DAVID MARCUS: Call me an optimist but I don't believe Americans are celebrating murder
Luigi Mangione is accused of murdering United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Most Americans see an evil and tragic act not a martyr
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Call me a hopeless optimist if you will, but I do not believe for one second that any significant portion of the American people see Luigi Mangione’s alleged brutal murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson as anything but an unalloyed and tragic act of evil.
No, I don’t live in a cave. I have seen the TikTok videos of women smitten by the suspected killer’s rugged good looks and rippling six-pack. I saw media reporter Taylor Lorenz say she felt "joy" over the murder.
I have even seen University of Pennsylvania professor Julia Alekseyeva indicate how proud Mangione had made her his Ivy League alma mater in a smiley video post.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But then what happened? Vox Media, not exactly a hotbed of conservatism, ended its relationship with Lorenz after her horrible comments, and Professor Alekseyeva is scrambling to do damage control with social media apologies, calling her remarks "insensitive and inappropriate."
What Vox and UPenn came to realize, albeit perhaps a bit late, is that outside of the faculty lounge, the MSNBC greenroom and social media platforms swarming with malicious foreign bots, almost no everyday Americans see any nuance or good in murder.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}No large swaths of Americans are taking to the streets in support of the supposedly heroic Mangione, and yes, there have been a few crowdsourcing efforts to help his legal cause, but they seem to total a tiny $17,000 dollars.
The only place where we have seen the slightest bit of evidence of support for the cold-blooded and premeditated execution of Thompson is on social media and liberal cable news channels, where fever dreams abound that Americans want some anti-corporate Batman type to go around murdering people.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It's absurd.
The desperate hacks at CNN have even tried to equate the "vigilantism’ of Mangione’s alleged act to the actions of Marine veteran Daniel Penny, who was acquitted in the New York City subway death of Jordan Neely on Tuesday.
CNN anchor and correspondent even Audie Cornish suggested, "There you also have a victim who somebody determined did not deserve to continue living, right? Tell me which vigilante action is okay."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Let’s be clear, Daniel Penny acted during a dangerous and spur of the moment incident in which witness after witness in that subway car said they were scared for their lives. Also, Neely had every chance to simply calm down and stop threatening people.
DANIEL PENNY FOUND NOT GUILTY IN SUBWAY CHOKEHOLD TRIAL
Brian Thompson didn't get any such chance, he was shot in the back by a coward who hunted him, and now his two young kids won’t have a chance to grow up with their dad.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Not every single thing that happens in our society has to be turned into some Rorschach test pitting left against right, even if there are clicks to gain and money to make by doing so.
Some things are still pretty much morally black and white, and as someone who spends a lot of time talking to every day Americans around the nation, I promise you that the horrible murder of Brian Thompson is one of them.
Unless one is a member of the Park Slope Food Coop the odds that anyone at the grocery store with you thinks the murder was actually a good thing are incredibly small.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Just like JD Vance allegedly being considered "weird," this is a fabrication of the media, social and otherwise.
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And these kinds of hyperbolic media reactions to high-profile murders are nothing new.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}In 1881, after Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield, he sat in a Washington jail giddy and convinced that Garfield’s political foes would be swept into power and have him released and feted. The newspapers even wrote stories about it.
It was good copy.
But, of course, that was a ridiculous fantasy, as Guiteau would learn a year later at the end of a hangman’s noose.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}If Mangione is guilty of the senseless killing of a health care executive, he will soon have a similar realization. He will discover that he will not have drawn attention to his cause, or become a folk hero. All he would have done, aside from destroying a family, is to end his own life as a free man.
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Look, there is a very small group of far-left lunatics who think they can justify the murder of Thompson, and believe me, social media will find and display all of them to a chorus of outraged response, but remember that this is a tiny minority of Americans.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Brian Thompson deserved to live. His kids deserved to have their dad. That is all that really matters here, and his murderer will not be made into a martyr.