This is an edition of the newsletter Pulling Weeds With Chris Black, in which the columnist weighs in on hot topics in culture. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Thursday.
For quite a while, the narrative has been that our country is deeply divided, with people cutting off family members for differing political beliefs, threatening to move to Canada, and overusing corny yard signs. But this week, it seems we have been united again. Mercifully, it wasn’t Taylor Swift or Moo Deng who brought us together. It was something far stranger and, quite frankly, more sinister: it was a hot male murderer.
Last Wednesday, someone fatally shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a hotel in Manhattan in broad daylight and then rode away on a CitiBike. The NYPD released an image online of a suspect wearing a mask with a hood up, and the internet started salivating from a peek at wisps of black curls and a forehead. According to the authorities, the shooter fled the city by Greyhound bus. On Monday morning, police arrested a suspect at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. His name is Luigi Mangione, aka “the Hot Shooter,” and he is the only thing anyone can talk about.
Once Mangione was apprehended and his name released, the internet did its thing and found all of his online output, from Twitter to Goodreads. He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore prep school and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, but most importantly, he has a chiseled six-pack. According to friends, he suffered a bad back injury and fell off the face of the earth. He reviewed the Unabomber’s manifesto, quoted “Brave New World,” and retweeted Jonathan Haidt. He pontificated on the values of men and about the gym as a cheaper and viable replacement for antidepressants. We don’t know what podcasts he listened to, but I bet you can guess. Someone even found his Grailed account (he liked Rick Owens.)
One thing that affects almost everyone in this country is healthcare. The system is fucked, and has been for a long time. People are refused care, going to the hospital when you’re sick is a serious financial decision, and an ambulance ride costs a minimum of $5,000. Will the murder of a single CEO change anything? I highly doubt it, but the way society has reacted—treating this Ivy League hottie like Robin Hood with a silencer and a Greyhound ticket—is very interesting. My most liberal friends are reposting memes. Caroline Calloway posted about having sex with him, and several gay men are claiming he was bisexual. The same people who were banging pots and pans together for front-line workers and wearing masks while driving alone are cheering him on.
In his manifesto, he called his act a “symbolic killing,” which, in many ways, it was. He represents a new kind of disenfranchised American. He isn’t a lifelong political warrior or hardened, experienced activist. He is a rich, educated guy who does a lot of hanging ab raises, spends too much time online, and thinks the system is broken. I am not sure murder is the way to fix it, but I haven’t seen people this excited about something in a long time. I am sure the story will fade when something new happens, but this might be a turning point. People might really take matters into their own hands, which, good or bad, might bring us together.
