Monthly Archives: July 2021

The three authors go on:

Animosity toward Democratic-linked groups predicts Trump support, rather remarkably, across the political spectrum. Further, given the decisive role that Independents can play in elections, these results suggest that reservoirs of animosity are not necessarily specific to a particular party, and may therefore be tapped by any political elite.

Before Trump took center stage in 2015, Republican leaders were determined to stymie Democratic policy initiatives, resist compromise, and make it clear that Republicans desire to score political victories and win back power from Democrats, Kane wrote in his email, but establishment Republicans generally did not openly demonize, much less dehumanize, Democratic politicians at the national level.

Trump, Kane continued,

wantonly disregarded this norm, and now Trumps base may come to expect future Republican elites to be willing to do the same. If this practice eventually comes to be seen as a winning strategy for Republican politicians as a whole, it could bring us into a new era of polarization wherein Republican cooperation with the Demon Rats is seen not just as undesirable, but thoroughly unconscionable.

Most significantly, in Masons view, is that

there is a faction in American politics that has moved from party to party, can be recruited from either party, and responds especially well to hatred of marginalized groups. Theyre not just Republicans or Democrats, theyre a third faction that targets parties.

Bipartisanship, Mason continued in a lengthy Twitter thread, is not the answer to the problem. We need to confront this particular faction of Americans who have been uniquely visible and anti-democratic since before the Civil War (when they were Democrats).

In their paper, Mason, Wronski and Kane conclude:

This research reveals a wellspring of animus against marginalized groups in the United States that can be harnessed and activated for political gain. Trumps unique ability to do so is not the only cause for normative concern. Instead, we should take note that these attitudes exist across both parties and among nonpartisans. Though they may remain relatively latent when leaders and parties draw attention elsewhere, the right leader can activate these attitudes and fold them into voters political judgments. Should America wish to become a fully multiracial democracy, it will need to reconcile with these hostile attitudes themselves.

Adam Enders, a political scientist at the University of Louisville, and Uscinski, in their June 2021 paper On Modeling the Social-Psychological Foundations of Support for Donald Trump describe a Trump voter profile: an amalgamation of attitudes about, for example, racial groups, immigrants and political correctness that rivals partisanship and ideology as predictors of Trump support and is negatively related to support for mainstream Republican candidates.

In an email, Enders described this profile as fitting those attracted to Trumps

relatively explicit appeal to xenophobia, racial prejudice, authoritarianism, sexism, conspiracy thinking, in combination with his outsider status that gives him credibility as the anti-establishment candidate. The Trump voter profile is a constellation of social-psychological attitudes about various racial groups, women, immigrants, and conspiracy theories that uniquely predict support for Donald Trump.

Uscinski and Enders are the lead authors of a forthcoming paper, American Politics in Two Dimensions: Partisan and Ideological Identities versus Anti-Establishment Orientations, in which they argue that

Our current conceptualization of mass opinion is missing something. Specifically, we theorize that an underappreciated, albeit ever-present, dimension of opinion explains many of the problematic attitudes and behaviors gripping contemporary politics. This dimension, which we label anti-establishment, rather than explaining ones attitudes about and behaviors toward the opposing political coalition, captures ones orientation toward the established political order irrespective of partisanship and ideology.

In the case of Trump and other anti-democratic leaders around the world, Uscinski and Enders contend that

anti-establishment sentiments are an important ingredient of support for populist leaders, conspiratorial beliefs, and political violence. And, while we contend that this dimension is orthogonal to the left-right dimension of opinion along which partisan and ideological concerns are oriented, we also theorize that it can be activated by strategic partisan politicians. As such, phenomena which are oftentimes interpreted as expressions of far-right or far-left orientations may not be borne of left-right views at all, but rather of the assimilation of anti-establishment sentiments into mainstream politics by elites.

