Madison Wisconsin Ann Althouse, who tries admirably hard to suppress her natural left-leaning biases and I admire her for that, wrote a statement over the weekend that perfectly encapsulates what is so seductive and destructive about the progressive mindset.
I didn’t know what to do with it. I was temped to make it an Unethical Quote of the Month, but it’s not really unethical; it’s just dumb. (Also Trump’s outrageous attack on Rob Reiner locked up that distinction. I’m pretty sure it is also the most unethical quote of 2025.) It is so dumb, however, that I am tempted to say Althouse failed her duty of influence and expertise. Smart people who are expected to provide intellectual and emotional guidance have to take care that they don’t mislead the people who trust them.
Her statement was…“It shouldn’t be possible to become famous through murder, but it very clearly is.”
What a silly, utopian, “Imagine”-esque thing to say, out loud or on a blog (the internet is forever). It is, however, a near perfect example of the how the progressive delusion gene makes people believe in, advocate, and administer terrible policies that can’t possibly do anything but backfire horribly, and can’t possibly work.
It is one thing for someone to think along those lines in a moment of panic or stress. That’s excusable, though my late wife, “E2” in the EA comments, was always annoyed when characters in movies or TV shows would scream, “This can’t be happening!” The political Left is constantly gulled into thinking the realities of life can somehow be banished by a well-meaning program, law or policy. That’ where communism and socialism ooze from: surely there’s a way for everyone in a successful society to be happy, healthy, safe and having the benefit of sufficient food, living space and employment!
Uh, no.
The original Robert Kennedy almost became President quoting George Bernard Shaw’s (from “Back to Methuselah”) “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were, and say why not?” If we had a competent education system and properly trained journalists, the public would have known that RFK was quoting with approval a lifelong socialist who attacked capitalism, advocated for state management of commerce, advocated pacifist, and praised Josef Stalin while condemning democracy and individual freedoms.
“It shouldn’t be possible to become famous through murder”? That’s the equivalent of saying human nature should be different from what it is and history should be censored. Ann’s a lawyer: how could she write garbage like that? She was writing about Carl Reiner’s son who is only momentarily famous because the news media wants to make as big a deal out of his murdering his two parents as possible to drag Trump down for his disgusting Truth Social post. But Nick Reiner’s fame will last just a bit longer than Andy Warhol’s famous “15 minutes.”
Quick, what’s the name of the man who murdered Bob Crain, star of the popular “Hogan’s Heroes” sitcom and once the most popular disc jockey in the U.S.? Who killed actor Sal Mineo, stabbed to death in an alley? Do you remember the names of the Manson Family members who killed Sharon Tate, or just Manson? Tupak Shakur? John Lennon was a more important figure in the arts than Rob Reiner: can you remember his killer’s name? How about Dorothy Stratton, the rising starlet whose murder was dramatized in “Star 80”? How many of us even remember Charlie Kirk’s assassin a few short months since his death?
But those victims, like Reiner, are not the kinds of figures, and his murderer not the kind of sensational killer, that will always ensure fame for the individuals who end their lives. Serial killers become justly famous because they represent a frightening lesion of the human mind and our society. Presidential assassins justly become famous because they change history, and they should definitely be famous. Of course murders that have epoch-altering impact should become famous. I remember Princep, the Bosnian Serb nationalist whose assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, triggered World War I. Brutus was the most famous murderer of Julius Caesar, a rather important figure; certainly he should be famous.
Declaring that murder “shouldn’t” make someone famous follows the slippery slope of wishcraft that so much of progressive thought inflicts on our time, discourse, and wallets. The U.S. shouldn’t have so many gun deaths. The world shouldn’t have wars. People shouldn’t be hungry. Group members shouldn’t prefer their own group over others. Attractive people shouldn’t have an advantage over homely people. You can fill in dozens, maybe hundreds more.
