The White House steers clear of naming and shaming those who inspired the Buffalo shooting
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The White House steers clear of naming and shaming those who inspired the Buffalo shooting
As President Biden visits the grieving community, administration officials said the focus should be on the lives lost not those who spread the conspiracy theory that motivated this shooting.
I unexpectedly skipped Monday’s newsletter because I needed a day. To be honest, I need a few days and I’ll be taking them next week so stay tuned for an update in the upcoming days.
In the meantime, let’s focus on today: President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden this morning will travel to Buffalo to stand with the community as it grieves after another racist shooting at the hands of a young white supremacist.
A White House official said that after President Biden offers his condolences, he’ll give a speech during which he’ll call on Congress to take action on keeping assault weapons off the street and out of the hands of criminals and people with serious mental illness. But Senate Republicans aren’t having any of that and will continue to do the gun lobby’s bidding.
Karine Jean-Pierre on Monday afternoon dedicated the first few minutes of her first briefing as the new White House Press Secretary to eulogizing the victims who died during the shooting.
“We recognize their lives today and those lost and affected by gun violence this weekend in Houston, in southern California, Milwaukee, and communities across the country,” Jean-Pierre said, referencing the other mass shootings that occurred this weekend across the country. “And we honor the bravery of those in law enforcement who responded quickly and with professionalism in Buffalo, and who risk their lives every day to protect and serve their communities.”
Much of the political debate has been about whether the leading voices in conservative media and Republican leadership share any responsibility for mainstreaming and sanitizing the ideology that reportedly inspired the shooter to drive hundreds of miles from his home to terrorize a Black community in the second-largest city in New York.
It’s unsurprising then why several reporters asked Jean-Pierre why the White House refused to name and shame the obvious culprits who stir a sickening cocktail of white fear, rage and ignorance on their TV shows, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and podcasts.
“This is about the lives of people who were taken in a violent way, in an abhorrent way. And so, the focus for the president is to make sure that we call this out,” she said. “We’re not going to get into politics here about this. We want to make sure that we’re calling out what we’re seeing. These are people’s lives.”
There was no such resistance on Capitol Hill, where Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was crystal-clear in his condemnation of Fox News and other organizations he believes have spread the conspiracy theory that motivated this shooting.
“Not long ago, views like replacement theory were only found in the darkest places in deranged minds. Then they came to be found in the hardly-viewed trenches of the internet, and on chatrooms that most Americans never visit. To most Americans, these ideas are transparently repugnant and an affront to our core values,” Schumer, who will join Biden and New York’s other senator Kirsten Gillibrand on his visit, said during a floor speech. “But unfortunately, with each passing year, it seems harder and harder to ignore that replacement theory and other racially-motivated views are increasingly coming out into the open, and given purported legitimacy by some MAGA Republicans and cable news pundits.”
Schumer added that it’s not enough for outlets like Fox News to simply condemn Saturday’s violence, and condemn the shooter’s racist views, and then return to their regularly scheduled programming. Instead, the network and its hosts need to stop spreading dangerous ideas like replacement theory on their shows, he said.
As I mentioned though, there’s little legislative recourse to back Schumer’s tough talk, which honestly, renders it less potent.
👋🏾 Hi, hey, hello! Good Tuesday morning and welcome to Supercreator Daily, your guide to the politicians, power brokers and policies shaping how digital creators work and live in the new economy.
Here’s what’s happening today in politics:
— President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden this morning will travel to Buffalo to visit the TOPS Market Memorial to pay their respects to the lives lost in Saturday’s shooting before meeting with the families of victims, law enforcement and first responders, and community leaders to grieve and offer their condolences. The president will also speak during his visit. Once back at the White House, the president and first lady will host a celebration for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
— Vice President Harris this morning will attend Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece’s address to a joint meeting of Congress. She and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff will join President Biden and the first lady for the AANHPI Heritage Month celebration.
— The House is in and will Prime Minister Mitsotakis’s speech.
— The Senate is in and will continue work on the $40 billion Ukraine aid bill.
In the Know
— The White House announced that you can order a third of free COVID-19 tests starting today. The administration said the tests will help slow the spread of the virus in parts of the country but that it will be unable to sustain its testing capacity unless Congress approves a $22.5 billion funding request from President Biden.
— Police arrested a suspect in connection with a shooting at a Dallas hair salon last week that injured three women of Korean descent. The FBI opened opened a federal hate crime investigation into the shooting, which took place in an area called the Asian Trade District, known as the city's Koreatown. (Chantal Da Silva and Kurt Chirbas / NBC News)
— The Justice Department proposed a settlement that allows the leading infant formula manufacturer to open a Michigan facility and resume production after it received assurances that the company would take specific measures designed to increase safety and ensure compliance with federal regulations. The facility has been closed since February when the company issued a voluntary recall on its formula leading to a nationwide shortage.
— The Departments of Homeland Security and Labor announced the availability of an additional 35,000 worker visas for US employers hiring additional workers through September. “These additional H-2B visas will help employers meet the demand for seasonal workers at this most critical time, when there is a serious labor shortage,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. “The visas are accompanied by significant worker protections and provide a safe and lawful pathway for individuals to come to the United States and earn wages in jobs that are not filled by American workers.”
