A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Why is the Media Coverage of Luigi Mangione So Bad?

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

The remarkable dissonance between the public’s embrace of UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione and the mainstream media’s outward disdain for both Luigi and the public’s martyrization of him has been… bizarre. In a rare moment where the culture war has been traded in for the class war, billionaire-owned media corporations and politicians alike seem to be panicking. That panic should be a moment of clarity for everyday Americans. Support me + listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Listen to Taylor’s podcast, Power User.  Subscribe to Taylor’s newsletter, User Mag. Subscribe to Ken Klippenstein’s Substack. Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at www.factormeals.com/fruity50.  Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at www.rocketmoney.com/fruity.  Me on Instagram. A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I have a good intro line for you. I have a really good intro line for you, I think. Hello, hello, and welcome back to A BitFrudy, the podcast where we answer the question that keeps New York Post writers up at night. What does Taylor Lorenz really think? I thought that was good. It was good.

Oh, my God. Yeah, they've been on me lately. So if you followed the release schedule of this podcast closely, which I realize that matters more to me than it matters to any of you. You would know that this should be an off week. Usually I upload every other week. That's how we do this here. But sometimes in the media landscape of political news,

something happens that is so ridiculous, so egregious, so tugs at my anxieties about the way that media works and functions right now, that I feel compelled to sit down in front of this camera and squeak into the mic for anyone who is willing to hear. The last time I did an episode like this was during the campus Gaza protests, when everyone in the media made it look like these students who were doing something completely reasonable and respectable and based in the history of protest, made it look like they were just like radical, fringe, insane, anti-Semitic,

like all of this stuff. And I sat down and I made a similar episode. And today, we are doing that about Luigi Mangione. If you've been online the last few weeks, which if you're listening to this podcast, there's a definite chance that you have been. You are probably aware of the stark difference between the way the internet and largely the public has reacted to Luigiini. Luigioni Jesus Christ To Luigi Mangione

shooting the CEO of United Healthcare Brian Thompson Hey there Luigi What's it like in New York City I know when you get to prison You got something planned for Diddy Yes you do You're my little vigilante boo

My Italy do And the way that The mainstream media, CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, what have you, have depicted Luigi Mangione, the assassination. The Instagram posts from nutbag people, which I was sent in the commercial break earlier, crazy. Like, he's cute. He's that, and people celebrating this, this is a sickness.

Honestly, it's so disappointing. The disparity between the way that the public has largely reacted to this event and the way that the media has reported on it and in a way what feels like slapping the public on the wrist for how they've reacted, how we've reacted, feels really important to me and has me circling around these questions in my head like, what is the role of these huge media institutions, especially in moments like these. But first, I want to introduce Taylor. If you listen to this podcast, you're familiar with her. If you read the New York Post, you're familiar with her an entirely different way. Taylor, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. Taylor, how would you summarize this disparity? Gosh, I think this news event was just one of the moments where you realize that the traditional media is just fundamentally unprepared to cover this moment. It was a watershed moment, I think, for really loss of trust in the traditional media. It's so interesting because you've been a journalist at various traditional media institutions for almost your entire career until about a month ago. Yeah. You've worked at the Washington Post, you worked at the New York Times, and now you're working independently. Side note, subscribe to Taylor's newsletter. Links in the description. But it feels like your career shift has almost like coincided with this event, which is largely representative of the fracturing of media right now. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, I quit right before the election. And I think we saw with the results of this election, the power of new media. I mean, for the second, time Trump got elected largely on the backs of content creators and the internet, podcasters, people like that. And then you see a news event like this where you really see how consent is

manufactured and how, you know, people in power push certain narratives. And I just, I think it's not working anymore. I will say the moment that I knew something big was happening here, besides like the assassination itself, which we'll talk about briefly, I'm sure you don't need me to go into a ton of detail. You know what's going on. Was so, okay, right after Luigi Mangione, who we didn't yet know was Luigi Mangione, assassinated Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO. There was largely an outpouring of tepid to total support for the event and mostly people using it as an opportunity to air their grievances with the broken private health insurance system that we have in the United States.

and Ben Shapiro posted a YouTube video that you're in the thumbnail of. Are you wearing the same sweater right now? Oh, God. Terrifying. No, I'm wearing a different sweater. That's from an MSNBC appearance that I did. They love clipping because I got upset on air. They find ugly pictures of me.

Yeah, it was a little bit of a jump scare to see myself in that video. But ultimately, I felt very vindicated when I saw the comment section. Right, because so the title of the video that he made is the even, Revolutionary Left cheers murder. And right, this was the moment that I knew we had something. All of the comments from Ben Shapiro's own viewers were basically telling him, Ben, this is not a left and a right issue. We are cheering on the further.

And reading those, I like felt like I was hallucinating because it was such a wild moment of like class solidarity. Yeah. That, to be fair, like so many people on the left have been advocating for for such a long time and you know people like me have been saying like you know trans people are being scapegoated yeah they're putting in the culture war to to disappear the class war and it felt like people were and are really united on this no pun intended i think it's interesting how just these daily wire figures have completely failed to navigate it like you mentioned it wasn't just ben shapiro

it was also matt walsh and some others on the right that i think initially tried to side again with the rich CEOs that's what they always do but just were so swiftly correct directed that they kind of just stopped talking about the issue. I think they realized it was a loser for them. I also think that when it came out who Luigi is, he doesn't fit the rights narrative. Like, Luigi is not a person of color. Luigi is not poor. Luigi is not, you know, LGBTQ. It's this, he's this handsome, young, privileged guy who, frankly, was part of the systems that could have put him in a position of power to be a executive at somewhere like United Health. So, you know, he, He was from that sort of like the type of background that I think made it very hard for them to weaponize.