I can see progressive mischief arising out of Ann’s delusional assertion. Hey, let’s make sure that no one becomes famous for murder! Just excise the names of Lee Harvey Oswald, Ted Bundy and all the rest from our history books, and make sure no media sources publish the names of killers like Nick Reiner. Problem solved…except that this is 1) impossible, 2) embraces Orwellian tactics that will have far more perilous societal implications.
[The video clip above is the finale of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Assassins,” which distorts history considerably to make the claim that Presidential assassins are motivated to kill in order to escape obscurity.]
Ethics Alarms 
“Wishcraft.” Term of the Year? For too many years, you could get an Arizona vanity auto license plate that had little handprints on it and the words “It shouldn’t hurt to be a child.” And then there’s the “Imagine World Peace” bumper sticker. I bet those are popular in Gaza or Lebanon or Yemen or Iran or Syria. My esteem for a lefty co-worker rose tremendously when I realized it was her car in the parking garage which sported the “Imagine Whirled Peas” bumper sticker.
Do you wish that humans would stop wishing for the world to be different?
Do you wish that humans would accept the fundamental truth that the world never changes, that impossible things don’ become possible, that how things always were is how they will always be?
I’m confused about your expectations here. What am I missing?
Humans should focus on reality, not delusions. That’s pretty basic.
I recognize that this statement is more aligned with the cynical Doris than the hopeful Fred Gaily as I discuss in the 2025 Ethics Companion to “Miracle on 34th Street” But then the movie wants us all to believe in Santa Claus.
What methods do you yourself use for telling the difference?
The world is full of amazing things which are now real that started off as delusions. Planes. Computers. The United States itself. In 1776, a British colony successfully declaring independence from Britain and setting up a democratic republic would have been considered ridiculous.
Humans with imagination and vision realize that “unlikely” is not the same thing as “absurd”. The question people need to ask themselves isn’t “is this realistic based on my experiences to date?” but rather “in order for this to work, what else would need to happen?”
I think if you see something already existing in real life, you know that it is possible. If you have never yet seen it existing historically, but you can imagine it, it may or may not be something possible.
Your example of the US as a republic is a good one. Typically in early modern Europe republics were small–Venice, the Dutch Republic, and things such as the Swiss Confederation. Bigger countries tended to be national monarchies or dynastic empires.
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There is a line in an old Clifford Geertz book about Lebanon, written probably around 1970, and it’s in a book of his essays _The interpretation of cultures_ published in 1973.
I found the exact quote online.
“Lebanon may be–as Phillip Hitti has pointed out–not much larger than Yellowstone Park, but it is a good deal more astonishing.”
If you see Lebanon in its diversity, you know that it is possible. If you see major portions of Lebanon destroyed since the sentence was published, and the elaborate balancing act in Parliament now problematic, you know that such an outcome is also possible.
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As for what is possible with humans, many would argue that human nature does not change. If it does change, it only changes slowly.
Victor Davis Hanson provides the example of a new and improved irrigation pump. The new pump moves more water faster and cheaper but the water itself has not changed. He argued that we can think of human nature as a bit like water in that example.
Probably in a completely different essay, Hanson mentions a historical figure who burned down an ancient temple simply to achieve fame.
AI suggests this for details:
“The man who burned an ancient Greek temple for fame was Herostratus, an arsonist who destroyed the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in 356 BC, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, purely to achieve notoriety, leading to the term “Herostratic fame” for gaining fame through infamous acts.”
Merry Christmas!
charles w abbott
rochester NY
When this post arose last week and the comments came in, it reminded me of a quote that Steven Pinker used in his book _The blank slate_.
“Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”
–Anton Chekhov
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thanks for letting me share.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
It should not be possible for humans to ignore reality, but, clearly, it is and they do.
I think the killer of John Lennon was named Chapman, but that’s about all I remember from that list. I remember Jack McCall, the drifter who shot Wild Bill Hickock in the back of the head because he wanted to kill a celebrity. I remember Solomon Teghirian, the Armenian assassin who struck former Ottoman Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha down in revenge for the genocide of his people. I also remember Dr. Carl Weiss, who shot Huey Long point blank and was then riddled with bullets by his bodyguards. I used to remember the name of the West Webster killer, who deliberately set fire to a house on Christmas Eve 2012 so he could target the first responders and killed 2 firemen, but I’ve forgotten it and would have to look it up now, partly since he killed himself right after, and so couldn’t have a sustained news presence through a trial, nor a “what is he doing now?” interview by some gullible reporter two decades down the line.
