MS NOW Regular Promotes His Book On Daniel Penny, and It Appears As Obtuse as Expected

The issue of Daniel Penny, the center of a New York City vigilante case in which he unintentionally ended the life of Jordan Neely following a subway confrontation, is the focus of a new book. Frequent MS NOW guest Anand Giridharadas is out promoting his work, Man in the Mirror.

His interviews seen during the media promotional tour do not give the impression of an unbiased approach to this topic. Instead of describing core facts and the details that pertain to the confrontation on the New York subway car, Giridharadas delivers what sounds more like a college term paper-level of pontificating.

Sitting with Christiane Amanpour, the Heat Miser-coiffed Anand offers up a theory that Neely, Penny, and others on the subway car were experiencing something that is felt across the country:

Jordan Neely, you know, a mentally ill, homeless man, felt abandoned by the systems of care. Daniel Penny felt abandoned by a lack of police and a lack of law enforcement that forced him, in his mind, to step up and step in. The passengers on that train…spoke of their own sense of abandonment and kind of being left to their own devices. And, Christiane, I think that sense of abandonment, that sense that the cavalry’s not coming, the sense that we’re on our own, the sense that maybe somebody does something because no one who should be doing anything is doing anything. I believe, Christiane, that is the defining political emotion of this age. It is maybe the most dangerous emotion in a democracy, because it starts to tempt people with the thought that if nobody’s coming, I must fill the void. In this case, it was Daniel Penny filling a void in a subway in New York.

This is the selling of the concept that we need government in more, if not all, aspects of our lives. If Jordan Neely had been given proper mental healthcare and housing, if there had been police on that train car, if Daniel Penny had not felt abandoned by authorities, this tragedy would not have played out. If every person in the country is cared for by the government, we will have no problems!

He then makes an audacious leap by comparing this “plight” he ascribes to so many to the Luigi Mangione shooting. Giridharadas literally compares Mangione to Daniel Penny and then matches the support for Mangione on the Left with the backing Penny had received on the Right.

This is beyond a stretch, for numerous reasons. Daniel Penny was cast into a situation that was unplanned and sought to bring an end to a confrontational situation. The arguments – both legal and social – regard whether he went too far with restraining the out-of-control Neely, and how much intent he harbored in their confrontation.

Conflicting testimony from witnesses added to the gauzy explanation of what took place, and the trial was more inconclusive than anything. After a jury was initially deadlocked, Penny was cleared of a reduced charge after a higher charge was dropped by the prosecution.

Mangione had premeditated his attack in murdering the CEO of United Health Care, out of a severely misplaced feeling of meting out justice. This is the kind of juxtaposition of realities you would hear during a late-night dorm skull session – likely fueled by intoxicants, or other cerebral additives.

But this was not all we hear from the author. He also made appearances on his home network, one of which arrived in a rather disqualifying manner. If you want to dissuade those contemplating purchasing your book, there are few ways better than crediting Al Sharpton with its creation.

Anand sat in with the Reverend on his show, Politics Nation, and the author literally asserted that Sharpton was a primary motivator in the writing of his book. He said:

And so I, taking that cue from your eulogy, I almost wanted to take that idea as my reporting prompt. I was struck when I was first covering the case at your line in the eulogy where you said, and I’m paraphrasing, he wasn’t just choked by one man in this one moment, he’d been choked much of his life, and he’d been choked by a whole city. He’d been choked by agencies. He’d been choked by hospitals, he’d been choked by so many systems.

So now we have swung 180 degrees with the causes attributed to the death of Jordan Neely by Daniel Penny. We have gone from people – and the nation – feeling abandoned by the System, to now the System being an oppressive force causing the strife.

And if you have not heard enough to grasp the lack of factual rigor being applied to this tome, he delivers this bizarre nugget. Neely’s mother had been murdered by a boyfriend, and since she was also choked, Giridharadas concludes there is some form of genetic through-line…we think???

The cause of death on her autopsy was compression of the neck chokehold, which would be the identical cause of death for her son a decade and a half later. A reminder of the way mistreatment metastasizes and is passed down through generations.

She was murdered years earlier, and if this was passed down…somehow…it would not be done via them both being victims. This is pure psychobabble theorizing of the lowest order. Making sense of this is a practice in pure folly.

In addressing the case of Daniel Penny and Jordan Neely, some have said this is a “thought-provoking book,” and frankly, that is the problem. Anand Giridharadas appears to have been provoked by no shortage of thoughts about what inspired the events that played out in that subway.

But something in short supply appears to be the facts and a sober analysis of those details.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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