Early the morning of December 4, 2024, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione allegedly walked up behind UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson as he walked down a city street and shot him dead. Thompson died outside the lobby of the Midtown Manhattan Hilton.
Early the morning of May 31, 2009, 51-year-old Scott Roeder walked up to Women's Health Care Services abortionist George Tiller as he handed out church bulletins and shot him dead. Tiller died inside the foyer of the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas.
Two daring, conscience-shocking acts of cold-blooded murder. Two victims whose life work made plenty of enemies. Two appalling assassinations committed in broad daylight. Yet, two completely different responses from our contemptible media culture.
Let's start with the Thompson assassination.
The motive for his slaying is not yet known, but that hasn't stopped progressive journalists and academics from despicably concluding that he had it coming. Here are two Columbia professors not only saying depraved things, but also brazenly demonstrating the confidence they have that their Ivy League school will not hold them accountable.
It's particularly choice that Professor Zenkus describes himself in his bio as "anti-violence." But these two scholars were far from alone. Former Washington Post and New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz told Piers Morgan that she was overjoyed at seeing Thompson executed on the street:
Meanwhile, over at ABC's The View, host Sunny Hostin led off her show's discussion of the event by sharing offensive comments from social media, without offering any condemnation:
Some of the comments were, ‘thoughts and deductibles to the family.' One of the comments was, ‘unfortunately, my condolences are out of network.'
‘Isn't that something? I really think it's reflective about how people are feeling about their healthcare,' she said.
Her co-host Ana Navarro jumped on that theme, claiming that the assassination of Thompson "has definitely shined light on our health crisis."
It has? We don't even know that mediocre health insurance coverage is what led Thompson's assassin to his crime. Yet somehow that has become the story worth covering? New York Magazine took it a step further:
Inevitable? That's a morally perverse thing to even imply, no less say. "Thompson was bound to get shot because no one can be expected not to murder in retaliation for high insurance premiums" is quite the take for supposed journalists.
Pivot to the murder of abortionist George Tiller, however, and you'll notice a thundering silence from those same academic and media sources when it comes to justifying some "inevitable slaying."
And remember that unlike Thompson, Tiller killed for a living.
Let's be clear: Tiller often boasted of being one of the only late-term abortionists in the country. For the uninitiated, that means he would half-deliver babies feet first, insert scissors into the back of their necks, open the scissors creating a hole, ram a suction tip into the tiny skull, and suck the brains out until the baby went limp. Through the entire process, the baby's face would be kept muffled inside his mother so that no one had to hear his cries. Once the baby was lifeless, Tiller would extract the child, cut the cord, and discard his kill into medical waste receptacles.
Roeder cited that horrendous practice as his justification.
'I did what I thought was needed to be done to protect the children,' Roeder said during his trial. 'I shot him … If I didn't do it, the babies were going to die the next day.'
Where were the New York Times and Washington Post reporters to express that their belief in the "sanctity of life" led them to be joyful at Tiller's execution?
Where was New York Magazine to opine that it was "inevitable" someone as violent and cruel as Tiller would be shot dead?
Where were The View ladies to discuss how Tiller's murder had "shed light on the horrors occurring in abortion clinics?"
Where were the Ivy League professors lecturing about how when doctors lose their "core principles of ethics, they encourage others to do the same?"
Why does this cut only one way?
That was the question conservative commentator Mary Katherine Ham asked:
Somehow it never happens that way. Left-leaner threatened[?] Pivot to lionization of person/cause, demonize [the] right. Right-leaner threatened[?] Excuse shooter, pivot to potential retaliatory violence by [the] right.
Ham went on to cite the example of Representative Mo Brooks who, after nearly being murdered at the Congressional baseball game shooting years ago, was asked whether he would be changing his position on the 2nd Amendment.
'The equivalent,' Ham wrote, 'would be asking abortion[ists] he literally bombed if Eric Rudolph didn't give them some things to think about.'
It's impossible to even imagine a mainstream journalist asking such a thing, and for the record, I don't think they should. Murder is always unjustified, always immoral, always wrong.
No victim "has it coming," or "brought it on themselves." Suggesting otherwise reveals a moral degeneracy that is quite apparently an epidemic right now on the American left.
