As our own Nicholas Fondacaro has noted here, ex-Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz has made her reaction to the execution shooting of health care executive Brian Thompson perfectly clear.
Nicholas quotes her as follows:
Lorenz’s comments about killing healthcare industry CEOs started with a quoted post from the left-wing More Perfect Union reporting that 'Blue Cross Blue Shield in Connecticut, New York and Missouri has declared it will no longer pay for anesthesia for the full length of some surgeries.'
To that report, Lorenz darkly commented: 'And people wonder why we want these executives dead.'
She even admitted that she associates with others who want to see CEOs murdered in targeted killings when she shared an image of a smiling anthropomorphic star giving two thumbs up with balloons touting 'CEO DOWN,' adding: 'Woke up to see this spammed in my group chats.” She also shared a variant of the imagine which celebrated “Healthcare Executive DOWN!'
Executing health care executives? No problem for her.
Where does one start?
Let’s start with the obvious. If it's OK to kill somebody because they are a health care executive and the killer hates health care executives? Then what if somebody out there hates journalists like, say, Lorenz’s former colleagues at the Washington Post? Or television anchors? Football players and other athletes? How about presidents?
To say that this attitude is not just wrong but exceptionally dangerous would be to understate.
In fact, the country has already been there with presidents. For those old enough to recall, there was a smiling President John F. Kennedy riding in a motorcade through downtown Dallas, Texas one fine November 22nd of 1963 - and assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, perched in a 6th floor window of the Texas School Book Depository was waiting, rifle in hand. Kennedy was killed on the spot, changing history in how many countless ways we will never know. Not to mention leaving behind his wife and two small children
Then there was President Reagan’s narrow escape from would be assassin John Hinckley outside the Washington Hilton in 1981. Not to mention President Trump’s two near misses, first at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally, then on his Florida golf course.
In short? There is no excuse for what Americans have now seen on the vivid video of Brian Thompson’s assassin trailing a few feet behind him and then whipping out a gun to do his deed.
One of the sorriest features of human life in the 21st century media age is that when some crazy commits a heinous act caught on camera somewhere, like a shooting murder, and the video goes everywhere, there can be what are quaintly called “copycats” - those who think it would be cool to do the same thing and become instantly famous.
One would hope health care executives are getting security post haste. Not to mention one would hope that those Americans in any profession who have a high public visibility are taking precautions in the midst of all this.
At the end of the day there is zero excuse for anyone - anyone, not to mention a media figure with any kind of audience - leaving the impression that killing health care executives is one big no deal and she associates with those crazies who find it justified.
One would look forward to a public retraction and apology from Lorenz. But don’t wait up.