Totally. And we're going to actually get into a little bit of who he is right now. Again, I don't want to stay here too long, but as is famous for this show, I always give a little background. Luigi Mangione was born and raised in Maryland. He grew up in a wealthy family with ties to Republican politics in Maryland. His family has owned country clubs and health facilities. He graduated from high school, all boys private high school in 2016. He was the valedictorian and led the robotics club. He went on to earn both bachelor's and master's degrees from University of Pennsylvania

and computer science and worked as a data analyst at TrueCar, which is an online car retailer. He lived and worked remotely from Hawaii for a while, where he had a back injury, which was worsened from surfing and hiking, which are things he loved to do, which, that really hot picture of him was born out of. It looked like he was hiking shirtless with his turtle abs. Not to, I don't know, someone's going to get mad at me for thirsting on the main here. He ultimately got back surgery for this injury, which as far as I can tell, left him in more pain than he was to begin with, which back surgery often does. He would talk about excruciating chronic back pain.

Among other things, he couldn't have sex. and when that was reported through a friend of his, a lot of people were joking about like, oh, like this guy that people are lifting up as a sex symbol. Like he couldn't have sex from his back pain. But like sex is something that most people require in some form. And not being able to have sex, I mean, I know personally if I was physically unable to have sex, like that would change the state of my brain. Absolutely. I don't know. I just thought it was interesting. It was like a sensationalized detail, but I think it was a really meaningful one. I think it's a really meaningful one because, again, it's like this basic human thing that he can't do. He's a young man. You know, he's like a young guy in his 20s.

Like, must be incredibly painful for him and isolating. You know, like you need that human connection. Yeah. And people were also slotting into, slotting that detail into like the in-cell shooter narrative. But this is not that. There's no evidence at least that I've seen that he was like an in-cell. An-cell is a very specific sort of political ideology. You know, it's not as much about involuntary sex as it is about,

blaming women for your failures as a man. I guess Luigi Mangione was like an in-cell in the purest form, which was that he literally was involuntarily celibate. Exactly. Right. But not, he was not an insol the way that. Most of the insoles are like, you know, I'm just a nice guy and these bitch women won't fuck me.

It's like he wasn't that type of insult. He eventually left Hawaii and ultimately caught off contact with friends and family. He also around this time, he left a long trail of interest on good reads where he revealed. where he reviewed, among other things, books critical of the private health insurance industry, and then took a month's long trip to Japan earlier this year where nobody heard from him. One of the last things he said to a friend was he wanted to zen out.

And then he reemerged on December 4th, allegedly on the streets of Midtown Manhattan, where he allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, before fleeing to Pennsylvania where he was arrested in a McDonald's. That was basically all the summary I put in here. I think that's about it. I mean, that's what happened.

That's what happened. And so I wanted to kick off this analysis with you because I already can read the comments and I want to get it out of the way fast. Taylor Lorenz. Do you condemn violence? Oh, my God. I condemn violence. We condemn violence. We condemn violence.

We condemned it. Which is exactly why we're against that for-profit health insurance industry, by the way. Well said. Every piece of content, media, interviews, writings, essays, everything that I've read from anyone who's tried to look at this entire sequence of events with a critical eye that is critical of the healthcare industry, I haven't seen an instance of that without a million comments being like, well, do you condemn violence? It's an intentional effort to smear and sort of dismiss the very nuanced point that people like myself and others are making. It's the same thing of the do you condemn Hamas or do you condemn Hamas? or do you condemn, you know. That's what I wrote on my outline.

It is. It just, it's the same thing. It's this bad faith framing. The thing is, I mean, I'll tell you my own personal views. I, first of all, I don't even support the death penalty. I'm generally against murder in all forms. I also just don't support gun violence as a sort of means of retribution for things because gun violence, I mean, in this instance, nobody else was hurt.

I was talking to Abine at the Guardian, a phenomenal gun violence reporter. And she was talking about the fact that. But most people who carry out these sort of revenge killings or politically motivated killings end up killing other people. Because again, gun violence, like when you go to shoot someone, you usually don't do it, you know, in the way that Luigi did where he really got off without a hook. Like things go wrong. People get hurt. So, you know, I think, sure, do we want everybody out, you know, shooting people in the streets? Obviously not.

Okay. Obviously not. However, I think it's a very intentional misdirection to try to dismiss people that are talking. in a nuanced way about this issue by just sort of shouting them down with like, well, oh, so you don't condemn violence, you know, oh, so you just, you're, you know, you think violence while completely dismissing the violence of the system. It's very, I mean, it does remind me of the do you condemn Hamas because it's like, well, you're ignoring the entire like violent nature of the occupation and the oppression that happens, right? Like, you're both sizing this issue and actually,

you're the one sort of like morally equating an unfathomable amount of. death and suffering with a single act of violence. And I think that that is actually incredibly dangerous and dismissive of violence. It's interesting to me that the Hamas comparison hit you the exact same way. It's a lot of the same people making those arguments too. That too. It's been what, 14 months since last October, the official report says over 40,000 Palestinians dead, but other reports saying up to 200,000. And every time I talk about this still, I get comments from people being like, well, do you condemn Hamas? And it's like, it's just such a bad faith thing. It's a way to make sure that the conversation goes nowhere. Yeah, it's again, it's drawing this false equivalence

between a single act of violence or one sort of limited act of violence and a long-term systemic campaign of violence. Exactly. I mean, you went on, I don't know, one of these talks about. You're very brave. I'll show up anywhere and fight with people about what I care about. I commend you for it, but you went on one of these and you basically said the health care system is murder. too. And I completely believe that. That's what a lot of this comes down to. This like, well, do you, you know, do you condemn violence? It's like, do you condemn violence? The goal of all these conversations is to derail the discussion away from talking about the systemic, violent nature of our health care system and how our for-profit insurance company commits murder and murders thousands of

