Why the Right Calls Mangione the 'Ivy League' Killer [View all]

JANUARY 8, 2025
ARI PAUL

How do murder suspects get their media nicknames? Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has been called the “CEO killer” or some variation by ABC (12/24/24) and some of its affiliates (KABC, 12/20/24; KGO, 12/24/24). The name makes sense, as the victim’s stature and the place of his murder—a hotel where a company-related meeting was to take place—was the aspect of the crime that made it sensational news. This is similar to how Theodore Kaczynski became the “Unabomber,” because his targets were universities and airlines.

Yet right-wing media are using a seemingly mundane feature of Mangione’s life—his college degree from the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania—to call him some variation of the “Ivy League killer.”

This label serves a few purposes for Republican-aligned media. Clearly, it is meant to deflate the sympathy for Mangione. Coding Mangione as an Ivy Leaguer also codes him as a leftist, occluding what appear to be his much more politically heterodox views; it paints him as an out-of-touch rich kid, rather than an anti-establishment renegade with whom Americans of all walks of economic life might relate.

It would appear that the right-wing press are taken aback by the growing sympathy the American public has with Mangione (Forbes, 12/12/24; Washington Post, 12/18/24; Newsweek, 12/21/24), a result of widespread anger against health insurance companies who inflate their profits through denial of care, high premiums and delaying medical services with cumbersome administrative bloat (AP, 9/12/22; KFF, 3/1/24; Gallup, 12/9/24; Marketplace, 12/13/24).

More:
https://fair.org/home/why-the-right-calls-mangione-the-ivy-league-killer/