Here’s the article summary:
“One time, Brian worked in a field. Luigi on the other hand, had rich parents, just like Osama Bin Laden.”
I fucking wish I was joking.
I laughed out loud at this.
An alternate opinion column could be: “One time, Adolf was an aspiring artist. Winston on the other hand, had rich parents, just like Osama Bin Laden.”
Winston Churchill was a genuinely awful human being and a war criminal prior to WWII.
He lucked out by also being a moderately competent wartime leader, who gets to be juxtaposed against Hitler for eternity.
Also, Brett Stephens is a bed bug and has a terrible track record of properly handling public backlash to his writing. I hope dark days are ahead for him.
Yeah I know he’s not an angel and is in the example specifically due to the juxtaposition.
I understand someone brings this up everytime Churchill is mentioned in a good light, so out of curiosity: who would be a better comparable figurehead? Joseph? Franklin? Neville? Albert?
Holy fucking shit. Imagine writing this out and thinking it’s a good thing to publish. What an idiot. What a buffoon. What an absolute bitch boy cuck ass moron.
Came to comment on the columnist being a corporate shill piece of shit, but you found more flowery words :)
You do realize this is an opinion column? You can tell by the big letters at the top that spell out OPINION
EDIT: here’s my “both sides” take on this, you all are as dumb as Fox News viewers. IMO (notice the O stands for opinion, please do not hold Lemmy accountable for what I say) schools need to implement a class on the media. Kids need to learn the difference between news and opinion. Also learn how to identify the source of the news. Also don’t post your nudes on the internet. Things are about to get a lot worse with AI and deep fakes
NYT still saw fit to publish it. Most would consider that a tacit endorsement.
You do realize, even for an opinion piece, this is astoundingly poor quality and taste? You can tell by having two brain cells to rub together.
I expect this sort of shit from a tabloid, not from any organization claiming journalistic integrity. A shitty piece is still a shitty piece, even if it’s hiding behind the opinion column banner.
The great thing about opinions? They typically spur opinions from other people. And those opinions spur more opinions.
What I’m trying to say is that the article being an opinion does not in any way negate the comment you’re being dismissive of, which in itself is an opinion too. That’s kind of how conversations happen.
Here’s the article, for anyone interested.
It basically boils down to: Brian Thompson grew up in a working class family in Iowa, while Luigi Mangione came from wealth and went to private schools. He compares Mangione to Osama bin Laden, and other “Angry rich kids jacked up on radical, nihilistic philosophies,” who “cause a lot of harm, not least to the working-class folks whose interests they pretend to champion.”
The author then mentions some polling that says people like their health insurance provider, actually. And then finally he says this:
Thompson’s life may have been cut brutally short, but it will remain a model for how a talented and determined man from humble roots can still rise to the top of corporate life without the benefit of rich parents and an Ivy League degree.
Without a stitch of irony. Thompson may have come from working class roots, but that ain’t where he ended up. So if it’s ok to become rich, but it’s not ok to be born rich, then I guess this author supports a 100% inherence tax? Yeah, somehow I doubt it.
The fact that he came from working class roots and chose to become a massive piece of shit makes him even worse than someone who was born into privilege.
Likewise, Luigi Mangione came from a background of privilege, yet gave it all up in the fight for the rights of all Americans.
Turns out you can be born into the working class and still be a piece of shit, and you can be born well off and still be a decent person.
The people writing these opinion pieces should be thrilled to hear that there is still hope for their children.
Likewise, Luigi Mangione came from a background of privilege, yet gave it all up in the fight for the rights of all Americans.
That’s very true. Mangione sacrificed his upper class life to fight back against the system, whereas Thompson used the opportunities afforded him by the system to enrich himself at the expense of others.
Yes! Brian Thompson and Luigi were both class traitors for completely different reasons. Thompson betrayed the working class for his own selfishess while Luigi was like Engels in that he walked away from extreme privilege because he was disgusted by what his class was doing to us.
People aren’t responsible for how they’re born. Being born into a family that’s benefitted from human suffering is out of their control.