Americans every year. That's something that I think most people actually in America, I think actually sort of are aligned on this issue. But you have a lot of people in power. power and a lot of people in the media that are not aligned on this issue. And they really want to sort of paint this movement with a broad brush. They want to paint activists as always as violent, again, because it makes it easier to crack down on them. It makes it easier to censor them. I literally got a opportunity that I had canceled recently because they were worried I would incite violence. And I think it's very funny because, again, I am against violence. That is why I have such strong opposition to our for-profit health care system, which is murderous.

Just want to take a quick break from this episode to thank today's sponsor, Factor. You know, as the days get shorter and shorter, I don't know about you, but I certainly find myself less able to over-extend myself into all areas of my life, especially, you know, once it hits 4 p.m. and it's totally dark. One of those areas is cooking. Now, for some of you, cooking might be the love letter that you write to yourself every single day. And if that's you, Godspeed. But not me. I mean, I don't even really like to cook when the sun is out, much less when it's, you know, pitch black and I'm like, fuck, what's, you know, what's for dinner? Factor is a meal delivery service where everything is cooked by the time it gets to your doorstep. and ready to eat in just two minutes, which is really a lifesaver for us folks who maybe need to cut some corners during this season and perhaps make some more time for our daily winter nap.

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And now let's get back to the deep dive. Okay, so we condemn violence. We've established we condemn violence. No comments, please. Back to the mainstream media. I have gathered here a bunch of just like really wild ways that this event has been covered by various legacy media outlets that I have found to be like really at odds with the way that the public has absorbed the information about this killing.

I just want to go through some of them and kind of pick apart what the media is trying to do versus what we think that they should be doing versus what the public is doing. First of all, I want to shout out Ken Clippenstein. Amazing journalist. Yeah, he's an independent journalist. And on this particular issue, he has just been absolutely grinding out all of this information that is available to mainstream media outlets that they're intentionally not publishing the biggest being Luigi's Manifesto, which Ken originally published.

when none of the other outlets would. But first, I have this article here from the New York Times that went, can you say a New York Times article went viral? It's just a large-scale publication. And it's titled, Suspect in CEO Killing withdrew from a life of privilege and promise. Tell me, talk to me. The framing is already trying to sort of shape the conversation, right? I think this is like where you see a lot of discussions around his privilege.

it's like, yes, it's important to note that he's privileged, actually, that, again, that actually threatens these narratives that a lot of these conservative places in the mainstream media generally want to push about, like, you know, the deranged outsider on the fringes of society, right? It's like, but there's an effort to sort of equate him with somebody making millions and millions of dollars a year that's the CEO of like an insurance corporation. Like, this is a 26 year old that yes, he grew up privileged. However, he also was not a multi-millionaire CEO of a major health corporation. But it's sort of this effort to paint him as like a, yeah, like a privileged rich kid, you know, who's spoiled and doesn't appreciate the things in life. And you know what I mean?

I think what you said at the beginning is so important, right? The fact that someone who was not on the margins of society, the fact that someone who theoretically could pay, you know, for private health insurance without issue. The fact that he could become aware of like how fucked up this system was, how violent the system was through an injury of his own is so threatening to like, you know, well, if he can see this, then everyone can see it. And there's also in all of this so much like, you guys are all trying to paint Luigi Mangione as a hero for, you know, the underclass of America.

But really, he's just a rich guy. And it's like, I think it's more compelling that he doesn't even need to be part of a group that suffers from high health insurance costs to see this. A rich person having class solidarity with average American workers is threatening and dangerous to them. They want you to keep focused on other sort of like boogeymen in society. And they don't want, you know, yeah, they don't want that sort of class solidarity. Can I read a little bit from this article to you? This article which got 7,000 comments on the New York Times website, people were pissed.

Luigi Mangione, the online version of him, was an Ivy League tech. enthusiast who flaunted his tanned, chiseled looks in beach photos and party pictures with blue blazered frat buddies. So this isn't even the point, but it's like, I don't think that I've ever seen quite such a clear, like, attempt at cartoonizing someone. Yes. It's so bizarre. It's like they write about him like he's a fictional character of like a preppy frat boy

and not a human being. He was the valedictorian of a prestigious Baltimore preptory. school who earned bachelor's and master's degrees at UPenn and served as a head counselor at a pre-college program at Stanford. With his credentials and connections, he could have ended up one day as an entrepreneur or the chief executive of one of his family's thriving businesses. Instead, investigators suspect, he took a different path. You know what this reminds me of? What? You've seen Girl Interrupted. Yes, yes. You know the beginning of the movie? It's right after trigger warning, girl interrupted, we're going to be mentioning suicide. But it's right after Winona Ryder's character, Susanna Kaysen, attempted suicide and is about to be committed to a mental institution. And you see all of these like kind of like country club women around her at like a house party her family's having being like, but you were such a sweet girl. How could you have possibly sunk into this depth? Yes. It's like why would you step outside the system? You could have

oppressed people too. You could have been part of these violent systems. If only you just shut up and sided with us, you know, it's like you too could be an oppressor. The family's wealth and work with charity made it well known in Baltimore. Luigi Mangione was, quote, just the last person you would suspect, said Thomas Moronic Jr., a lawyer and radio host who knows several members of the Mangione family. Quote, it was just a well-respected family and such a prominent family within Baltimore County. It's that framing where it's like, again, you were part of the upper class. Like, you too could have killed millions of innocent Americans who couldn't afford health insurance. You know, why would you go off this path? It's like, why don't you want to be in the position of power?

