There are more people who can say "Brian Thompson killed my father", than there are "Luigi Mangione killed my father."
Also, what does it have to do with whether he was a father or not? If he had had no kids, would that change anything? Can it be more acceptable to kill someone who hasn't had kids? What's the point in that?
I mean, if it's not obvious, the point people are making is that his kids are innocent and that celebrating their father's death increases their suffering.
I agree with the logic, but I don't think it's enough to shut down the conversation.
I am not at all worried about his kids. His kids are set for life.
I am worried about other kids- and adults- suffering due to a much less discerning and less accurate copycat vigilante. It hasn't happened so far, but it is something that greatly concerns me.
Thompson was divorced. My understanding is he had either limited or no contact with his kids.
I wonder if he updated his will since the divorce
Kid probably happy too, since, odds are, the dead person was shitty to the kids.
Geneally, you don't become a CEO without being a shitty person, and therefore a shitty parent.
Literally fatherless behavior
Paul F. Tompkins is excellent and 'No You Shut Up' should have gone on for 20 more seasons
I miss Dead Authors Podcast but I'm happy for his success.
Whatever, piss pig
Nobody says "Won't someone think of their kids?" when celebrating a mass shooter or a drug kingpin or a foreign dictator being deposed. It's a shitty argument here, too.
Nobody says "what about their kids" when a poor single parent stealing food to live ends up in jail and their kids in foster care.
Those criminals would have raised their kids to be criminals, too. It’s good the kids will be taken away to be raised by a system that will [checks notes] orphan them, abuse them, and raise them to be institutionalised. That will totally fix the problems of generational poverty and waste of societal potential, preventing those kids from becoming adults who have to steal food so their own kids can live.
They are absolutely thinking of the children. They are thinking about how much more likely they are to end up in the system, more slave labour from the next generation.
Yeah I never heard anyone say "won't someone think of Osama bin Laden's, like, 30 fukken kids?" Genghis Khan had so many goddam kids that we're still finding bits of Mongol warlord genome stuck in random places like it's craft glitter. Fuckin' Leopold II had four kids, went off to make people-hand soup down in the Congo, and then had three more kids while he was doing it! This is not necessarily an indicator of virtue, folks!
The reporting on Brian Thompson feels similar to as if Igor Kirillov (Russian general killed in the scooter bombing) was being reported by Russia Today on how his two kids and wife love him and anonymous staffers praising his work.
Nobody says “Won’t someone think of their kids?” when celebrating a mass shooter or a drug kingpin or a foreign dictator being deposed.
I've heard it said unironically a few times about dictators we're allied with who have a sudden fall from grace. The Shah of Iran, the Batista Regime in Cuba, and the brief failed Jeanine Áñez coup in Bolivia all leap to mind. I'm sure we'll get some kind of "President Yoon was a cool dude with a family why is everyone in South Korea so mean to him?" Op-Ed sooner or later. We just stuck the head of Al Qaeda in Syria in charge of the country and I don't doubt we'll get a bunch of "Damn, what a cool guy I can't believe he got got his family will be so sad" stories if he ever accidentally swallows a hand grenade in a power dispute.
And I can't count the number of articles, TV Shows, and movies that try to lionize the CIA. They're some of the biggest drug runners on the planet. Hell "Charlie Wilson's War" might as well have been "Dr. Heroin the Child Rapist or how I learned to stop worrying and love the Mujaheddin".
And then you've got the real heavy hitters like American Sniper and Rambo II. Talk about celebrating mass shooters.
Or... maybe, just maybe, people can have the opinions they want and have their reasons for them.
The idea I have to consider my parents' role as my parents undermined if they did something scam-ish is arguably appalling.
This is turning into a collective shame kind of culture.
Yeah. Kids are allowed to love their parents. My parents are flawed. They're not evil, but they're the kind of people I wouldn't spend time with or associate with if they weren't my parents. We simply have different values and opinions.
But I still love them and love spending time with them, and they feel the same.
Could not care less about some trust fund kids.
If you don't want people to celebrate your death, don't live in a way that makes people want to celebrate your death.
What's the saying? You shouldn't say anything about the dead unless it's good. So he's dead. Good!
You shouldn’t say anything about the dead unless it’s good. So he’s dead. Good!
this sounds like a joke from an 80 year old jewish man.
I mean, I can feel bad for his kids (especially if they're too young to understand, no idea how old they are) and still be of the opinion fuck that guy. The two are not mutually exclusive.
Grief is not a conscious decision and we do not get to choose who we will mourn for and because of that, I do feel for them, but the rest of us are under absolutely no obligation to mourn along with them.
It's hard to grow up with no dad.
It's also hard to grow up with a dad who's a bottom feeding scumbag.
Brian Thompson was a scumbag. We can't say whether it will be better or worse growing up without him. We can only say that if he wasn't a scumbag, he'd probably still be here.
Truth is, people celebrated before we had any idea who this guy was. He wasn’t famous or a public figure before he was killed. People didn’t hate the man that died, nor his kids.
People cheered because of what he represented. People didn’t celebrate his death, they celebrated that it made his type of person look like they aren’t untouchable.
