Why Luigi Mangione Is Being Treated as a Folk Hero
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
4.2 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2024
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
After a five-day manhunt, Luigi Mangione, a twenty-six-year-old Ivy League graduate, was arrested and charged on Monday with the widely publicized assassination of the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O. Brian Thompson. The case seized public imagination, and there has been a torrent of commentary celebrating Mangione and denigrating Thompson, including fan edits of the alleged shooter to posts sharing personal anecdotes of denied health-insurance claims. “Mangione is going to be seen as a folk hero across the aisle,” the New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino tells Tyler Foggatt. What does the lionization of a suspected murderer say about the health of our society?
This week’s reading:
- “How Daniel Penny Was Found Not Guilty in a Subway Killing That Divided New York,” by Adam Iscoe
- “A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing?,” by Jia Tolentino
- “What Will Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy Accomplish with Doge?,” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells“
- The Fall of Assad’s Syria,” by Rania Abouzeid
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| 0:00.0 | On December 4th, United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed in Midtown Manhattan. |
| 0:08.2 | The assailant was masked, wielded a pistol with a silencer, and he fled the scene on a bicycle. |
| 0:14.1 | The killing quickly became the biggest story in the country. And by Monday, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, |
| 0:20.6 | a data engineer and an Ivy League graduate, was arrested in charge with Thompson's murder. |
| 0:26.3 | Although the assassination has been widely condemned, there has also been a flood of commentary across social media celebrating the killing. |
| 0:34.9 | Online, people have mocked Thompson's death and offered personal anecdotes of denied insurance claims. |
| 0:41.3 | Others have declared the shooter a folk hero and have made fan edits of the images released of him. |
| 0:46.6 | But what does this story and the reaction to it say about the state of America's health care system and the health of our society? |
| 0:54.6 | New Yorker staff writer Gia Tolentino, |
| 0:56.6 | who recently wrote a piece for The New Yorker |
| 0:58.3 | about the assassination and the response to it, |
| 1:00.9 | joins us today to discuss this unfolding story. |
| 1:04.1 | You're listening to The Political Scene. |
| 1:06.0 | I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. |
| 1:15.1 | Thank you. And I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker. Hey, Gia. Thanks so much for being here. |
| 1:17.5 | Hey, Tyler. I'm glad to be here talking about what's on everyone's mind. |
| 1:21.2 | I'm wondering if you can just start by walking us through the kind of unique circumstances of the United Healthcare CEO's murder. |
| 1:28.6 | How was he killed? And why was this a murder that immediately captured the public's interest so |
| 1:34.2 | vividly? I think one of the reasons that, you know, immediately as soon as the news broke, |
| 1:38.9 | probably all of us were getting texts from a million different people, was that the victim of this shooting, |
| 1:45.3 | Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, is the kind of person who was the kind of person |
| 1:51.1 | who was thought of as impervious and untouchable. He's incredibly powerful. He's incredibly |
... |
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