I think so many people, especially in these elite institutions or these elite circles, like, they've already made that moral tradeoff. Their goal is to sort of like enter the halls of power and oppress people. that is sort of like the goal, right, is to like run one of these evil corporations or, you know, have positions of power over other people. They don't view themselves as having solidarity with workers in this country, with vulnerable people in this country, with people that are suffering in this country. And so, yeah, it is very confusing for them because it's like, why would you turn on this like life of luxury? There's an undercurrent with the framing of a lot of these articles and a lot of them sound exactly like what I just read where it's almost like,

we can't believe that he would betray his, you know, class and job prospects to become a murderer. But, like, we're even more shocked that he would do it to, like, be in solidarity with the working class. Because rich people have zero solidarity with the working class. And often their success is predicated on exploiting the working class. And so it, you know, I think it's confusing to them. Well, and to your point, if Luigi Mangione became a health care CEO and murdered people that way, there would not be an article written. Absolutely not, because people don't care about that kind of violence,

or rather the New York Times and these sort of publications, don't cover those systems as violent. Did you see the New York Times opinion piece? The Brett Stevens one? Yes, indeed. I didn't read it. I saw the headline, and I don't want that man. I just assumed I knew what it said, but tell me what it said.

Do you want to tell the listener the headline? Yeah, let me pull it up. Oh, my God. It's actually like, I don't know. You know how sometimes people will be like, I'm not falling for that hot take. You have a humiliation fetish. Yes. This reads like someone with. With a humiliation fetish. So Brett Stevens goes without saying he's an idiot. Okay. This man, there's not a bad take he doesn't have. Published this article titled Brian Thompson, not Luigi Mangione, is the real working class hero. And he's, and he's a real working class hero. And he's a little. And he, He basically tries to argue that because he grew up in Iowa and, you know, didn't grow up sort of like upper middle class like Luigi that, you know, he's the real evil one. He also, he also completely, once again, misrepresented what I say. I was going to say, did you know that you were mentioned in this op- No, I didn't even know I was mentioned until right now, but he says, Taylor Loren said she felt, quote, joy at the killing. Note how they only quote this. This is what the media. Let me just tell you what the media does. We all remember, remember when Luanne de Lasseps went to Broadway. Do you remember Louan? You know, Luan from Real Housewives. The Housewife, yeah.

Luan, hold on. Let me find this for you. Because I think it's, I really think it's actually the perfect, hold on. I like just like how far reaching our references can get in an episode completely unrelated. Luanda Liceps basically took a single word of a bad review. I think that I can't remember what the word was. Oh, I know what you're talking about. Yes.

She took this like review that absolutely, I think it was in the New York Times that absolutely savaged her show and took the single word. word that was like, I think it was like, it's amazing how bad this was or something, right? And then she took the word, quote, amazing and put it on her posters. Yeah, amazing, the New York Times. And this is what the New York Times and the other mainstream media is doing with my comment. If you read my full comment, and I just want to read you exactly what I said, because I think it'll really be clear. Sorry, this is really bothering me. No, no, get it out. Like I said, this is the podcast where we figure out what Taylor Lorenz really thinks. Exactly. So which everyone wants to know. Okay, here we go. I just want to read you my full

quote. And then tell me if you think it's accurately represented by the media. Okay, wait, can I read the headlines first, like from the New York Post? Yes. Ex-Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz tells peers Morgan she felt, quote, joy over assassination of United Healthcare CEO. Here's what I said. I feel joy because people like you who are rich and powerful on TV and have access. to all the health care privileges in the world are finally being forced to pay attention to the barbaric healthcare system that murders tens of thousands of innocent Americans.

That is what I feel joy in. I feel joy that people like you are forced to confront these systemic problems. They took one word out of that statement and applied it to a completely different sentence. Oh yeah, here. It was Luanne Dillacep's review on her cabaret.

Talk to Luanne. Okay, listen, here's, wait, sorry, I just have to get this right because this is, I feel, I feel crazy. The New York Times and the rest of the mainstream media, they are pulling a Luann DeLasps because this was, this was the actual New York Times review of Luan's show. They said, tickets to the first performance went on sale and quickly sold out, inspiring Miss Dilliseps to add a second date. Now, she took the word inspiring and plastered it all over her posters as if that was descriptive of the show. This is what has happened to me in the mainstream media. The episode title is going to be, The New York Times is pulling a Luann.

They are. Maybe I'm actually just going to make the title of this, Taylor Lorenz feels joy. Can I read a little from this op-ed? Yeah, let's get into it, because I'm sure it's a lot worse than... I mean, it's honestly like more of the same shit. He, yes, he complains that you felt joy.

