This Fucking Guy: Bret(bug) Stephens

Sometimes you see a headline that you can't believe was printed. But when you dig in, it is as bad as it sounds. Count on the Times and its Anti-Anti staffer Bret Stephens to beclown themselves.

Yeah, I stole this from Jeff Tiedrich. So sue me already!

On December 12th, Bret Stephens, one of the stable of ‘Conservative’ balance columnists in the employ of the NY Times penned this farce of a column. Here is the link to just his bit (it is a rollup of several “short” OpEds) link¹ .

I have purposely avoided weighing in on the death of UHG’s Brian Thompson because it is a complicated issue, and frankly, the factions online are so bat-shit insane in their polemics that it is being twisted to the individual’s internal moral preference².

Still, the take of the esteemed Mr. Stephens is really just indefensible.

In short, his take is Mr. Thompson started from a modest background and pulled himself up by his bootstraps (a tired Right Winge trope) and that he was really one of the good guys.

Thompson “grew up in a working-class family in Jewell, Iowa,” a tiny farming community north of Des Moines, Amy Julia Harris and Ernesto Londoño report. “His mother was a beautician, according to family friends, and his father worked at a facility to store grain.” Thompson’s childhood was spent “going row by row through the fields to kill weeds with a knife, or working manual labor at turkey and hog farms.”

See, just like any normal middle (A.K.A. “Real”) American. Such modest roots. What’s not to love?

Of course, Stephens then turns his torch to Luigi Mangione, portraying him as the anti-Progressive ideal:

All this suggests that Mangione may prove to be a figure out of a Dostoyevsky novel — Raskolnikov with a silver spoon. It’s a familiar type. Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, was a lawyer’s son whose mother moved him to London before he went on to become an international terrorist. Osama bin Laden came from immense wealth. Angry rich kids jacked up on radical, nihilistic philosophies can cause a lot of harm, not least to the working-class folks whose interests they pretend to champion.

Hmm, wonder why he went to Dostoyevsky?

Look, I agree that on the face of it, Luigi the hunky lad (how many mentions of his washboards did I see? Yeah, he has cum gutters and the ladies were all aflutter) is the antithesis of the progressive ideal warrior sticking it to the establishment.

Then I had to really have someone hold my hair when I got the heaves reading his closing ‘graph:

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. As for the killer, John Fetterman had the choicest words: He’s “going to die in prison,” the peerless Pennsylvania senator told HuffPost. “Congratulations if you want to celebrate that.”

Sadly, the real tale here is a privileged son of a wealthy family had a psychotic break, and executed a CEO of a much-loathed company at the pinnacle of the homeless abortion that is the US Healthcare system.

Nothing more, nothing less.

For that, Bret(bug) Stephens wins another twirl in the “This Fucking Guy” seat.

1. This is the full link to the article, gifted so you can read it: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/04/opinion/thepoint?unlocked_article_code=1.hU4.GuIr.4SlX0ggrRF-N&smid=url-share

2. While I don’t like to both sides things, I will say that both the right and the left mobs are really overreading into this troubled young man their own proclivities, and a lot of you are fucking awful and should be ashamed.

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