Committing Crimes for Healthcare: Objectively Hot

Vigilantes have swag, it is lore. What does it say about desirability and crime in America?

So: Luigi Mangione, the UnitedHealthcare CEO Alleged Assassin. He’s hot. Let’s talk about what that means in our conversations about beauty, power, and politics. Let’s also talk about the fact he’s not the first man with his motives in American History - he is simply the man America has spawned for 2024.

From Newsweek

First, essential companions:

1. A Man Was Murdered in Cold Blood, and You’re Laughing? by the good sis Jia Tolentino

2. Tressie Mcmillan Cottom’s thoughts via this roundtable at NYT, because Tressie, on anything beauty, is essential

3. Mimi Nguyen’s The Promise of Beauty, out now at Duke Press.

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If billionaires and C.E.O.s want to enjoy the spoils of power, visibility and access in our celebrity culture, they have to understand that they are in essence a public entity — a stand-in for industry but also for politics. - Tressie

Isn’t it interesting that within 48 hours of the crime, different CEOs of different healthcare insurers across the United States had their photos and biographies removed from their company websites? Isn’t it fascinating that more people anecdotally mentioned they had more claims approved and adjusted in their favor within the following 72 hours? I find this all so…. telling.

There is Luigi Mangione merch now of all flavors, comment sections filled with advice on jury nullification and insurance jokes of the most morbid nature.

Source

We should admit that this fandom happened so quickly not only because of populist rage at the moral failings of public heath in America but the fact that Mangione is hot, ripped, and white (enough) that his otherness feels negligible: backstory for a tragic anti-hero. Italians, in America, weren’t considered white in the American imagination until the 20 century. Public reception of Mangione would be different if he were equally hot and Black, or Asian, or Native American. I believe he would be seen as a true villain. If he were “more visibly” disabled - he would also be seen differently, and disability has radicalized so many men in America to very different ends. But he is who he is, the man in the headlines right now. He’s a good ol’ Italian boy. The lore is that he did it for family. The internet keeps offering endless alibis in the comment section, countless parodies of Italian families defending him as the news breaks. He’s innocent, your Honor.

There is already fan fiction written about him up on fanfiction website Archive of Our Own. Gunmen have been American celebrities for generations and murderers have become very profitable IP empires, their stories endlessly translated into money-making docuseries and limited series events across streaming platforms. Mangione is the hot murderer of our time. I almost wrote martyr, how Freudian: I suspect that is what popular culture and the American justice system will fight over how to define him for months and years to come.

He reminds me of another bisexual Italian American anti-hero (so much in common!) named John Wojtowicz. Wojtowicz tried and failed to rob a bank to pay for his partner’s gender re-assignment surgery in the ‘70s.