Choosing to harm people in order to join a class of societal leeches is different.
Staying in that position of privilege you were born into is also a choice.
(I agree with you while people are young though)
Staying in that position of privilege you were born into is also a choice.
is it? You can just undo like 15 years of child rearing in that privileged position? Seems factually incorrect to me.
Siddartha Gautama (better know as the Buddha) was literally born a prince and gave up his life of privilege in order to live as a beggar. Sure, he never killed anyone (except his own future life as a king), but he still became a saint. Meanwhile, Jesus may have come from more humble roots but he could have become a king had he chosen to do so.
All I’m saying is Reuters clearly knows where their bread is buttered.
As a side note, I recommend reading a lot of Buddhist writings for everyone!
It’s cool how something so old has found its way to being useful in modern clinical psychology.
The article in question was an opinion piece published by the New York Times. Why are you bringing Reuters into this?
Just cancelled my subscription, absolutely disgusting seeing this on the front page. Is there any publication left not bought and paid for by our corporate overlords?
I can’t vouch for their opinions, because I haven’t read it enough, but The Guardian doesn’t have shareholders and has editorial freedom
The Guardian is decent. Articles can definitely be opinionated and not all columnists are equally good, but I haven’t read anything particularly egregious yet. And their investigative journalism is quite good compared to other media outlets imo.
They also clearly mark articles that are old as being old (warning you to check more recent sources), which I quite like.
It’s one of the few outlets that seems to have an opinion rather than an agenda, if that makes sense. Their viewpoint is left of center, but they make this fairly clear and they’re pretty factual and offer nuanced alternative viewpoints most of the time. They don’t seem like they’re sneakily trying to convince you of stuff, it’s just a “Here’s what we think about what happened”.
As a person who actually lived in the UK and read The Guardian for maybe a decade, in my opinion it’s a neoliberal propaganda outlet and it’s definitely (not just opinion, actual fact) pretty much just maned (last I checked all journalists but 2) by people from a high upper middle class and upper class background (what in the UK is called “Public School Educated”, which curiously doesn’t mean a State School, it means an expensive private school).
All you have to do is look back at the Snowden Leaks - The Guardian did leak the Snowden information but not soon after the Newspaper Editor there who was part of it got kicked out and the coverage of it changed 180 degrees, to the point that whilst the UK Government was busy retroactively making legal all that eavesdropping (unlike the US, were some of it was rolled back) The Guardian was mute about it.
(Whilst I believe The Guardian had genuine Leftwing and pro-Democracy journalists - and last I checked, it still has two of them - they’re the exception rather than the rule as the natural tendency of both its Board and most of its staff is Neoliberalism in very much the same vein as the NYT as well as massivelly pro-System - with their coverage of The Royals being fawning to the point of servilism - which is why the Editor who published Snowden got kicked out as soon as the focus on it moved out)
It also has had some real extreme Fashion-following Upper Class Identity Warrior articles over the years, like the one from a self-proclaimed Feminist criticizing men who use sex dolls (I! Kid! You! Not!) totally oblivious to how her article was in exactly the same pattern as used a decade or two earlier to criticize homosexuality.
Last but not least (I have material here to go all day, but lets not) don’t get me started on how they were a massive part of the campaign to slander Corbyn (a leftwinger who some years ago got elected leader of the Labour party, taking it of the hands of the Neoliberals who led it for 2 decades), a campaign which overwhelmingly relied on anti-semitism accusations, done together with UK based Israeli-linked Jewish groups and which was so ridiculous that they literally accused a Jewish Holocaust Survivor of being anti-semite for comparing some of the actions of Israel with those of the Nazis (this was some years ago) and thus taint Corbyn by association as they were both on the same panel in a conference.