— The Education Department will host a first-of-its-kind virtual summit next week to highlight steps schools, colleges and communities can take to support students with disabilities and students with mental health needs.“Ensuring that our students with disabilities receive a free, appropriate public education that meets their academic, social, and emotional needs isn’t just written into law, it’s a moral obligation,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement. “We must work together so that students with disabilities and mental health needs receive the resources they need to thrive.”
— 44 percent of Americans think major technology companies should be regulated more than they are now, down from 56 percent in April 2021. A majority of people believe social apps believe engage in political censorship while a larger share of Americans think the companies tend to support the views of liberals over conservatives. (Emily A. Vogels / Pew Research Center)
Read All About It
Jonathan Chait on why Fox News host Tucker Carlson deserves some of the blame in the Buffalo Supermarket shooting:
Carlson is not directing his audience to commit murder. But he is spreading an ideology that lends itself naturally to murderous tendencies and has accordingly spawned a violent wing. White nationalists see Carlson as their champion, and so too does the vast majority of the conservative movement. Carlson, like Trump, serves as a bridge between the Republican Party and a movement once seen as too extreme and marginal for the party to touch. The defenses of Carlson will ensure that the power of white nationalism continues to grow, along with its body count.
Kathleen Belew on white violence:
This means that these are not “lone wolf” attacks even when they may appear to be, and certainly not just because a shooter has claimed to have been operating alone. The white-power movement has, since the early 1980s, organized the disparate groups of the militant right (Klansmen, neo-Nazis, militiamen, and others) around cell-style terrorism. Activists deliberately obscure their connections with one another. Yet the historical record reveals an interwoven tapestry of people on the militant right who have united in common cause to target minority communities and to undermine American democracy, and who ultimately hope to provoke race war.
[...]
In white-power ideology, mass violence is seen as a tool rather than an end point. Here we need look no further than the manifestos that are now routinely shared online from gunman to gunman, imparting instructions for future mass shooters as well as explaining how the attack itself is meant to provoke race war and civil unrest. The Buffalo document includes long sections of text pasted from the manifesto connected to the Christchurch shooting; the El Paso document did the same.
All of this is much too important to ignore as a disconnected string of events or to set aside as simply inexplicable acts of hate and prejudice. The alleged shooter in Buffalo is said to have written that boredom, isolation, and internet radicalization led him to his act. When we imagine how many others like him are in front of their screens, alone but together, we might summon an appropriate level of concern to move us to action. Every person should demand accountability from our elected officials for these events, whether January 6 or yesterday’s mass shooting. The death toll is still mounting, and the threat to our democracy grows.
Erica Schwiegershausen on how the formula shortage shows the stigma around formula feeding:
The online conversation around breastfeeding, which has spiraled out of control in recent days, reveals that many people are threatened by the idea of a mother who is able to separate from her baby for the workday with relative ease. Even if they don’t say it outright, the assumption that breastfeeding is the superior way to feed a baby is difficult to untangle from the belief that a woman should be home taking care of that child. At the same time, a lack of structural support that acknowledges the true demands of caregiving forces many mothers to rely on formula in order to return to the workplace, given that many jobs — particularly those with lower pay — still do not provide adequate accommodations for pumping. It’s not a coincidence that poor women of color, who are disproportionately represented in that workforce, have some of the highest rates of formula usage. And it doesn’t come cheap: As Jessica Grose points out in the New York Times, formula supplies for a baby’s first year of life cost an estimated $1,500 to $1,900. CNN reports that half of infant formula in the U.S. is purchased by families using WIC benefits.
Suzannah Weiss on how polyamorous people are marking commitment to multiple partners:
Polyamory is a form of consensual non-monogamy — when people have more than one sexual or romantic partner at once with all partners’ permission. A 2021 study in Frontiers in Psychology **found that one in nine single American adults had engaged in polyamory.
In legal terms, polyamorous people are unable to marry all their of partners: It is illegal throughout the United States to marry more than one person at a time. Somerville, Mass., is thought to be the first U.S. city to legally recognize polyamorous domestic partnerships, which it started doing in 2020.
However, people like Namer and the Brylinskys are utilizing an option that symbolically, though not legally, binds all three of them: a commitment ceremony.
[...]
Many people are embracing the notion that their relationship doesn’t have to be celebrated with a traditional wedding, and opting for commitment ceremonies instead — even those whose relationships only involve two people.
Ezra Marcus on the ‘E-Pimps’ of OnlyFans:
The key to this business model is the ready availability of cheap English-speaking labor around the globe. Job postings for OnlyFans chatters are widespread on freelance sites like Upwork, many offering as little as $3 an hour. Agency heads told me they’ve hired workers from Eastern Europe, Africa and all across Southeast Asia. “At the end of the day, it is a geo-arbitrage business,” wrote Justin Dallas, the founder and chief executive of Cam Model Agency, in an email.
This phenomenon is part of a broader boom in homespun online businesses that connect cheap developing-world labor with American consumers, allowing the proprietor to step back and reap the profits. A well-known example is drop-shipping, in which retailers advertise consumer goods shipped from suppliers (often in Shenzhen) directly to buyers. This can be more or less automated so that the nominal sellers don’t need to do much other than post digital ads for watches or vibrators and let their business run itself. OnlyFans marketing, though perhaps more time-consuming, brings together an even more geographically dispersed labor pool. Some of the models come from poorer countries in Europe and South America, and may not have the English skills to reach American customers; a chatter in, say, the Philippines completes the circle.
Thanks for reading Supercreator Daily. Send me tips, comments and questions — or just say hi: michael@supercreator.news.