No, Brian Thompson Wasn’t a “Working-Class Hero”
Commentators like the New York Times’ Bret Stephens have called slain CEO Brian Thompson a “working-class hero.” You don’t have to condone murder to see through that ridiculous claim about a man who was at the helm of a legalized extortion racket.
Flags fly at half mast outside the UnitedHealthcare corporate headquarters on December 4, 2024, in Minnetonka, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen / Getty Images)
In 2011, then president Barack Obama announced to great fanfare that Navy Seals had killed terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden. That night, crowds at baseball games and professional wrestling matches broke into chants of “USA! USA!” when they heard the news. There were spontaneous street parties in New York City and Washington, DC.
I didn’t join the merriment. I was and am disturbed by the idea of extrajudicial assassinations carried out far from any war zone. It would have been far better to capture Bin Laden alive so he could stand trial for his crimes.
Even so, I didn’t feel the slightest temptation to memorialize Osama Bin Laden as a great man or whitewash his crimes. It’s possible, and in fact quite easy, to agree that it was bad to kill someone without retroactively sanitizing the victim.
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