(The present day Zionist Genocide and the use of such anti-semitism accusations to slander critics of their mass murder, really gives us some perspective on the true nature of such slander and those who use it. The anti-Corbyn campaign on which The Guardian so eagerly participated was very much an early trial run of the use by Israel - with again The Guardian eagerly participating, though they’ve stopped it after a while - of such Identity Politics to shore up support for and deflect criticism of their Genocide)
They’re slippery posh twats at The Guardian who don’t just straightforward lie like populists do and instead use cherry-picking, half-truths and other deceit techniques in their “opinion making” (some of their journalists have openly admitted that their work is making opinion), basically like the New York Times but with the benefits of a more elegant style of dialectics, argument building and word usage that comes for having had a posh education at so-called Public Schools.
Is there any publication left not bought and paid for by our corporate overlords?
Really good question. I think the answer, at least in terms of newspapers, is a big NO. I had realized years ago that the “newspapers of record”, i.e., New York Times and Washington Post, were compromised after seeing how they covered Bernie Sanders’ campaign. In reality, they likely always were compromised. Don’t forget that NYT had a large role in pushing the Iraq invasion that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. I’ve heard that they were also involved in the US getting into Vietnam too, but don’t have much detail of that.
I have decided to subscribe to my local metro area newspaper instead, just to get some coverage of local news and events in addition to basic national and international coverage.
Now, magazines should be a different story, if you look at leftist ones like Jacobin, Monthly Review, etc.
Bret Stephens, the author, is not telling the whole story and using the omissions to spin a story of ‘most Americans are happy with the system.’ This [expletive] says the below to defend against the united anger at the health insurance industry
As for the suggestion that Thompson’s murder should be an occasion to discuss America’s supposed rage at private health insurers, it’s worth pointing out that a 2023 survey from the nonpartisan health policy research institute KFF found that 81 percent of insured adults gave their health insurance plans a rating of “excellent” or “good.” Even a majority of those who say their health is “fair” or “poor” still broadly like their health insurance. No industry is perfect — nor is any health care model — and insurance companies make terrible calls all the time in the interest of cost savings. But the idea that those companies represent a unique evil in American life is divorced from the experience of most of their customers.
This [expletive] looked at the report’s top and only positive point and ignored the rest. The next very next point is
- Despite rating their insurance positively, most insured adults report experiencing problems using their health coverage; people in poorer health are more likely to report problems. A majority of insured adults (58%) say they have experienced a problem using their health insurance in the past 12 months – such as denied claims, provider network problems, and pre-authorization problems.
Here are the other points on the report:
- Nearly half of insured adults who had insurance problems were unable to satisfactorily resolve them, with some reporting serious consequences. Half of consumers with insurance problems say their problem was resolved to their satisfaction.
- Affordability of premiums and out-of-pocket costs are a concern, particularly for those with private health coverage, and for some, contributed to not getting care. About half of adults with Marketplace plans (55%) or ESI (46%) rate their insurance negatively when it comes to premiums, compared to 27% of people with Medicare and 10% of Medicaid enrollees. Four-in-ten insured adults say they skipped or delayed some type of care in the past year due to cost. One in six insured adults (16%), including larger shares of those at lower income levels, say they had problems paying medical bills in the past year.
- Insured adults overwhelmingly support public policies to make insurance simpler to understand and to help them avoid or resolve insurance problems. About nine in ten say they support requirements on insurers to maintain accurate and up-to-date provider directories, provide simpler, easier-to read EOBs, disclose their claims denial rates to regulators and the public, and provide in advance, upon request, information about whether care is covered and their out-of-pocket cost liability.
[Expletive] this disingenuously written story, [expletive] Bret Stephen for not telling the whole story, and [expletive] the New York Times for time after time publishing BS and propaganda that sets us all back.
Your nanny state instance admins redact naughty words to “[expletive]” before it federates out. It’s pretty funny when you use it a bunch of times to help get your anger across.
It does? Hahahaha, that’s great, I’m trying to swear less in general, but good to know I didn’t have to redact myself on here. I’m curious to see what happens.
Shit fuck.
Edit: did the instance filter it? It’s still showing up for me.
I’m sure many are happy with their plans given that they have no real choice.
I’d be happier with a plan that punches me in the face twice a year rather than one that punches me monthly.
Luigi murdered one person.
Brian murdered thousands.
That’s all you need to know to compare the two.
