Luigi Mangione

Comment of the Day: “’What’s Going On Here?’ Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

I wanted to start Easter (and Greek Easter: for once the calendars agree) morning off on a moral note, and Glenn Logan‘s ringing Comment of the Day on the revolting Axis admiration of murderer Luigi Mangione provides exactly that. Glenn was a prolific blogger himself, has been a regular commenter here from the beginning (2009) and I have recognized him here too seldom, probably because he is economical with his pronouncements.

Yesterday was pretty quiet around these parts with few comments, but, as Spencer Tracy says of the “meat” on Katherine Hepburn’s person in “Pat and Mike,” what there was “is cherce.”

Here is Glenn Logan’s COTD on the post, “What’s Going On Here?” Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?

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“What’s Going On Here?” Is This Incident Just A Single Teenage Idiot In Love Or Does It Have Larger Cultural Significance?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

The time is January 2024. A few minutes after a Carnival Sunrise cruise ship left the port of Miami, Florida for Jamaica, Carnival Cruise Lines received an anonymous email saying: “Hey, I think someone might have a bomb on your sunrise cruise ship.”  This triggered security protocols that involved both the US and Jamaican Coast Guard. More than 1,000 rooms on the ship had to be searched, and were. After a delay of many hours, the ship was ruled safe to sail and continued the cruise.

An investigation eventually traced the email to 19-year-old Joshua Darrell Lowe II of Bailey, Michigan. He confessed to making the false bomb threat, explaining that he was trying to prevent his girlfriend and her family from going on the cruise without him. Though Lowe could have been sentenced to five years in prison, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney this month sentenced him to only eight months behind bars. The judge was apparently impressed by the teen’s letter to the Judge taking full responsibility for his actions, expressing remorse, and apologizing profusely.

There is no question that such an act is unethical as well as potentially dangerous. I am interested in whether our political and popular culture sends messages to the young, impressionable and stupid that this kind of extreme conduct in the name of love or other passionate feelings is admirable.

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Unethical Quote of the Week: Ethics Villain Taylor Lorenz

/ Jack Marshall / 12 Comments

“You’re going to see women especially that feel like, Oh my God, right? Like, here’s this man who’s revolutionary, who’s famous, who’s handsome, who is young, who’s smart. He’s a person that seems like this morally good man, which is hard to find.”

—–The infamous Ethics Villain Taylor Lorenz, on CNN yesterday, saying (again) how admirable cold-blooded murderer Luigi Mangione is for killing  UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by shooting him in the back.

Ethics Alarms has paid little attention to the unethical rantings of Lorenz, who was fired from the New York Times for publishing slanderous material, hired by the Washington Pots (which has no ethical standards), and now is on her own. The Times once described her as a “talented journalist,” which also tells you all you need to know about The Times. I have put Lorenz in the same metaphorical isolation cell with perpetually unethical pundits like Elie Mystal, Jot Reid and Jimmy Kimmel, “Julie Principle” cases so obviously devoid of decency that 1) they aren’t worth criticizing and 2) they serve as useful markers of a friend’s lack of standards: if he or she can listen to or read what these awful people spew into public discourse without thinking, “Wow, what a lunatic!” said friend is beyond ethics rehab efforts.

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Unethical Tweet of the Month: CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

Could we possibly have more irresponsible, untrustworthy, detestable broadcast journalists than we have now?

CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins supported the assassin of UnitedHealthCEO Brian Thompson in the “Twitter/X” post above, directing readers to a site set up by the shooter’s lawyer that featured a prominent link to a GoFundMe for the murderer’s defense. Luigi Mangione, who strains the use of the term “alleged” as he was caught on camera shooting the victim in the back and arrested with incriminating evidence on his person has become the darling of the sickest of the sick among progressives. Leftists ranging from Elizabeth Warren to the most unhinged of my Facebook friends have rationalized Mangione’s cowardly crime as “understandable.” “You can only push people so far. And then they start to take matters into their own hands,” slimed Warren (BOY she’s horrible!) Mangione faces charges of first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism.

After the disgusting tweet attracted appropriate criticism ( “This is @CNN — pimping the GoFundMe for a left wing assassin,” tweeted Ace of Spades, completely accurately) Collins took it down–this is known as “subsequent repairs” in negligence law—and then employed manifest deceit to defend herself. “In no way did I share a fundraising link for him,” she protested.

No, she posted a link to a website that had the fundraising link displayed at the top of its page. Her claim that the fact the website existed was “newsworthy” does not explain or excuse her promoting it on social media. Jorge Bonilla on Newsbusters rightly asks what the reaction would have been to a Fox News journalist who posted the address of a site that linked to a GoFundMe for J-6 rioters.

The Trump White House has opened the long overdue debate over whether openly biased, partisan, unprofessional and untrustworthy journalists should continue to have press credentials at White House briefings. I would expand that discussion to whether people like Kaitlan Collins should be recognized as journalists at all.