He writes, pictures of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old charged with the murder of Thompson have also elicited a fair amount of ooing and eyeing on social media over his tone physique and bright smile. But if Mangione's personal story, at least what we know of it so far, is supposed to serve as some sort of parable,

it isn't one that progressives should take comfort in. He is the sion of a wealthy and prominent Maryland family, was educated at an elite private school and the University of Pennsylvania, and worked remotely from a nice, apartment in Hawaii. And while Mangione, like millions of people, apparently suffered from debilitating back pain, excellent health care is not generally an issue for Americans of great wealth. Well, he's able to correctly articulate the problem, which is that access to health care

is generally not a problem for rich people, very conveniently ignores the fact that it is a problem for everyone else. I mean, just to call him a sion is just delusional and false and misleading. Like, he's an upper middle class kid from Baltimore. Again, not like Baltimore is not some nice city. There are nice parts of Baltimore, but trust me, I lived in Baltimore. It's Baltimore. We're not talking Beverly Hills. So I want to talk a little bit about the manifesto. As we all probably know at this point, when Luigi was found in the McDonald's, he had a manifesto on him. It was pretty brief. And even in its brevity, no major media outlet reported it, not in full. What they did after being provided it by the police department of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is they published bits and pieces and very, very

specifically editorialized bits and pieces. And what's interesting is, and this is true for this entire story and this entire situation, but like the reason why we're talking about mainstream media at large and not what I often talk about when I'm talking about things like queer issues, like I'll talk about Fox News or OAN or Newsmax for these specifically right-leaning media networks that Taylor and I talk about all the time. But this was an event where like MSNBC and CNN and the New York Post were all reporting the exact same thing, which is the only sentence that any of these outlets quoted, not even a sentence fragment, that any of these outlets quoted from the manifesto was how Luigi wrote, these parasites had it coming. A manifesto was found and it referenced the health care industry

and read in part, these parasites had it coming. Well, he was railing against the healthcare industry, which of course fits into the scenario here. He talks about how these parasites had it coming. He's arrested him at a Pennsylvania McDonald's. He was in possession of a manifesto that read in part, quote, I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done.

These parasites had it coming. That's it. That's the only, what, five words? Did you see them report anything else at any point before Ken reported the manifesto? No. It was just these parasites had it coming. Yep. Because again, it allows them to frame him in a certain type of way and dismiss his very legitimate

critiques of the system, which were made in the rest of the manifesto. Can I play a clip from CNN? Yes. Where they're talking about the manifesto? All right. So we just heard him yell that about it, sort of something being unjust as an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Let's bring in trial attorney Mercedes-Colwin with us. I mean, this is someone on a mission, it appears. He is the alleged killer in this case.

We have to be very clear about that. He's facing an extradition hearing here. But I just wonder what you think of a moment like that as you see it, knowing the evidence that police say they have on this person. Brian, it's very disturbing. And those types of outbursts will certainly be evaluated by his defense team because that's just not normal. I mean, we've already had reports that he has been very strange since over the summer that he has become reclusive. This manifesto is these ranting and ravings of an individual that obviously has some aberrant thoughts in his mind, and that's why he put it down on paper. So all of that is certainly very disturbing. The defense is going to have to evaluate whether this is an individual that really will even understand the charges. I mean,

they may, depending on how aberrant his thoughts, are, he has to be able to understand the process and the proceedings, even at this, at this state. Wow. Wow. Wow. The rantings and ravings of an individual with aberrant thoughts. The way that they stigmatize mental health issues and the language that they use to sort of,

that stigmatizing language, where they're even talking about, like, is he even mentally capable to, like, understand the charges when there's absolutely no evidence. evidence that this man has lost touch with reality. He just seems to have very specific views that don't fit their narrative. It's just, it's wild. I mean, just the language, again, you have to listen to the words that these people use because it's very intentional. And it's meant to stigmatize and dismiss him and do that by painting him, frankly, in pretty like ablest ways, right? It's like, oh, this like deranged lunatic, right? Totally. Literally the word lunatic is on the tip of her tongue. Also, I mean, I know we're like kind of stretching in a lot of directions here, but I think it's necessary.

Like, they're doing that because look at the way that they talk about mentally ill people in news media. Look at the way that they talked about Jordan Neely. He was a mentally ill person and therefore we don't have to care about him because he was less of a human. If only Luigi Mangioni could have been, you know, had a recorded history of mental illness, then we could be like, oh, well, you know, he's just a, you know, another mentally ill guy, you know, went off the deep end when like clearly, that's just not. the case. And like, I'm going to read the manifesto, but it's like, it just seems so clearly like the reason that they're, you know, and when I say they, I mean all of these like media people, but also like politicians who have been echoing the same thing, you know, everything that we've been hearing on CNN. They're so scared that any of us could relate to him. Yes. That any of us could see him as a human being very similar to us with very similar struggles to us. And it's just, it's, it's bizarre. So I want to read the manifesto. And to be clear, this was eventually published by Ken Klippenstein through his substack, which I will also link in the episode description. But he basically said, I don't know why none of the media outlets are publishing this. He got a hold of it and published it. Here it is.

To the feds, I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country. Immediately. This is not a leftist. He's thanking the feds for what they do for this country in the first sentence. I mean, it makes sense why Ben Shapiro gave up on this because of the, this is not a lefty. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial. Some elementary social engineering,

basic CAD, and a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife or traumas,

but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder. The U.S. has the number one most expensive health care in the world, yet we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy. United is the largest company in the U.S. by market cap behind only Apple, Google, and Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy? No. The reality is these indecipherable have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly, I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument.

