Iwas a little late to hear about the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In the days leading up to the 2024 election, I deleted the news apps from my phone and purposefully disengaged with social media, just as I had in 2016 and 2020. This time, being disconnected felt so good that I didn’t bother plugging in again.
So I was ignorant when a colleague caught me in the hall after a morning class in early December. “Aren’t you the Robin Hood guy?” she asked. Used to this question, I chuckled and said yes.
Then she asked me what I thought about Thompson’s murder in light of my research. It would be one in a long stream of comparisons between the assassin, alleged to be a man named Luigi Mangione, and the legendary outlaw. Reddit, especially, has latched onto the idea of Mangione, who is scheduled to appear in court Friday, as a “noble outlaw” figure. The comparison has not gone unnoticed, and articles exploring the idea have appeared in Politico, The Globe and Mail, and HuffPost.
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