Quotes and Links

A week in review

CNN’s Audie Cornish compared UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione to Daniel Penny, Tuesday, December 10, 2024.

Note for new subscribers: On Fridays I send out a post with a list of notable quotes from the past week, along with links to some of the best reading material I’ve come across. You can opt out of these posts by simply clicking on the top right and going to “manage subscription.”

---

• “Taking the assignment, number one, because you have to know what you’re good at.” — Donald Trump, when asked by Time magazine what he thought Kamala’s biggest mistake was

• “Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U.S. History” — NYT headline

• “JURY ACQUITS MAN WHO WAS CHOKING RIDER ON SUBWAY” — NYT print headline

• “Democrats should spend exactly zero political capital stopping any Trump deportation efforts. It is madness to spend capital trying to help people who are no longer a major part of your electoral coalition.” — The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last

• “To be clear, I welcome the end of male dominance in literature. Men ruled the roost for far too long, too often at the expense of great women writers who ought to have been read instead. I also don’t think that men deserve to be better represented in literary fiction; they don’t suffer from the same kind of prejudice that women have long endured. Furthermore, young men should be reading Sally Rooney and Elena Ferrante.” — University of Nevada creative writing professor David J. Morris, in a NYT op-ed titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone”

• “You know, later in the night we’re also going to talk about [Daniel] Penny and the verdict there. There you also have a victim who somebody determined did not deserve to continue living.” — CNN’s Audie Cornish, comparing Luigi Mangione to Daniel Penny

• “When the conservatives Matt Walsh and Ben Shapiro made videos complaining about people dancing on Thompson’s grave, people pushed back in the comments and called the commentators out of touch. In this way, Mangione’s act and the response demarcate a new moment, one in which acts of political violence are no longer confined to extremists with fringe views, but widely accepted.” — The Atlantic’s Ali Breland

• “Violence is never the answer. But people can only be pushed so far.” — Elizabeth Warren, in an interview with The Huffington Post

• “This is not to say that an act of violence is justified, but I think for anyone who is confused or shocked or appalled, they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied [insurance] claims as an act of violence.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

• “I am not going to pretend that, in a country that’s been started and operated on violence, that violence doesn’t sometimes solve things.” — MSNBC’s Jason Johnson

• “Dear White People, I don’t know why I feel the need to keep talking to you. I don’t know why part of me still has hope for you and for us. Some of you are too far gone. But maybe enough of you aren’t and will join us in fighting to end white supremacy.” — Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY)

• “Harmeet Dhillon and these conservative Indian Americans are gonna learn the hard way what MAGA really thinks about them and their brown skinned families. But, hey, Desi chickens lining up for Colonel Sanders.” — Daily Beast’s Wajahat Ali

• “The black women were shut out for having unconventional hair.” — Chivona Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Greater NY, regarding the Daniel Penny jury (which had four “people of color”)

• “We need some black vigilantes. People wanna jump up and choke us and kill us for being loud? How about we do the same?” — Hawk Newsome, husband of Chivona Newsome and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Greater NY

• “I don’t think the incoming president should be threatening his opponents with jail time. That’s not the kind of talk we should hear from the president in a democracy.” — Adam Schiff

• “This is about saving lives and doing away with a cruel, racist, and fundamentally flawed punishment that has been disproportionately weaponized against Black, brown and low-income families for far too long.” — Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), calling on Biden to use his clemency authority to commute death row sentences

• “I do believe in the sanctity of life, and I think that’s why I felt, along with so many other Americans, joy, unfortunately.” — Taylor Lorenz, regarding the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson

• “Did I say that I felt ‘joy’ over the healthcare CEO’s death? No, but that hasn’t stopped the media from lying about it.” — Also Taylor Lorenz

• “When I say do I wish someone dead is that advocating for them to be killed? No, of course not.” — And also Taylor Lorenz

• “If Donald Trump is going to become a tyrant, the American people will have to examine the option of dealing with him the way a citizenry deals with a tyrant.” — Patrick Frey, deputy district attorney for L.A. County

• “Pete Hegseth’s Crusade to Turn the Military into a Christian Weapon” — Politico headline

• “America was given a choice between a lawless, amoral monster and a qualified, intelligent, joyful woman of color—and it chose the monster. We need to reckon with the reality of what that says about so many of us here.” — “Liberal Christian pastor” John Pavlovitz

If you need to get past a paywall, try Archive Today or 12ft.io.

• Rolling Stone: “The Dirty Mind Behind ‘Girls Gone Wild’”

• The Guardian: “What lies beneath: the secrets of France’s top serial killer expert”

• Current Affairs: “How Much of the Harris Campaign Was a Scam?”

• The New York Times: “An Elite School and the Criminal It Hired to Teach Math”

• Wired: “Art of the Steal: On the Trail of the World’s Most Ingenious Thief”

• Gun & Garden: “An Alabama Kidnapping That’s Stranger Than Fiction”

• N.S. Lyons: “The Counter-Revolution Begins: 7 principles for the Trump revolution if it wants to win bigly”

• The Atavist: “The Romance Scammer on My Sofa”