Here is a "Letter To The Editor" that appeared in the December 9, 2024, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle (subscribers can click the link for the original):
And here is an excerpt from the December 7, 2024, New Yorker Newsletter:
The C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare, fifty-year-old Brian Thompson, was murdered on the street in midtown Manhattan, on Wednesday morning, twenty minutes before sunrise. He was in town for an investors’ convention, and had worked for UnitedHealthcare for more than two decades—a company that is part of UnitedHealth Group, a health-insurance conglomerate valued at five hundred and sixty billion dollars. UnitedHealthcare had two hundred and eighty-one billion dollars in revenue in 2023, and Thompson, who became C.E.O. in 2021, had raised annual profits from twelve billion dollars to sixteen billion dollars during his tenure. He received more than ten million dollars in compensation last year. Andrew Witty, the C.E.O. of UnitedHealth Group, remembered Thompson in a video message to employees as a “truly extraordinary person who touched the lives of countless people throughout our organization and far beyond.” Thompson lived in a suburb of Minneapolis, where UnitedHealthcare is based, and he is survived by his wife and two sons.The particulars of this murder are strange and remarkable: it occurred in public; the suspected shooter went to Starbucks beforehand; he got away from the scene via bicycle; he has not yet been found. But the public reaction has been even wilder, even more lawless. The jokes came streaming in on every social-media platform, in the comments underneath every news article. “I’m sorry, prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers,” someone commented on TikTok, a response that got more than fifteen thousand likes. “Does he have a history of shootings? Denied coverage,” another person wrote,On LinkedIn, where users post with their real names and employment histories, UnitedHealth Group had to turn off comments on its post about Thompson’s death—thousands of people were liking and hearting it, with a few even giving it the “clapping” reaction (emphasis added).
The above excerpt is from a New Yorker article by Jia Tolentino - an article written, obviously, before the suspected shooter was apprehended. Tolentino's article was titled, "A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood and You’re Laughing?" I am not laughing. Obviously, Berkeley resident Henry Abrons isn't laughing, either, and Zeynep Tufekci is definitely not laughing. Tufecki's commentary on the killing of Brian Thompson is titled, "The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms." Tufekci's article appeared in the December 8th edition of The Times.
Murdering people, no matter who they are, is wrong. Our national failure to have implemented a universal health care system, and to have chosen, instead, to put private corporations in a position to treat desperately ill people with both disdain and disregard (which they, of course, do), is an occasion for massive outrage. But let's direct our outrage into politics, not murder, just as Mr. Abrons suggests. Murdering people, no matter who they are, is wrong, and murdering the executives of health care corporations simply isn't a laughing matter.
I am with Abrons, Tolentino, and Tufekci on that. I am definitely not laughing about the murder of Brian Thompson.
I'm not "clapping," either.
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