When photos of murder suspect Luigi Mangione’s arraignment hit the Internet this week, my first thought was, “Oh, come on.” The accused shooter of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson obviously possesses Kardashianoid media savvy, and after aping the Unabomber with a ham-fisted “manifesto” went to court Monday dressed in what looked like a Lee Harvey Oswald costume, though the color was wrong (Oswald was shot in black). Women’s Wear Daily covered his hearing like a runway event […]

That a sociopathic rich kid who’s too lazy to write a real manifesto (262 words is the insane diarist’s version of premature ejaculation) might skip the woods-and-privation part of the Unabomber story and jump straight to the American cheat code for fame isn’t surprising. That everyone from Amy Goodman at Democracy Now! to Michael Moore to writers at the New York Times and Washington Post would sign on to Mangione’s Bonnie-and-Clyde ploy and turn a murder into a referendum on health insurance and a forum for recognizing “public anger” (ten minutes ago denounced as both imaginary and a threat to democracy) is more surprising, but only slightly so.

And that was only the icing on the 2024 bull pie.