Taylor Lorenz Defends Her Celebration of Brian Thompson’s Murder: ‘It’s Natural’
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Former New York Times and Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz defended her celebration of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder in a column on Thursday, calling her reaction “natural.”
On Wednesday, in the hours immediately following Thompson being shot and killed in the middle of Manhattan, Lorenz expressed her dismay with the health insurance industry, musing, “And people wonder why we want these executives dead.” She went on to share celebratory graphics that she said were being “spammed” in her group chats, as well as to share the name and headshot of a chief executive at a rival company.
Unsurprisingly, her joy over the extinguishment of Thompson’s life drew criticism online, which Lorenz dismissed as “pearl clutching” in her column.
After providing some examples of other users dancing on Thompson’s grave while only mentioning one of her many enthusiastic posts, she addressed the backlash:
Naturally, the mainstream media began pearl clutching in outrage. After I posted a quote tweet about insurance companies no longer paying for certain anesthesia with the phrase, “And people wonder why we want these executives dead,” legacy media outlets including Fox News pounced and wrote a slew of articles about my “calls for violence.”
Let me be super clear: my post uses a collective “we” and is explaining the public sentiment. It is not me personally saying “I want these executives dead and so we should kill them.” I am explaining that thousands of Americans (myself included) are fed up with our barbaric healthcare system and the people at the top who rake in millions while inflicting pain, suffering, and death on millions of innocent people.
If you have watched a loved one die because an insurance conglomerate has denied their life saving treatment as a cost cutting measure, yes, it’s natural to wish that the people who run such conglomerates would suffer the same fate.
“People have very justified hatred toward insurance company CEOs because these executives are responsible for an unfathomable amount of death and suffering. I think it’s good to call out this broken system and the people in power who enable it. Again, not so they can be murdered, but so that we can change the system and start holding people in power accountable for their actions,” she wrote, disregarding her earlier overt endorsement of the violence perpetrated against Thompson.
After enumerating her grievances with the industry, Lorenz submitted that “Instead of issuing mealy mouthed platitudes about civility and scolding social media users for getting emotional about an issue that materially affects their lives, Democrats could recognize the widespread public sentiment surrounding privatized healthcare and push for more progressive policies like universal coverage.”
“In the meantime,” she concluded, “as the journalist Malcolm Harris put it, ‘[the] every life is precious’ stuff about a healthcare CEO whose company is noted for denying coverage is pretty silly.”
