Memeing a murderer

If you spotted the person who shot Brian Thompson, would you a) turn them in to the police or b) continue to go merrily about your day?

Judging by the gleeful reaction to the UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder, 99% of the United States would choose option b. There have been a lot of memes after Thompson was gunned down in what appears to have been a targeted attack in Manhattan. There have been a lot of jokes about pre-existing conditions and denied coverage. There have been a lot of shocking stories about how UnitedHealthcare has ruined people’s lives by denying coverage. What there hasn’t been is very much sympathy for the 50-year-old insurance CEO. In a country that can’t agree on much, an awful lot of people seem to agree with the Clarence Darrow quote: “I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”

I don’t need to spell out why Thompson’s death has elicited so little sympathy. It doesn’t matter how great a guy he might have been to his friends and family; he was a top executive at a company that has treated millions of people very poorly. Health insurance in the US is a racket that is more focused on increasing profits than providing care. And UnitedHealthcare is particularly egregious when it comes to getting its customers to pay enormous premiums, then turning around and denying them care when they desperately need it. According to data from ValuePenguin, a consumer research site owned by LendingTree that specializes in insurance, the company dismissed about one in every three claims in 2023. That’s the most of any major insurer: the industry average is 16%.

Denying claims is apparently very profitable. UnitedHealth has a market value of $566bn, and generated nearly $372bn in revenues last year. It’s the fourth-biggest publicly traded US company by sales. Thompson himself got a nice little cut of that: he earned $10.2 million in 2023. He was also very good at selling his stocks at opportune moments: Thompson was one of three UnitedHealth Group executives named in a class-action lawsuit accused of dumping more than $120m of stock while the company was the subject of a federal antitrust investigation.

In short: Thompson was the face of an unfair system that has screwed millions of people over. Nobody knows what the motive behind Thompson’s murder was yet, but the shooter wrote “deny”, “defend” and “depose” on the shell casings left at the scene – which echoes the title of a book about predatory insurance company practices. There has been a lot of speculation (and it is purely speculation) that the shooter may have been someone whose loved one was denied coverage by UnitedHealthcare.

Whatever the motive, many people seem to think Thompson got what he deserved. The glee we’re seeing doesn’t just stem from animosity towards insurance companies, but anger towards an unfair system in which the elite rarely seem to face any consequences for their actions. The banks that caused the 2008 financial crisis got bailed out while regular people lost their homes. The key executives behind the opioid crisis may never see a jail cell, despite the lives they have ruined. Joe Biden gave his son Hunter a pardon. Donald Trump will become the first president convicted of a felony.

To be clear: I am not in any way condoning Thompson’s murder or endorsing vigilantes shooting CEOs on the street. Murdering anyone is quite clearly wrong. But please spare me the pearl-clutching from people (mainly politicians and billionaires) who are shocked by the satisfaction Thompson’s murder has inspired, yet who happily endorse or ignore other forms of violence. It’s quite illuminating to see who is vocally outraged by Thompson’s death yet indifferent to murder on an industrial scale. Representative Ritchie Torres, for example, has tweeted that Thompson’s assassination “is so shocking that it leaves one speechless”. Meanwhile, Torres is working overtime to whitewash the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza – which Amnesty International has labelled a genocide. Violence is apparently not shocking when it’s against people you consider subhuman rather than wealthy white CEOs. Nor does violence seem quite as shocking to some when it’s baked into an economic system that kills people via greed and neglect rather than with a gun.

Now that the US is finally having a nationwide conversation about how much people hate health insurance companies, the big question is this: will anything change? There has been one bit of positive news: Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield said on Thursday that it would reverse a decision to put a time limit on anesthesia. It’s not clear whether Thompson’s murder had anything to do with this, but negative sentiment towards insurers likely did factor in.

Still, I wouldn’t get too optimistic about imminent systematic change. Rather than making their business models more humane, it’s likely that health insurance companies will simply invest more money in private security. Indeed, it seems that security companies are already seeing an uptick in business. This is the world we live in, I guess. One man’s murder is another man’s business opportunity.

Academic trolled by misogynists is ‘unfazed’

Dr Ally Louks, a University of Cambridge supervisor, recently posted a picture of herself on X with her completed PhD, which was on the politics of smell (a scentillating subject). Because some men cannot stand to see a woman being happy, some large rightwing accounts targeted Louks and she was bombarded with rape threats. “I feel quite unfazed by the vitriol,” she said about the trolling. I’m glad she’s unfazed but the fact that we seem to have normalized online misogyny is unacceptable.

Tradition of smacking women’s bottoms with cow horns draws scrutiny

“An annual festival on a German North Sea island that had drawn criticism over a practice of men hitting women with cow’s horns passed without reports of assaults this year,” the Associated Press reports. Now, that’s certainly a lede you don’t see every day.

Man disrupts TV interview about women feeling unsafe in public spaces

A journalist in Britain was interviewing a mother and daughter about an experience with attempted sexual assault when a man interrupted filming and reportedly became aggressive.

Keira Knightley ‘stalked by men’ amid early fame

“There was an amount of gaslighting to be told by a load of men that ‘you wanted this’,” Knightley told the Los Angeles Times about shooting to fame as a teenager. “It was rape speak. You know: ‘This is what you deserve.’ It was a very violent, misogynistic atmosphere.”

The abortion case that could set a precedent across Latin America

In 2013, a young woman known as Beatriz was denied an abortion in El Salvador despite her high-risk pregnancy. Beatriz died a few years later after being involved in a traffic accident but her case made it to the inter-American court of human rights (IACHR). A ruling is expected soon and could open the way for El Salvador to decriminalize abortions, setting an important precedent across the region. Before the IACHR ruling, however, it looks like activists linked to the US hard right are running a disinformation campaign trying to discredit the case and attacking feminists involved with it.

‘Yes, it’s a genocide’

If you’re still somehow under the impression that shooting Palestinian kids in the head is morally justified, please do read this powerful statement from Amos Goldberg, an Israeli professor of holocaust studies. “[L]ike in every other case of genocide in history right now we have mass denial,” Goldberg says in his statement. “But reality cannot be denied. So yes, it is a genocide.”

The week in pawtriarchy

This week in cat stats: women who owned a cat but no dog overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris in the election. Meanwhile, I’m afraid to report that dog owners leaned towards Trump, according to AP VoteCast’s survey of more than 120,000 voters. Talk about paw choices.