oh my god stop gloryfing Daniel Penny

After Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely to death on the F train, right-wing media swung into action, not just excusing the killing, but glorifying Penny as a hero. It’s sickeningly obvious why. Neely, a mentally ill Black man, funds their business model; a symbol of big city disorder and danger. A caricature of Neely both makes their audience feel good about living in some boring suburb, yet keeps them on their toes about Ever Present Danger Everywhere.

“The house-of-cards case against Daniel Penny is falling apart,” the New York Post gloated. “On Friday, the defense rested in the Daniel Penny trial, leaving many observers to ask what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was thinking in pursuing this case.” I don’t know! A man died! Seems like a thing worth looking into!

They quote witnesses who say they were scared of Neely. “A third said Penny restrained Neely “so he wouldn’t attack anybody” — more proof that Penny was selflessly acting on behalf of others and a direct blow to lefty claims that his actions were racially motivated,” the Post adds.

“Daniel Penny is a hero,” Charlie Kirk opined. “He stepped in to protect women and children from a violent madman with multiple felonies who was threatening to kill innocent bystanders.” The latest sex criminal appointed to the new Trump administration, Pete Hegseth, also thinks, “Daniel Penny is an American hero.” Someone else on Twitter was like, “His profile looks like it belongs on a penny!”

Bari Weiss’s “Free Press,” has an indept investigation into the incident. This. Is what. They uncovered. “Six minutes on a subway car on May 1, 2023, divided America instantly,” the hard hitting expose concludes. “On one side are those who say Daniel Penny is a racially motivated vigilante who murdered Jordan Neely. On the other side are those who believe he is a hero who protected his fellow riders.”

I don’t think very many people who aren’t braindead ideologues think either of these things. Do I think Daniel Penny is a racist demon who set out to murder a Black man and should go to prison forever? No. Do I think that manslaughter two is a pretty appropriate charge for ending a man’s life? Yes?

Also I don’t believe in the trial penalty for anybody. But it is kind of interesting that Penny, who killed a man in front of 10,000 iPhones, had the confidence to go to trial instead of take what, I’d guess, would have been a fairly generous plea deal, given that at the time Alvin Bragg was trying to outrun his reputation as a progressive prosecutor. In a sense, all of his fan boys may have screwed Penny by making the case so wildly public that he seems convinced he has a good chance at trial.

OK. Witnesses say they were scared.

I’ve been scared on the F train before. Really, ever since the pandemic made everyone 80% more insane, roughly one out of every five times I take the F from Brooklyn into Manhattan and back, a man will burst into the subway car raving and screaming. You avoid eye contact and if it does get scary you go to the next car. Once a guy screamed at me, and then moved on to the man next to me, and sort of pushed him. The guy jumped up and said, “Don’t you dare lay your hands on people. Go to the other car.” The guy went to the other car. Frankly I think that’s braver and manlier than choking a man to death.

It’s all so creepy, how much people’s ideas of appropriate justice derive from insane cultural anxieties and biases (I know, I know, a totally original point). Would Free Press be publishing an exoneration of an undocumented immigrant who choked a man to death? (Obviously OBVIOUSLY not). A fair point has been made that Penny was interrogated by police in a bad faith way. Yes that is what they do, which is why you should only talk to police with a lawyer present. Am I the only person who watches 300 episodes of Law and Order every day? I think many of the January 6 insurrectionists were overcharged, and learned about the “trial penalty” the hard way. But, Daniel Penny, despite fullfilling incel masturbatory fantasies of “American Heroic Manhood” choked a man to death because the man was having a mental health breakdown in a hard city with very few services for mental health care. Penny is not a hero.