It’s a real-life murder that feels more like a Netflix series.
The two-line synopsis goes something like this: Health-care CEO gunned down on streets of New York. Suspect arrested and lionized as sexy folk hero.
What are we to make of the online celebration of Luigi Mangione? He is a 26-year-old who, on paper, seemed to have it all until he was charged with murder on Monday. He was an Ivy League grad from a rich family. Then everything went chillingly sideways last week when Brian Thompson, the CEO at UnitedHealthcare, was killed.
This was a public execution. And, yet, many are delighting in murder.
In the immediate aftermath, while Mangione was on the run, people flocked to social media to joke about how Thompson was probably denied coverage for his bullet wounds. The tone was shockingly heartless. Thompson was a husband and father. He was beloved by many.
But as a mandarin of a broken health-care system, he was vilified in death by those who never knew him in life. He wasn’t real. He morphed into a cartoon villain embedded deep inside a despised industry. The basic decency of RIP was replaced with a snickering GR: Good riddance.
One former Washington Post reporter told a gobsmacked Piers Morgan she felt “joy.” This was not an outlier reaction. Mangione is innocent until proven guilty. Thompson was judged guilty and can’t prove his innocence because he is dead.
Mangione was feted with “Super Mario” and “Sopranos” memes, as if he was a fictional anti-hero delivering vigilante justice. Online sleuths pointed to his love of the assassin video game “Among Us.” They cited his appreciation of the Unabomber and looked forward to reading his own anticorporate manifesto as if it was an unearthed Faulkner novel.
Analysis went into why Mangione liked a quote on Goodreads from Dr. Seuss’s “The Lorax”: Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
In a few days, pop culture swallowed a heinous crime and reverse-engineered a feel-good screenplay. Comparisons were made to the 1971 satire “The Hospital.” People shared shirtless thirst traps of Mangione like they were publicity stills for a “Magic Mike” sequel: His abs! His smile! His pecs! His eyes!
But not a peep about … His alleged crime!
This is beyond sick. Yes, the world knows America’s health-care system is appalling. The need to sell your house to pay for open heart surgery is appalling. A bad car accident that bankrupts your family is appalling. Having to choose between feeding your kids or getting dialysis is appalling.
But you know what’s also appalling? Murder.
Two things can be true at the same time. Two wrongs never make a right.
I mutter about my Rogers bill every month. This grievance does not grant me the right to 3D print a ghost gun and stalk Rogers CEO Tony Staffieri. You can’t firebomb a bistro because you were unhappy with the steak frites. You’re not allowed to stab a shady landlord.
I haven’t seen an alleged criminal get swooned over with more rapturous glee since the 2014 mug shot of Jeremy Meeks captivated millions of fluttering hearts. Mangione is charged with murder. But it’s as if he is now a social media influencer, a reality star, a modern-day Robin Hood and Paul Bunyan combined.
Even before the Monday arrest, there was a look-alike contest in New York based on surveillance footage. The mood was giddy. Interest spiked in Mangione’s fashion sense. As TMZ reported, the jacket many believed he was wearing led thousands to Macy’s website this weekend and 700 sales in 48 hours. Hopefully, those jackets will not be worn to commit crimes.
Meanwhile, the McDonald’s in Pennsylvania where Mangione was arrested was quickly flooded with negative reviews. People were so angry their internet boyfriend was captured, they lashed out at a fast-food chain by falsely claiming they had spotted rats near the deep fryer.
The real rats are the people acting like Mangione is some kind of freedom fighter who helped topple dictator Assad in Syria. He’s not. Trying to fix health care by killing those who work in health care is like trying to change a light bulb with a sledgehammer.
Whatever the motives, murder is not justified — not unless you want society to swap rules and laws for a Mad Max hellscape in which grievance is settled with violence and anarchy chokes out democracy.
Turning Luigi Mangione into a sexy folk hero is even sicker than America’s broken health-care system. To wonder why “deny,” “depose” and “defend” were scrawled on shell casings is to get distracted from the fact those bullets were bought to end another man’s life at point blank range.
Cheering on murder is a death blow for civilization.