Anti-establishment voters, Uscinski and Enders write, are more likely to believe that the one percent controls the economy for their own good, believe that a deep state is embedded within the government and believe that the mainstream media is deliberately misleading us. Such voters are more prevalent among younger people, those with lower incomes, those with less formal education, and among racial and ethnic minority groups. In other words, it is groups who have historically occupied a tenuous position in the American socio-economic structure.

The most intensely partisan voters very strong Democrats and very strong Republicans are the least anti-establishment, according to Uscinski and Enders:

Those on the extremes of partisan and ideological identity exhibit lower levels of most of these psychological predispositions. In other words, extreme partisans and ideologues are more likely to express civil attitudes and agreeable personality characteristics than less extreme partisans and ideologues; this contradicts growing concerns over the relationship between left-right extremism and antisocial attitudes and behaviors. We suspect this finding is due to strong partisans and ideologues being wedded to, and entrenched within, the established political order. Their organized, relatively constrained orientation toward the political landscape is built on the objects of establishment politics: the parties, party elites and familiar ideological objects.

That, in turn, leads Uscinski and Enders to another contrarian conclusion:

We find that an additional anti-establishment dimension of opinion can, at least partially, account for the acceptance of political violence, distrust in government, belief in conspiracy theories, and support for outsider candidates. Although it is intuitive to attribute contemporary political dysfunction to left-right extremism and partisan tribalism, we argue that many elements of this dysfunction stem from the activation of anti-establishment orientations.

One politician whose appeal was similar to Trumps, as many have noted, was George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama, who ran for president four times in the 1960s and 1970s, openly using anti-Black rhetoric.

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Opinion | Trumps Cult of Animosity Shows No Sign of Letting Up - The New York Times

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How should the science community respond when representation of evidence and conclusions is incomplete, erroneous, self-serving, or misleading?

Author of the article:

Publishing date:

One of the most important questions raised by governmental responses to the COVID crisis is Who should speak for science in the public arena?

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Every government in the world claims that its response to this health crisis is science-based. Scientific papers and authorities are liberally quoted in describing the nature of the virus, the best ways to combat its spread, and the role of science and technology in developing vaccines as the ultimate protective solution.

But who is doing most of this quoting of science, this referencing of scientific authority, and this presentation of the science of COVID to the public? Often it is not the scientists speaking directly for themselves but politicians, civil servants and media commentators.

In the case of politicians, few have a solid background in the basic sciences and most of us would have difficulty on our own clearly explaining the operations of a flashlight battery let alone that of a virus, even with the help of Professor Google. This shaky grasp of the application of science to a public issue makes it more likely that the politicians choice as to what science to reference and how to apply it will be more strongly influenced by non-scientific factors such as political ideology and partisan positions. For example, since the Trudeau government has embraced critical race theory and identity politics, will it not be more inclined to embrace and promote the conclusions of a scientist or science team that has also embraced these theories than the findings of a scientist or science team that ignores or even rejects them?

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Civil servants may well have scientific degrees and expertise but they are lodged in public bureaucracies, hierarchically organized with multiple divisions of responsibility and a fundamentally different approach to information processing and decision making than that prescribed by the scientific method. Thus the filtering of scientific observations and hypotheses through a bureaucratic system is likely to bring yet another bias to the application of science to a public issue.

And in the case of the communication of science by public media commentators, this cannot help but be influenced, at least in part, by the media-world reality that negative is more newsworthy than positive, feelings are more newsworthy than facts, disagreement is more newsworthy than consensus and short-run is more newsworthy than long-run. Public policy guided mainly by newsworthy science is not truly science-based policy.

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Calling for an expanded and direct communications role for scientists in the public square on public issues is not, however, without its own challenges. For example, the language and style in which scientists normally communicate with each other are not usually the best language and style for communicating with the public. Are scientists able and willing to make the adjustments required to be more effective public communicators and will those adjustments be supported or misunderstood by fellow scientists?

How should the science community respond when the representation of scientific evidence and conclusions by politicians, bureaucrats, and media commentators is incomplete, erroneous, self-serving, or misleading? Should scientists publicly challenge and correct such representations even if doing so might result in a possible withdrawal of government funding for the science in question?