Anyone who has kids and wants to leave a good legacy for their kids will now have to take into account whether they want their kids to end up like this guy’s kids. I know I won’t be accepting any c-suite jobs any time soon, but I’ve turned down jobs in the past because they didn’t align with my morals.
people like him are not like most of us. The amount of wealth they've acquired is absolutely an indicator of that. There are many legitimate reasons to hate the man.
Same, I turned one down earlier this year. No amount of money would make me hurt people like he did.
Hell, my father died and I was excited and happy as a clam, and he was just a normal dickhead.
For all we know, it was the guys kid who made several of the first memes about it!
When my step grandfather died, we had a party. Most of the folk there showed up to make sure he was dead and maybe piss on his grave a little.
We do that for people we like. We call it a Wake.
If my biological father could just go ahead and kick the bucket, the world would be a slightly better place.
Mine died this year. I was like huh, damn I guess I better go to the ceremony. He told me so many times over the years that he had something saved up for me and my brother when he died, as he brushed close to death right after my brother was born and a few times since. I'm not complaining because I don't care, he was an asshole, but either he was lying about that too or his disgusting wife just got it. She's so terrible I thought she was Jewish the first two years I knew her. It turns out that she just did a "funny" Jew impression and then turned that into her entire personality. My dad had a legit full auto Thompson he promised me as well. I imagine she already sold that.
If he didn't get around to making a will, all would have gone to his wife
Yeah unfortunately I know all about what happens when someone dies without a will. My last grandparent and then my mom died six months apart. I was executor in mom's case.
God, he sounds insufferable. Sorry you had to deal with that.
Mine was an abusive meth head. Beat and berated my brother, my mother, and me all the way up until CPS took us out when I was 15. I was terrified of men for a long time, and I can still be pretty standoffish with them, even at 32. I can remember being 8 years old, washing dishes. I dropped a glass. It broke. The next thing I knew, I was suspended 3 feet in the air by my neck and being thrown into a wall. For dropping a glass.
I always loved my mother. I was given her phone number recently, but I've been hesitant to call. I know she's with a different man these days and is genuinely happy with him. He's good to her. She finally left my father after he broke several of her ribs, punctured a lung, and nearly killed her. I know she was always scared he'd kill her if she left, but I suppose that she got so close to it that death didn't seem like such a bad alternative to the life she had with him.
So yeah, the day he breathes his last will be cause for celebration in my circle.
Call your mom. She sounds pretty normal, though traumatized of course. She probably had PTSD and you do too.
My dad never beat me or my brother beyond spanking. He did hit my mom though. One New Year's Eve when I was about 9, he came home shitfaced and hit and screamed at my mom. I laid in bed pretending to be asleep as he broke every plate in the house in the kitchen while screaming. He cut himself pretty bad at some point and began slinging the blood everywhere. I heard him go in the shower so I got up and my mom was in the kitchen floor cleaning up the broken dishes and blood.
She died five years ago from alcoholism and starvation.
I used to fantasize about killing my dad. Sometimes even had dreams where I did, for years. He constantly harassed my mom with lawsuits and custody fights, just trying to waste my grandparents money on lawyers. He made good money, we were broke. He got the court to lower his child support to $100 per month just to make her life shittier. My mom was a pathetic pushover so she just didn't fight these cases except the custody ones. He didn't even want us, he just wanted to fuck with my mom. I remember I had to quit the basketball team because he told my mom he was going to kidnap me from there. He was a deranged asshole. He got off on using the system to fuck with her. He also pulled a gun on three people that I know of. Crazy fucker. His dad once drowned a sack of puppies in a river.
I'm good now though. I mean I'm severely mentally ill but my medications have helped a lot. And I've beaten my alcoholism.
this hypothetical pondering isn't reality. mega wealthy people don't care if poor people suffer or die. they don't see us as humans. we are just parasites that cost them money. it literally doesn't matter that we generate all the money for them--we are repulsive to them, and the celebration over CEO extermination just pushes us even further into "other" territory
this is how kids are raised in billionaire households. you think that asshole's kids plays with poor kids? or even has any kind of meaningful interaction with them? hell fucking no. they go to private school with other rich kids, get chauffeured everywhere, vacation in places only they can afford, and on and on-- how else would all these kids grow up to be exactly the same as the assholes who raised them?
to hell with the lot of them i say
Paul F Tompkins is great!
He's a principal on my beloved Thrilling Adventure Hour, a new-time stage show and podcast in the style of old-time radio. I've seen them live twice.
His very excellent improv comedy podcast SPONTANEANATION! with tons of great guests. Link to a live show video.
He had his own fake news show with puppets briefly, No You Shut Up!
He was main cast on Bajillion Dollar Properties, a fake reality show about Hollywood real estate agents.
PFT was in Tangled with a minor part as Short Thug, a passable rap name.
He and his longtime friend Tawny Newsome (who plays Mariner Beckett) co-host the official Star Trek podcast.
Plus he's basically the king of podcast guesting. He has been in everyone else's show. And who can forget his impeccable style.
This is just racism against rich people.
No, I will not be explaining my thoughts further. I will simply be collecting my check from the WSJ.
Thompson's children, like every other human, aren't just neutral moral agents. Like their father, their position depends on our monstrous system. Sure they could overcome this and adopt good politics, but it will be harder for them than people who earn money honestly.
Remember that the capitalists are always class-conscious and usually show class-solidarity.
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