David Jett Explains The CEO Shooter
De-lay, De-ny, De-Lovely
There’s a scene in Arthur Penn’s 1967 masterpiece film Bonnie and Clyde in which the titular characters are having fun shooting at an abandoned house. The previous owner, a worn-down and no-nonsense farmer, shows up with his sad family for one last look. He and his farm hand had spent years working the land, but the depression was here, and the bank foreclosed on his farm, forcing his family to move to whoever the hell knows where. Normally if you stumbled across the most notorious criminals in the country, you might be given pause. But when Clyde offers his gun so the farmer can get in a couple of shots at the house the bank took from him, he accepts the bandit’s offer and fires away. As the farmer leaves, Clyde proudly says, with an enormous grin, “we rob banks.” The farmer gives him a slight look of approval and in this small moment, the bank robbers become anti-heroes. They may be criminals, but they never forced a family out of their home. The bank did that. (The farmer was so wooden and realistic, that I’m not even convinced it was an actor. Maybe the producers just drove way out into the country and picked the first old, crusty fuck they found.)
The movie glamorized the duo in many ways, but the biggest was the casting of Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, two of the biggest, and best looking, movie stars at the time. The real Bonnie and Clyde, known in the 30’s as “Barrow and his gun mol” were not as glamorous. Both walked with a limp, Clyde because he cut off some toes to get out of hard labor during a prison stay, Bonnie due to a car accident which also gave her serious burns.
The Depression-era public became fascinated by Bonnie and Clyde due to a combination of hatred for the banks foreclosing on their homes, their employers taking advantage of them, and a series of photos found on a camera left behind by Bonnie during a panicked getaway. Newspapers across the country published the photos, some of them considered scandalous, which resulted in even more interest and even support for the bank robbing pair. (Bonnie and Clyde robbed very few banks and mostly robbed gas stations and drug stores.)
On December 4, 2024, 50-year old Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot and killed outside of the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel. Brian was attending the annual investors’ meeting for his company, a meeting in which I’m sure he was going to extol the massive amount of money the company made that year, in part by denying claims of suffering people, possibly costing them their lives.
Here’s the thing. A man was murdered and not a lot of people cared. Healthcare insurance in this country is so fucked up that people just saw the same thing as the farmer in Bonnie and Clyde. The public accepted the gun and shot at the house.
I’m not here today to spend time arguing whether or not we should have universal healthcare. (For the record, I’m in favor of it. Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro said of the CEO murder: “Violence can never be used to try to prove some point. That is not what we do in a civilized society.” Well, a civilized society would have universal health care. Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom. What country is missing from that list?)
What I’m more interested in is the reaction to the CEO shooting and the question “are we obligated to care about everyone who gets killed?”
I certainly don’t condone murder, well, for the most part. Do I think someone should have murdered Brian Thompson? No. Do I care that someone did? Again, no. This man was the head of a profit-mongering corporation that for the sake of investors and their bonuses, let people suffer and/or die. Sure, he may have been a great guy to work with. Maybe he was a great dad and fantastic husband. But he led a company that casually traded other people’s pain for money. I wasn’t glad that it happened, I wouldn’t have done it, but I didn’t shed a tear.
On December 7, 1941, Japan carried out an attack on Pearl Harbor, an American naval base, and brought the United States into World War 2. On August 6 and 9, 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cites Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Between 150,000 and 246,000 people were killed. Most of them were civilians.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an attack on Israel which killed 1,195 people, including 815 civilians. Israel responded with sustained attacks on Gaza which killed over 40,000 Palestinians, more than half of which were women and children.
If the CEO killer had been wronged by insurance companies, was his response proportional and/or just, especially compared with the two examples above? Just something to think about for 3 hours the next time you’re high.
I didn’t watch the first John Wick movie for years because they killed his dog. I cared more about the killing of a fictional dog than I did a real-life CEO. Did Brian Thompson deserve to die? In the movie Unforgiven Clint Eastwood’s character William Munny has the upper hand with Gene Hackman’s Little Bill, who says “I don’t deserve to die.” Munny replies “Deserves got nothing to do with it.” Earlier in the film, after killing several people, the Schofield Kid says “Yeah, well, I guess they had it coming.” Munny replies, “we all have it coming, kid.”
The NYPD began a manhunt for the killer which mostly just involved police walking around Central Park with the urgency of your jackass friend trying to help you find your lost keys. A department spokesperson said that officers had been “driving around” and that they have “never seen this level of operational sophistication.” I have a feeling Don Knotts and Tim Conway robbing a bank would be too sophisticated for their operations.