But many have illuminated the corruption and greed decades ago, and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently, I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty. Are these the rantings and ravings of a lunatic? Absolutely not. I mean, I just, it's very clearly written and it's very like, again, it has a point of view. It has a very clear, well thought out point of view. And I think that is what terrifies them is that, again, he is not somebody that was unhoused or struggling. Like this man is well educated. He is,

you know, can write clearly. He can speak clearly. I think this is a very compelling manifesto, which is, again, why they have tried to bury it. When Ken published this, he also asked a question, which I think is really interesting, especially for you, and which is kind of the question at the heart of a lot of this, right? Why didn't they publish this? Why are they only publishing, you know, for example, photos where Luigi is yelling at media instead of the ones where everyone is thirsting over him? And what Ken wrote is basically, is it the media's job to predigest information for the public?

because what he was able to uncover were these internal like slack messages from people at the New York Times basically saying it's not in the public's interest. It's not in public interest to publish the manifesto. It's not in public interest to publish photos of Luigi's face. And it's like does the New York Times decide what is in the interest of the public? They used to. And that's why we had the fucked up. They used to. And that's why we had such a mess.

I guess we're already demonetized. You can say fucked up. You can say fucked up. They used to, and that's why we had such a fucked up media ecosystem, right? They want to operate like it's 1995 and they can control the narrative. And, you know, the corporate media exists to prop up powerful institutions and systems of power. And you see them trying to do that even still today in 2024 when we all have the internet. Thanks to independent journalists like Ken and others and just the power of the internet itself as this sort of crowdsourced information sharing, sharing.

ecosystem has allowed people to circumvent those narratives that the press tries to manufacture, or rather the sort of elite media tries to manufacture. Because there's a lot of journalists, myself, Ken, and others, right, that have critiqued this system. But we're not at places like the New York Times. I would like to take a quick break from the show to give a shout out to Rocket Money for sponsoring this podcast and making episodes like this possible. And for, you know, being a very useful app that might be especially useful to you as we head into the new year and you might be looking over your budgets. It's happened to all of us, right where you sign up for something, whether it be a streaming service, a news subscription, and only fans, and then you

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Rocket Money has over 5 million users and has saved over $500 million in unwanted subscriptions. And it saves its members up to $740 a year when using all of the apps features. If you want to start budgeting and saving for the new year, you can do that. Head over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity. That's rocketmoney.com slash fruity. That's rocketmoney.com Rudy. Now, let's get back to the episode. It's interesting. I mean, one of the reasons that the media has, I guess, kind of defended itself in its decision to like really selectively publish here, which I don't find to be a compelling one, but I think we should, you know, address it for people who might find

a compelling is it's basically out of fear that publishing his manifesto or his face, you know, his face being attractive or the manifesto being relatable would inspire copycat actions. It's just so deranged and delusional to think that way because you have to have complete ignorance of the entire online media landscape. We can see pictures of his face. You're not shielding us from pictures of his face. There are multiple documentaries in the works right now. And I know people are pitching scripted series about this to streaming platforms. Ryan Murphy, put the pen down. Like, it just, it bothers me so much when they're like, oh, this is America. You know, we don't we don't glorify killers. it's like please turn on Netflix. Please, what are you taught? Like, please just like look around in America just generally. We celebrate violence all the time, right? It's just, do you celebrate acceptable violence or not acceptable violence? Because the New York Times has no problem promoting violence. It's just they promote violence that they feel is justified. Again, look at their coverage of Israel and other sort of actions. Like, I mean, some of the stuff that they cover, even just when you look at their crime coverage, right? And how.

violence against unhoused people is covered or violence against other marginalized people is covered in that same paper. They don't seem to espouse these concerns. So I think it's worth asking why they're holding themselves to these standards with this incident specifically. I mean, you literally had Laura Ingram at Fox News. Did you see that 28 second clip? Absolutely. Yes. Where you see the coverage back to back. She's talking about Luigi and then the man who killed Jordan Neely and sort of we don't lion eyes killers five seconds later, this American hero, you know, killed, killed this deranged ill man and saved everyone. You know, it's just ultimate hypocrisy. The Instagram posts from nutbag people, which I was sent in the commercial break earlier, crazy. Like, he's cute.

And people celebrating this, this is a sickness. Honestly, it's so disappointing. But I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Gentlemen, thank you so much. And up next, The other big news out of New York, Daniel Penny. A lot of people think he's a hero. And tonight, he's not guilty. My take next. But you see it when you go to the traditional media on so many of these like sort of elite legacy media websites, like you go to these pages and you see article next to article, right? You see the article about sort of how they're covering Luigi. And then you see another article about, again, violence against oppressed people, marginalized people, unhoused people, police violence. Like, it is covered in such a radically different way. And so,

So I think we need to ask questions about those editorial decisions. I guess now would be a good time to ask something that I wanted to fit in here somewhere, which is like, why do all of these huge publications? Like, why do they so aggressively serve power and not the people, like in a way that's become really apparent through this incident? I think, first of all, it's important to distinguish, like, what sort of media we're talking about. There are these outlets like Democracy Now or ProPublica that is nonprofit, right?

