Ethel Cain responds to criticism over United Healthcare CEO comments

Earlier this month, Florida-raised singer Ethel Cain expressed sympathy for the alleged United Healthcare shooter Luigi Mangione, prompting a panel of Fox News hosts to call for a “boycott” of her music.

In a Tumblr post last night (January 21), the Preachers Daughter singer clarified her original comments and responded to the backlash. “I find it funny that conservatives try to paint me calling for the death and destruction of multi-billionaire CEOs as some radical ‘woke liberal’ standpoint,” she wrote. “It’s no secret I’m from a deeply conservative family in the sticks of Florida and I still grew up hearing ‘I fought the law and the law won’. The healthcare system has fucked each and every member of my family in a different way at one point or another, as is the case with pretty much every family in this scorched earth nation.”

Cain then proceeded to emphasise that the politicisation of the shooting had served to distract from common class issues, making an apparent dig at Trump’s fanbase. “Remember when the coal miners, grandfathers to the ‘trump-er hillbillies’ of Appalachia that everyone loves to write off as ignorant, fought tooth and nail for unionisation because the companies that were built off their labour didn’t give a shit if they lived or died? Since when has ‘upholding traditional values’ gone hand in hand with defending lawmakers and oil tycoons?” she wrote.

The Tumblr post follows the significant backlash that Cain received in response to her initial comments regarding the shooting, shared alongside the hashtag ‘#KillMoreCEOs’. “It’s simple,” she wrote, “you make them fear for their lives and hit them in the only place they hurt otherwise nothing will ever get done... It seems quite straightforward to me. ‘Violence is never the answer’ wrong. Sometimes it is.”

In an episode of Fox News’ The Big Weekend Show aired on January 16, right-wing panellists Jason Chaffetz, Jackie DeAngelis, Anita Vogel and Guy Benson called her comments “sick” and “depraved”.

“The message there is violence is the answer,” said Benson. “You know who used that exact same mentality, that type of language? Terrorists.” DeAngelis added: “People need to boycott her.”