The murder last week of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the subsequent capture of his accused killer has led to an inconvenient truth for some: A lot of America is broadly unsympathetic to the victim and much more sympathetic to the man accused of shooting him. And this isn’t something that falls neatly onto left/right lines.
CNN looked at this dynamic this week.
“In a Facebook post by @UnitedHealthGrp expressing sadness about #UnitedHealthcare CEO #BrianThompson’s death received 62,000 reactions — 57,000 of them laughing emojis.” #LuigiMangione https://t.co/uPyen3f0x9
— Tom Kenis (@tomkenis) December 10, 2024
People on the Internet have been leaving 1-star reviews on the Google and Yelp pages of the McDonalds in Pennsylvania where Luigi Mangione was arrested, accusing them of “snitching,” on the suspect. Meanwhile, merchandise praising Mangione and including the words “deny, defend, depose” — which reportedly was scrawled on bullet casings left at the crime scene — has appeared online.
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Companies have taken steps to outlaw such merchandise, with eBay telling CNN that “items that glorify or incite violence, including those that celebrate the recent murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson, are prohibited.” Such items were also, for a time, available on Amazon.
As for those reviews, per Reuters, Google has begun to pull them. One review, of the McDonalds, stated that “this location has rats in the kitchen that will make you sick and your insurance isn’t going to cover it.”
Yelp, for their part, stopped allowing reviews of that McDonalds location altogether.
“While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to this incident, we’ve temporarily disabled the posting of content to this page as we work to investigate whether the content you see here reflects actual consumer experiences rather than the recent events,” Yelp said in a pop-up message on thee page of the McDonalds, as reported by CNN.
However, moderation of the Internet, and of public sentiment in general, is much harder to do.
Luigi Mangione’s fellow Pennsylvanian prison mates have been heard yelling “Luigi’s conditions suck” & “Free Luigi” in new interview with NewsNation.
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) December 12, 2024
Meanwhile, at the jail in Pennsylvania where Mangione is being held, inmates were shown on NewsNation yelling “Luigi’s conditions suck” & “Free Luigi,” with the anchor and reporter speculating on the air about whether Mangione was able to watch their show in his cell.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
