Almost every reference to Ibsen's The Wild Duck starts with how rarely it's performed. You can see why: the play is basically a tragedy wrapped up in a comedy wrapped up in questions of class, status, gender, and whether deception is a necessary social glue. It's a Rubik's cube of a play but -- credit where it's due -- director Simon Godwin makes it look easy. In his hands, this is an intimate, tragic-comic domestic drama you can really get your teeth into.
And kudos to Godwin (and adapter David Eldridge) for seeing how relevant The Wild Duck is for a 21st century audience. Even if Ibsen writes as a man of his times, it's still true that a single mother today might push her daughter towards financial security, a young man might make an ideological break from an overbearing father, and a destabilized family might forget to protect its fledgling.
FBI Director Kash Patel has allegedly fired a former FBI employee and new agent trainee for displaying a gay Pride flag on his desk at a California field office last year, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The trainee, who worked as an FBI support specialist in Los Angeles, received a termination letter dated October 1 -- the first day of the government shutdown -- and signed by Patel, claiming he had displayed an improper “political” message in the workplace, according to CNN.
At the time, he was completing new agent training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
A video shows a Burger King manager -- who also owns the franchise -- ordering an irate female customer to leave after she tried to get an employee disciplined for allegedly misgendering her, despite the fact that she had repeatedly misgendered the worker first.
It’s unclear when the video was recorded, but it has been circulating widely in recent days.
The video, filmed from the customer’s point of view, opens with her at a Kansas Burger King demanding to speak with the manager. A male employee goes to get the manager, prompting the customer to demand the manager’s full name. The employee tells her he doesn’t know the manager’s last name.
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