Two links about the healthcare CEO murder suspect.
Mangione is not a leftist hero or a MAGA guy or an incel or out of his mind.
✍️ This is a really smart post about Luigi Mangione, who was arrested yesterday for the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson; it's by Robert Evans. Mangione is not a leftist hero or a MAGA guy or an incel or out of his mind; he is not stupid, but he is a young man with the emphasis on both of those.
✍️ And this post by Ken White, "Some Other America, One I Do Not Know," is worth your time too. He writes:
America isn’t the worst place ever. Humans treat each other inhumanely all the time and always have. But Americans like to see themselves as somehow above condoning violence and we’re absolutely not. Violence against people we’ve decided to hate doesn’t break norms. It is the norm.
I think some people read this kind of essay and think it's an insult to America, that it ignores the good stuff in favor of complaining about the stuff that's bad or worse in lots of other places too. I have never felt that way. I think if you believe in the good stuff, and especially in the good stuff that makes us America, you have to look at the bad stuff squarely in the face and care about making it better, because otherwise you're just ignoring the bad stuff in favor of praising the stuff that is just as good or better in lots of other places.
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😎 The Fun Part
One of my friends—one of you, actually—had a family emergency on Saturday, so I got her ticket to go with another friend to see Chris Redd, who was on SNL from 2017 to 2022, at Comedy on State in Madison. He is the main guy, Quan, in this, which is I think my favorite Saturday Night Live sketch of all time. The timing, the length and delivery of each line, how rapidly things go off the rails for Quan, what a bad move this was for him to make, and one single, brief, perfect Harry Styles moment that is exactly the right amount of Harry Styles you need here. I could literally watch it over and over and laugh every time. And I have. If you enjoy it too, this sketch has a similar vibe.
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