An occasional UD feature, tipping our hat to people who cleared his path to victory.

In an Instagram story that went viral this week, Julia Alekseyeva, an assistant professor of English and media studies [at U Penn], appears to refer to Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Penn grad, as the “icon we all need and deserve.” 

... You may see a shooter
You may see a shooter
Across a crowded room
And somehow you know ...
You're watching with stealth ...
Hey this guy!  He slaughtered
The head of U. Health!

Sat there with my buddies
Burghers of Altoona
Munching on McGriddles
Inside a crowded room
And then in a flash
As strange as it sounds
I looked at his eyebrows
My heart set to pound!

Who can explain it?
Who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons
Wise men never try.
Some McDonald's breakfast
When you find Mangione
Chewing on his hash browns
Across a crowded room
Then call 911
And capture your man
Or all through his life he
Will slaughter again

Once you have found him
Never let him go
Once you have found him
Never let him go!

Muddy the waters is a nice way to put it. Y’all keep trying to parse this politically, but Mangione warnt even into his big boy pants before he killed a guy so stop flattering him. Could barely eke out three pages of ooh manifesto ooh and so far it sounds like Patty Hearst circa Symbionese Liberation Army. He is 26 years old, and his experience of the world encompasses private school, hikes in Hawaii, and computer games. When the police cornered him he reacted with the Moro Reflex. And minutes ago baby had a BIG tantrum.

I grant that he is radically handsome with the bright set of chompers you’d expect of his demographic, but killing someone in NYC (in itself a banality) and completing a pre-writing exercise falls short of Antonio Gramsci. Better to understand him with a typically bogus but let’s go with it anyway psychiatric diagnosis: Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder. Onset was when he tried to take a surfing class but his bad back screwed it up. Since then his chronic pain has him gunning for the American health care industry.

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 The writer and cultural historian Mark Harris, posting on Bluesky, described Mr. Mangione as “a very recognizable type of young male ideology tourist” — a “This Explains Everything addict” untethered to a coherent belief system. 

[Mangione] called for the banning of “custom pornstar pocket pussies being sold in [Japanese] Don Quixote grocery stores.” He wanted the return of traditional Japanese culture, including karate, and an emphasis on athletics in school. In other posts he called for [American] porn to be regulated “no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel.”

A fine fascist in the making – read further in the little pisher’s writings – whose trajectory was interrupted only by his fateful entry into the Altoona Pennsylvania McDonald’s.

From the left: Morning commuter train zips by. Bright sign is BLACK MARKET BISTRO, town restaurant. Sidewalk is brand new — just restored. Bright lower lights are the GP post office, where we pick up our mail. Continuing to the right, storage sheds for town equipment. Also picnic table, tennis courts.

Mangione verbally pushed back against two claims from prosecutors in court — first a claim that because Mangione was found with $8,000 in cash on him that he was trying to evade authorities.

The other claim was that because he had a Faraday bag on him, which blocks cell signal — this showed evidence of criminal sophistication. Mangione said to the first claim that he did not know where the money he had on him came from, saying maybe it was planted. On the second claim, he said that the bag was waterproof and he didn’t know about criminal sophistication.

 An officer asked him to pull down his mask and recognized him as the suspect from the New York shooting. When an officer asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake.”

So what was he doing eating at McDonald’s?

His grandfather owned a way-rightwing talk radio station; his cousin is the voice of Trump in the Maryland legislature. Luigi Mangione – the likely killer of the United Healthcare guy – has impeccable, historic, far-right, family credentials.

He seems to have peeled off from the family and acted from lefty motives, but ideologically it’s all a bit murky. Look what happened when les héritiers de Limbaugh attacked Mangione’s murderousness as clearly coming from/cheered on by the left.

[Ben] Shapiro and [Matt] Walsh harshly condemned liberals for cheering on the assassination in respective episodes of their eponymous podcasts, titled “The EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder!” and ” Why The Left Is Really Celebrating The Murder Of A CEO.”

But their followers disagreed with their criticisms and defended the left, arguing that they felt the same way about Thompson’s death …

“The fact that [M]att is trying to paint this as a left wing issue, when there’s clearly bipartisan celebrations going on, just goes to show how out of touch [wealthy] celebrities are, whether on the right or left, with regular everyday ordinary people,” one user said...

A third told Shapiro, “Just because ‘the left’ likes something doesn’t mean you have to instinctively hate it. Wake up and read the room bro.”

Disgustingly, portions of both left and right in this country seem pleased with what Mangione has done.

I believe the relevant cliche is unsung hero.

Luigi Mangione is in custody because a fast food employee in Altoona PA recognized his face from the pictures we’ve all been studying.

Once at the police station, the sources said, officers discovered Mangione had a gun similar to the one used in [Brian] Thompson’s killing, as well as a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID. The suspected gunman allegedly used a fake New Jersey ID when he checked into a Manhattan hostel last month.

Two senior law enforcement officials say Mangione had the name “Marc Rosario” on his fake NJ ID. Three sources familiar with the matter say the suspected gunman checked into the Upper West Side hostel using a fake NJ ID with the name “Marc Rosario.” Other fake IDs were found on Mangione Monday as well, investigators say.

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Kaczynski with good looks.

[Mangione is] an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a manifesto, “These parasites had it coming.”

Tech whiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md., apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, sources said.

… Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.

He said at the time of graduation that he planned to seek a degree in artificial intelligence, focused on the areas of computer science and cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.

The tech hotshot graduated cum laude from the private Ivy League institution in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE), Computer and Information Science in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.

He also completed a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE), Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, his profile states.

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Definitely the sort who thinks he can get away with murder.

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His parents own two country clubs, one of which, Turf Valley, UD and her sister drove around not long ago, after lunch in the area. He seems to share a grandfather with this Maryland politician. Very wealthy family.

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By the by: If you were his cousin – the politician – and you saw this all over the media —

wouldn’t you consider alerting the authorities? Did the guy’s enormous and apparently close-knit family cooperate?

[W]itnesses at the laundromat on Saturday said Coriz got into an argument with a male juvenile and two female juveniles over use of a washing machine, which escalated into a fight. 

Navratilova nails it on the Sadeian sick boys of Iran, who elaborate upon their torture fantasies with each iteration of the beautifully named Chastity Bill.

And keep your eye on the Islamists who just took Syria. UD’s optimism about them is high; but they too may want to scrape clits off, force black robes on, forbid going outside, etc. etc.

Sure hope not! But wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the cards.

A scandal-magnet, it’s always sandblasting the names of generous scummy alumni from its buildings, firing degenerate coaches, and, as of yesterday, watching as an assistant law school dean is escorted to prison for three years for stealing the shit out of the place over ten – count ’em! ten! – years.

‘A number of administrators departed Seton Hall after the embezzlement was uncovered. Kathleen Boozang stepped down from her post as law dean but remains on the faculty.’ Why all the departures? Because they appointed as a dean a person who under their noses for a decade stole – with two additional employees – the school’s money. And all of this also under the close eye of the Catholic church (read Seton’s pretentious and – in context – hilarious holier than thou thing here).

UD‘s thing is go ahead and be Yeshiva University, run by Madoff, Merkin, Wilf, and Rennert; be Liberty U under Falwell Jr; be slimy Seton Hall. But don’t try to snow me with your piety.

Other people noticed.

… the shooter.