for All was a pretty clear answer.
Granted, it didn’t go far enough towards removing the profit incentives and bringing big Pharma to heel, but it was a good first step.
This calls to mind K S Robinson’s book Ministry for the Future where climate activists shoot down corporate jets to address climate grievances. Pair that with advances in drone tech from Ukr and Zionist wars, we can be assured the war will come home more.
And, he’s correct. It is a class war.
Given his resources, I am surprised how fast he was caught without any obvious effort to change his appearance (for example hair dye). Perhaps he believed (once caught) the media would cover his point of view?
UHC stands to have $450 billion in profit this year? Perhaps if the amount was “only” $300 billion … seems an adequate amount to me … the CEO would still be alive. Why so? Perhaps the company would not be the leader in denied claims. But the shareholders! the executive bonuses! Are the shareholders on the bread line? Can the executives not meet their mortgage payments? UHC recently denied me coverage for routine blood tests for which they paid in the past. Not a great amount. I got the run around and finally paid the bill. Multiply this by millions of claims and pretty soon you have profits of $450 billion. I have no illusions about insurance companies. when young I worked for one. Their business is investing. Actually fulfilling the contract with the insured is an annoying feature dealt with as summarily as is possible. When one company acquires a dominant market share and has political protection, “summarily” takes on added dimensions. The bogus definition of “free market” that I attribute to Milton Friedman, the Chicago School, led us back to the 1920s and from there to the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age melded into an age of bombings and labor wars. The 1920s to the Crash, Great Depression, and War. Lest I forget, to labor wars in the 1930s. Since history does not repeat but rhymes, I suppose we shall have our own version of the reaction to untrammeled greed in the near or medium term. This incident may be the harbinger of things to come.