26-year-old Luigi Mangione (no relation to Chuck) was arrested at a McDonald’s in PA after “acting suspicious” and was charged in connection to the murder of Brian Thompson. Before he was arrested, photos floated around, and he became a modern-day version of Bonnie and Clyde. People began rooting for him to get away. The public followed every twist and turn in the case. And a lot of people didn’t care that he may have possibly murdered someone.
Gov. Josh Shapiro also stated, “In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this. He is no hero.” Actually, he might be. My cousin told me that Luigi was one of the X-Men, and my cousin is usually right about this kind of stuff.
The mainstream media, instead of publishing investigative pieces on why he may have committed this murder and how it could have been avoided, flooded the public with articles about how good looking the suspect is and why that may have contributed to people supporting him. Yes, Idris Elba could murder anyone he wanted and because he’s so handsome, people would be ok with it. “Susan, let me tell ya, that Idris Elba walked in and shot my entire family, but goddamn, he’s just so yummy!”
The New York Times published a piece titled “Luigi Mangione and the Danger of a Handsome Criminal.” The New York Times pays its employees to write shit that even People Magazine would be embarrassed to publish. Could someone please provide me with a list of crimes I’m good looking enough to get away with? I know I’m not CEO-killing handsome, but do you guys think I could get away with something like passing bad checks?
Luigi Mangione has plead not guilty to the crimes. Attorneys on both sides are in preliminary arguments over whether to allow those gorgeous eyebrows into evidence.
After Luigi had been arrested, NBC news reported that he had “once belonged to a group of Ivy League gamers who played assassins.” The game? Among Us. It’s a multi-player game where you’re roaming around different rooms in a spaceship. Each player is either a Crewmate or an Imposter. The Crewmates complete menial tasks while trying to figure out who the Imposters are, before the Imposters kill you. If you don’t know the game, here’s a screenshot.
Among Us isn’t Assassins Creed or Call of Duty. It’s a game that’s barely more realistic than Pac Man. It’s like if someone was murdered by a candlestick and the police looked into people that had played the board game Clue. Maybe the police thought Luigi was hiding out in a rural area because they might have found Farmville on his phone.
Police found shell casings at the scene. Three casings with the words Delay, Deny, Depose etched into them. Those words are in reference to a common insurance company strategy. Shortly after the killing, Author Jay Feinman’s book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It” rocketed up Amazon’s non-fiction bestseller list. It’s like Oprah’s Book Club but with more murder.
A 42-year old mother of three was recently charged with threats to conduct a mass shooting or an act of terrorism after she was denied a medical claim. While on a phone call with Blue Cross Blue Shield, she said, “Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next.” That’s the frustration level people have with healthcare insurance these days. Next time she emails in a claim, she should probably attach this photo.
Another journalist who has gotten a lot of attention lately is Ken Klippenstein who has been covering the shooting and mainstream media’s reaction to it. (Ken has a newsletter on Substack and you can find it here.) Ken was one of the few people to publish the “manifesto” found in Luigi’s possession. Most newspapers refused to publish it in full, only using select quotes, under the guise of not giving Luigi any undue positive publicity. Well, outside of what a smoke show he is.
Yes, you probably saw this coming, but here’s the complete manifesto. By the way, it’s really too short to be called a manifesto. It’s more like a post you could put on Bluesky in a short thread. Once again, shoutout to the excellent work by Ken Klippenstein.
To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. 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, 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 of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as 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 (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), 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.
Not exactly a raving lunatic. I’ve seen more unhinged writing on relatives’ Facebook pages.
I’m assuming the public will be spellbound by Luigi’s eventual trial. And it won’t be because of his rizz and his drip. It’ll be because either you or someone you know once had a horrible experience with healthcare insurance. Wanted posters have sprung up in New York featuring other CEO’s, and articles have been written about the escalating costs of keeping rich people safe. Some UnitedHealthcare employees spoke out about their anxiety over more potential shootings. If they need some advice about being targets of shootings, maybe they should speak with ANY GODDAMN THIRD GRADER, cause kids have been dealing with this this on a daily basis for years. And the fact that there are murders everyday that get nowhere close to the amount of coverage or police action that a rich CEO’s murder does, doesn’t help in making your average person root for the Bonnie and Clyde types less.
If Arthur Penn had made Bonnie and Clyde in 2024, I imagine that when the farmer took the gun from Clyde and started shooting at his foreclosed home, he may have uttered the line “fuck around and find out.”
BONUS CONTENT! Every time I hear the term CEO these days, the first thing that pops into my head is the entrance music for AEW wrestler Mercedes Mone (known as Sasha Banks when she was in WWE.) She even has a little dance for it!