Privileged For Being Special

A while ago, there was a saying about people like Paris Hilton. whom nobody could understand what they had done to make themselves famous, that they were "famous for being well known". What I've been noticing in recent years is a phenomenon of people who are, or were, privileged for being special. Nobody can quite figure out what made, or makes, them privileged. Take the example of Rebecca Lobach, the pilot of the helicopter that by current general consensus was at fault for flying into a regional jet on January 29. The jet was following the controller's instructions, at the precise altitude and course it should have been. The helicopter appears to have been above its authorized altitude and even slightly off course.

The initial news the morning after the crash had to do with the loss of 14 prominent figure skaters on the jet:

U.S. Figure Skating, the organization that serves as the sport's national governing body, confirmed the plane's passengers included several of its members, who had attended a prestigious training camp for novice and intermediate skaters in Wichita, Kansas, where the flight took off.

"These athletes, coaches, and family members were returning home from the National Development Camp held in conjunction with the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita, Kansas," U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement. "We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims' families closely in our hearts. We will continue to monitor the situation and will release more information as it becomes available."

But almost immediately, the focus changed. The Army was withholding the name of the helicopter pilot at the request of the family, even though it had released the names of the other two crew members. This immediately shifted attention to the pilot. For days after the eventual release, media carried tributes to her ahchievement and character:

U.S. Army Capt. Rebecca Lobach earned it.

She was an athlete and a top student. She was, more than anything, a patriot, in the best sense of the word, serving her country and, at the age of 28, becoming a leader and a mentor.

Notice the constant repetition in the quotes I've found over the past several days stressing that she "earned it", or, "Not only did she deserve what she achieved, but she was overqualified most of the time". Why the need to stress this? She was the pilot of a helicopter that was out of position, ignored the warnings of the tower, and crashed into a jet that was carrying 64 people who neither earned nor deserved the fate they got. Indeed, it sounds as if the jet's pilots were fully qualified, while at least 14 of the passengers were prominent athletes.

Somehow the media bought into the idea that Rebecca Lobach, beyond anyone else involved in the accident, was the casualty who was prominent for being special.

Another puzzling case is Luigi Mangione, who has been arrested and indicted for killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, on December 4, 2024 in New York City. According to the New York Post,

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, has accepted nearly $300,000 in donations from his so-called fans to pay for his criminal defense, his lawyer says.

The December 4 Legal Committee, a group that raised the money and is named after the date in which Thompson was shot and killed in Manhattan, confirmed the transfer on Monday to Mangione’s legal fund.

. . . Mangione, who is charged with first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism for killing the father-of-two, has gained a cult-like following over the high-profile case.

Jamie Peck and Sam Beard, of the “Party Girls” podcast who also serve as spokespeople for the fund, said they were thrilled to learn that Mangione was making use of the resources they helped build for him after making contact with his attorney on Monday.

One of numerous stories trying to make sense of the phenomenon says,

Mangione can be described with a host of adjectives, among them young, fit, wealthy and male. The valedictorian of an elite private high school with two Ivy League degrees, he comes from a prominent upper-class family in Maryland and maintained an active presence online.

. . . "This, of course, is framed as, 'He's one of us,'" said Ioana Literat, a communications professor at [Columbia University's Teachers College].

"'One of us' as in a social media user, 'one of us' as a young person and, very importantly, 'one of us' as someone that is dealing with this system that doesn't work for regular people."

The same story points out, though, that Mangione was not a customer of UnitedHealthCare. However he may have been dealing with "the system", it was at least one level removed, and the peculiar thing is that "the system" was in fact working for him. According to Wikipedia,

Mangione's father now runs the Mangione Family Enterprises. The extended family also owns Hayfields Country Club, Turf Valley Resort, Lorien Health Services, the WCBM radio station, as well as the Mangione Family Foundation

Mangione attended Gilman School, an all-boys private secondary school in Baltimore, where he graduated as valedictorian in 2016. Mangione received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) in computer engineering and a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) in computer and information science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. His undergraduate studies included a minor in mathematics, and his graduate curriculum was concentrated in artificial intelligence. He was a UI programming intern with the video game company Firaxis Games from May 2016 to August 2017 while he was an undergraduate student.

Mangione began to work remotely in November 2020 as a data engineer for TrueCar, a car retailing website company headquartered in Santa Monica, California. His employment there ended at some point during 2023, according to the company. His last known residence was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Wait a moment. After a career in tech, I can guarantee you that you do not need an MSE from Penn to work for a car retailing website. Most of my colleagues in system engineering didn't have four-year degrees, and many had just GEDs they'd obtained through the military. In general, he appears to have underperformed in life after leaving an educational system that his family was almost certainly able to game in his favor.

In the summer of 2024, Mangione stopped posting on social media. On November 18, 2024, his mother reported him missing to the San Francisco Police Department, saying the family had not heard from him since July of that year, shortly after a trip to East and Southeast Asia. Mangione's mother contacted the San Francisco Police Department because she believed that Mangione lived in San Francisco and still worked for TrueCar, which had an office there.

Although unemployed since leaving his remote job in 2023, he appears to have been able to travel to Southeast Asia, as well as to New York, with no visible means of support. What he apparently did have, though, was an overridng sense of grievance against "the system", when as far as anyone can tell, "the system" had been working in his favor all his life, or at least until he basically checked out.

I say this only as someone with a layman's general understanding of mental health issues, and we know very little of Mangione's specific case, but it's hard to avoid speculating that schizophrenia begins to manifest in the late teens and early 20s, and something like this may have taken place. But this hardly makes him admirable, just a very sad situation.

But somehow in the popular imagination, he's entitled to be privileged for being special because he's "one of us", which apparently means wealthy, attractive, fit, and privileged, but basically hollow, and in fact with a deep-seated fear they haven't earned their position in life and don't deserve what they have. And this also comes with a free-floating sense of grievance against "the system" that actually works in their favor. Seems like there's a lot of people who are that way, and they can all relate to each other.

How come so many of them are in the Ivy League/