It is not corporate driven. It's not billionaire owned. These are nonprofit newsrooms or operate sort of on public money sort of for the public good. Again, ProPublica has done some of the best investigative reporting on the health care system. They are phenomenal. The journalists there deserve praise and nothing else. Then you have the sort of digital media or it doesn't really exist anymore, but you used to have the sort of digital media, but you still have places like Splinter or these sort of small digital media outlets that will challenge power. because again, these are mostly journalists that came from places like Vice News or BuzzFeed News or places that sort of like existed to hold the media elite elite. Then you have the billionaire controlled and owned major sort of quote unquote elite media. You have places again like the New York Times and others. These places exist to prop up institutional power. These are for profit businesses at the end of the day. They are for profit businesses. They're not. They don't exist, you know, just for sunshine and rainbows to hold power.

to account. They exist to sort of package news and information for an elite audience. The audience of places like the New York Times and other elite media is wealthy executives. It's upper middle class people. It is people that, again, probably run in Brian Thompson circles. That is the audience. So that is the sort of editorial view that you're going to get from those places. Now, these outlets do allow certain reporters to challenge power. You have people like someone like David Enrich. David Enrich is one of the best reporters working in America today. He has written about not just the problems with sort of like health care, but also like, I mean, Johnson and Johnson, like poisoning people with cancerous talc. He does amazing investigative journalism, but he doesn't control the editorial page.

And I think actually the work that he and these other amazing investigative reporters do at the times, and this is how I feel too when I work to these places is your amazing work holding power to account is sort of being, it's used to launder. this broader business, which is sort of about appealing to elites. And when you look at the top down a tutorial structure of who has power within these media organizations, it's not people that challenge power. You have people like David Leonhard at the New York Times or Brett Stevens, whose sole job is to reinforce power structures. It is to tell the elites what they want to hear. It is to tell rich people what they want to hear. It's a don't mess with the system because they play a key role in the system. They don't want to. They're never going to push anti-capitalist sentiment because they're a for-profit business owned by billionaires, right? It's also like there's that great like Noam Chomsky

interview with that journalist where the journalist is like, you know, well, I'm independently minded. I'm independently minded. And, you know, they don't tell me what to say. And he's like, the very reason that you're in this position sitting in that chair is because they know that you will say a certain thing. And when you look at who gets hired at these places and who survives working at these places, places, they share an ideology. And it is not an ideology that questions capitalism or questions power. It's just not. Quote, case in point, look at the people that get driven out of the New Times and get driven out of places like this. Not me. I quit on my own. Okay, I'm not a martyr. But look at people like, you know, Jasmine Hughes or others, right, that have been pushed out of these

institutions for critiquing power. I just want to say one other thing, too. You're never going to hear critiques of the system from these places because they rely on these systems to, they rely on having access to CEOs for their deal book conferences or whatever. Like having access to elite halls of power is integral to their business model. Upholding these systems of power is integral to their business model. And they recruit people that have a specific worldview. Again, this is why you don't have tons of trans people, tons of anti-capitalists, tons of other people like working at these institutions.

And that's not to say that a lot of the lower level journalists don't share that ideology. actually most journalists are like working class people. They're not making a lot of money. So there are these amazing journalists at the New York Times that actually do believe those things. They're just never going to get the megaphone that someone like David Leonhard or Brett Stevens or any of these other people will have. Right. I feel like all of this is kind of well encapsulated in, right, the Washington Post famously like liberal leaning media publication. Their slogan is democracy dies in darkness. And they've kind of like branded themselves as. has this like holding power to account kind of thing. And they're owned by Jeff Bezos. Right.

Who forebode them from endorsing Kamala Harris, even endorsing Kamala Harris during the election. And then right afterwards, he goes and congratulate to Trump. So it's kind of just like, it feels like a business model that is fundamentally at odds with what these media publications claimed is their goal and that it's doomed to fail. Well, I think people are seeing through it. Thankfully, people are seeing through it, right? people are starting to question and say, wow, maybe billionaires shouldn't control our media ecosystem. Maybe we do need independent journalism. Maybe we do need people that aren't beholden to access, right?

That don't care if they get kicked out of, you know, the White House press briefing for asking the wrong question. That is what we need. And again, I just want to say because there are these amazing journalists at these institutions. They are just not in leadership. That's the thing. It's like you can, they use these people to write the, critical stories that are allowed, because you have to allow a certain amount of criticism, right? To maintain like credibility. Right, to maintain your sort of credibility and be like,

look, we do, look at us. We did that tough story. Remember back in that day, we did that tough story. It's like, well, yeah, because that was an acceptable story for you to do. And you could sort of couch it in these things. But you're never going to question the system. Even the way when you go look at a lot of this investigative journalism that comes out of these places, some of which is really high quality, it's done through a certain editorial point of view. And it like lets you sort of question not question the systems, but rather sort of question one bad executive, right, or the wrongdoing of one bad company. It's never like, hey, look at this whole system. Hey, why do billionaires control so much in our society? Why is capitalism so off the rails? It's just like, look at this bad person over here,

or we've uncovered this wrongdoing. And sometimes, again, like I just want to say, like people like David Enrich, people like Drew Harwell at The Washington Post, like these are really good reporters. These people do not fuck with power. These people question power. They work at these places, I believe, frankly, because they are the only places that give them a platform and resources to do the phenomenal journalism they do. They are not the editors in chief. They are not the managing editors. They are not the bosses. They are not the billionaire owners. They're not the CEOs. And ultimately, it is those people that, like, they control the media institutions that they run, right? They're the powerful people. One other thing, can I just say? Yes. But it's also like you have to sort of like look at what gets

amplified because somebody like David Lienhardt, for instance, having the mouthpiece that he does at the New York Times, this is a man who runs the morning newsletter who speaks to over 15 million people, I think, daily through his, you know, channels. He has given a platform that other people at the New York Times are never given again, because he shares an ideology with the rich people that own and control the paper. So same thing with someone like Brett Stevens, right? Why do we have all these people on the opinion pages that have this very specific ideology that's a vaguely conservative ideology again because the people in power want that step amplified. So it's like, yes, of course, you know, you've got the tech team and a lot of people on the business section of

the New York Times doing some of the best journalism out there, like holding power to account, but it's never going to be blasted out in the same way. It's never going to be like the tone of the paper is never going to reflect their work. It's going to reflect people like Brett Stevens. And I'm just using the New York Times as an example. I think this is true for all of these sort of mainstream traditional publications. And I think cable news is actually 10 times worse because they don't even pretend to do journalism. Yeah, the rantings and ravings. My rantings and ravings.