The bad news, like it or not, is that it is possible to become famous through taking life. The good news is that once victim and killer alike are both dead or out of the public eye, the fame usually fades. It’s also true of those who became famous other ways. I said way back when that after John McCain was buried and the crowd from the funeral cleared, we’d hear less and eventually no more of him, and we haven’t heard much more. Bush the elder is dead and Bush the younger is almost 80 and barely gets talked about anymore. How much more is there to say about bin Laden, dumped in the sea 14 years ago and hopefully fish food by now?
Eventually most folks, no matter what, become important only to historical scholars, learned men, and enthusiasts. The people whose continuing influence is still felt today by all could barely fill a room with 100 seats.
Shouldn’t? I think that’s one of the most useless words in the English language. Who decides what should have been? Who has the moral authority to decide what should not have been? You? Me? Anyone? Bad things happen, and bad things happen because people (sometimes well-meaning, sometimes ignorant, sometimes not looking ahead) make bad choices. If bad things happen that are big enough, people notice them, just like you can’t look away from a trainwreck. That’s just human nature, and most humans are not going to be Fred Rogers and look for the helpers. Of course, most humans are also not under-5 children.
Wishcraft? That’s a pretty catchy term for wishful thinking. Despite PBS telling kids to dream big, the what and the why are pretty useless without the how. It’s all well and good to imagine a world where the rivers are all clean enough for swimming and war is a distant memory. However, the science of clearing the world’s waterways isn’t so simple, and if war was a problem that could be solved, I submit we would have solved it somewhere in 6,000 years. That is ok, I also submit that everyone’s role is to deal with the evils present in his time. It is above any human’s pay grade to try to put an end to evil for all time, and that isn’t going to happen until Someone a lot greater than any of us remakes everything.
Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Sirhan Sirhan still ring a few bells.
We have people who are famous for being famous, so I’ll take the fame of a murderer over that any day. At least a murderer is news-worthy, unlike, say, any of the Kardashians.
Best comment on Althouse’s site: “I’ve always thought that people who murder their parents should be treated lightly as they are unlikely to do it again.“
And besides that, they are orphans.
Not exactly on point but related …..
With extremely rare exception, any kind of fame is fleeting. As has been mentioned, only those rare individuals who alter the course of history become noteworthy.
I am always irked and saddened to hear in eulogy or memoriam, that so-and-so will never be forgotten. In two generations or so, even their family will forget. It’s just human nature. For example, my children have no connection to my grandparents other than pictures in photobooks. I have a shot at a third generation remembering me, since I became Grandma at age 38, and currently have two great grandsons. Still, I need to live long enough for them to reach an age of solid memory.
We try to remember, respect and honor our past, but we live in the here and now. And while it is important to plan for the future, really living each current moment enriches us and creates a past worth cherishing.
Wishing you all the Joy of the Season and a very Merry Christmas
I deliberately scrolled past all of the comments to make sure that the names of celebrity murderers didn’t inform me. Call it intentional ignorance.
I remember the name John Hinckley as the person who murdered Lennon. I was less than five years old at the time, and I could be confusing Lennon’s murder’s name with the name of the man who tried to assassinate President Reagan.
I couldn’t even name the guy who shot Charlie Kirk. I’m sure I’d recognize his name as the one who assassinated Charlie Kirk. Can you remember the name of the man Luigi Mangione murdered? (Brian Thompson) Or the name of the person who was killed by the kid trying to assassinate Trump in Butler, PA? (Corey Campatore)
If Tupac Shakur’s murderer has been identified, I missed it.
Bob Crane’s murderer’s first name was John. (Auto Focus is mostly about sex addiction & Crane’s life was the template.)
This is what’s available to me from recall not enhanced by a Google search.