The rantings and ravings of Taylor Lorenz. That's the episode title. To your point, the people that they ultimately are indebted to, which are the people funding them and the people at the tops of these big media companies. It's the Jeff Bezos. Right. Exactly. I mean, I think that like as long as newspapers are owned by people, people like Jeff Bezos, where Rupert Murdoch, we're never going to get honest reporting about the very

human aspects of Luigi Mangione because they're, because they're terrified. They are terrified that the average person has so much more in common with Luigi Mangione than they do with Rupert Murdoch. And the average person can relate so much more to Luigi Mangioni than they can to Jeff Bezos. I wanted to end on kind of a lighter note. Did you see the Among Us panic? Of course. I saw the NBC News headline and I laughed so hard. I saw it on a meme account and I thought it was a joke. When I realized it was serious, I went into, I was in a group chat, somebody spam the link.

I literally laughed out loud. Do you want to read the NBC headline? It's so funny. Yes. Let me find it. Okay. So NBC published this story that says, quote, extremely ironic. Suspect in United Health CEO slang played video game killer friend recalls.

And they're talking about Among Us. They're talking about. Among Us. The New York Post and these other outlets ran United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson's suspected killer played assassin video game with friends. Assassan video game and it's among us. It's among us. For the boomers, among us, can you explain what Among Us is? Among us is a children's video game that was very popular in 2020 sort of lockdown era where you're basically like a little space, you're like a little like roly-polis space man and you're on a spaceship and you're on a spaceship and your goal is to find the imposter. There's like, you play with a group of maybe like 10 people and one is

the quote unquote imposter and the imposter. And the imposter's goal is to kind of catch and and kill. I mean, kill in the sense of like, these are like little like blob amorphous like men that like fall over and like, like there's no. It's like the way that you eat the alien in Pac-Man. That's like the level of assassination we're talking about. It would be like if you wrote this about Pac-Man. I think Pac-Man is the perfect comparison because it's like, yeah, it would be like he slaughtered ghosts in that, you know what I mean? Like Luigi Manjoni obsessed with violent video game, Pac-Man. It's so funny.

But it's just, it just shows again how out of touch this media industry can be. Among us explained what to know about the game played by Luigi Mangione, alleged CEO shooter. That is a headline from Forbes. What are we doing? To cap this off, it's such a weird reckoning because I've always seen journalists and journalism as this sort of aspirational, vital part of life in America. And it is, it is, right?

Journalism is. Journalism and the free press is hugely important. I believe in it. I encourage it. I guess maybe what I'm feeling about all of this and you tell me if my feelings are correct, is that like the press that we have right now, as long as it's beholden to these billionaires, isn't as free as we make it out to be? Absolutely. I think again, this is why, and I've said this my entire career, even when I worked at

these places, this is why we do not want billionaire controlled media. That is not the media ecosystem we want. We do not want a for-profit business model that caters to upper middle class and rich people. We want a robust media ecosystem where, again, I'm not saying CEOs shouldn't have their own news outlets. Sure, they can, you know, people can, like I said, there's a lot of amazing business coverage of Silicon Valley that is catered towards Silicon Valley people, right? But we also need worker-driven media. We need media and journalism for those of us that actually suffer under the healthcare system, those of us who have had medical debt, those of us who know how barbaric these systems are and can center the struggles of working average people. And I think that's why it's

really important to support independent journalism, people like Ken Klippenstein, people like others, who are willing to speak truth to power and go into these spaces. I would hope that I can count myself among those people too. But it's like you want journalists that that are comfortable doing that stuff. You know, it's hard because there's not that many journalists that can do that. And look at the backlash that you get. Look at the, look at the way the traditional press has tried to smear Ken. You know, look at how they took my like joy comment and like completely misquoted it. It's like you get so much backlash and there's so much effort to silence. independent journalism in this country. And I think it's a shame because we desperately need a more

diverse media ecosystem. Taylor Lorenz derives quote unquote joy from killing puppies. Taylor Lorenz derives joy from a robust independent media ecosystem. That's what I derive joy from. That is a sexy article title right now. That's one you will not see in the New York Post. Well, this was the the rantings and ravings of a frustrated homosexual. I hope you enjoy. Thank you so much for joining us on this kind of random, special, highly topical, more so than we usually do episode. Taylor Lorenz, where should people find you right now? Please subscribe to my YouTube. It's my main thing for 2024, also my newsletter, usermag.com. That's also how I pay my bills is usermag.com. it's an online culture newsletter. I wrote a lot about all of this and more. So check it up.

Thank you so much for being here. It is weird fucking times. Make sure you're doing whatever you need to do to stay afloat. However that looks for you. And until next time, stay free. Free Luigi. Yeah.