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And how should the science community respond when the acceptance and use of scientific findings by a government or funding body is heavily influenced by non-scientific ideologies such as those of critical race theory and identity politics? Suppose, for example, that a scientific paper published by a research team is scientifically flawed but the team itself satisfies all the criteria of political correctness possessing gender balance and racial diversity and expressing itself in appropriately nuanced language. Should the data and hypotheses of such a paper be scrutinized and challenged by other scientists via the tried and true procedures of the scientific method if doing so might generate public accusations of prejudice and intolerance? In other words, how should the science community respond if faulty science can be insulated from genuine scientific analysis and correction by clothing it in politically appealing garb?

Over the coming months, various internal meetings and external conferences will be held to evaluate the governmental and societal responses to the COVID crisis and the lessons to be learned from them. One of the largest will be the annual Canadian Science Policy Conference in November. A priority question to be addressed by such gatherings is Who should speak for science in the public square?

Preston Manning was the founder of the Reform Party of Canada, and served as leader of the official Opposition in Parliament.

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Preston Manning: Who should speak for science in the public arena? - Financial Post

A few comments on your June 23 Edition:

1. "It's Enough" - Article by J. Goren

Just as their American counterparts, Canadian Jews are finally realizing that European and North American woke progressive liberals are a farce. Justin and his gang of liberal cowards are scared witless of the Muslim extremists. They cater to their every whim and will never stand by Israel. They prefer political correctness and virtue signaling to true justice. This cowardly attitude is destroying Western Europe and America.

2. Jewish Pride and Courage - Letter.

I agree with this letter 100% - a massive counterprotest in support of Israel should have been organized in front of Israel's consulate in Westmount as an unequivocal show of support to Israel and its people. The aggressive and hostile protestors were given free reign to aggressively protest not once, but many many times. Next time I will personally organize a rally. I am so sick of not speaking out.

Illya Kuryalin

Momtreal

Originally posted here:

Comments on the June 23rd Suburban | Letters To Editor | thesuburban.com - The Suburban Newspaper

Savage right-wingers who are also no-exceptions Trump loyalists, like Mo Brooks, are about the only candidates safe from a primary purge on ideological grounds. Photo: Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Heading toward the 2022 midterm elections, Republican-watchers are fascinated by the aggressive role Donald Trump intends to play in GOP primaries. Aside from his plans of vengeance toward those who egregiously crossed him at some point over the past half-century, he is selectively backing candidates whom he can claim as his very own. Indeed, the former president has already endorsed ten Senate candidates, two House candidates, and five candidates for state offices (one for a 2021 election). More important, his potential endorsements have Republican candidates and proto-candidates scrambling to prove their MAGA credentials so as to head off, or at least partially neutralize, the possibility that the Boss will give the magic nod to an opponent. The most obvious example of this phenomenon is in the Ohio U.S. Senate race, during which candidates had an Apprentice-style audition with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in March, with one aspirant, J.D. Vance, subsequently launching his candidacy by apologizing for criticisms of the 45th president back in 2016.

But loyalty to Trump isnt the only essential trait for Republican candidates in a party that (in this century, at least) seems haunted by fears of heresy more than it is tempted by dreams of diversity and outreach. Trumpism has simply been added to previous conservative litmus tests. Revealingly, Herschel Walker one high-profile potential candidate for the U.S. Senate whom Trump has strongly encouraged to enter the race is alarming some conservatives in Georgia because he hasnt been ideologically vetted, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports:

Herschel Walker will need to come back to Georgia and campaign. He will need to show that he is a conservative, Doug Collins, a former Republican congressman and 2020 Senate candidate, said on his radio show.

I have never heard Herschel Walkers position on pro-life. I havent, Collins said. Ive never heard his position on gun control. Ive never heard his position on a lot of these issues that are conservative issues.

This demand was significant because Collins himself is a MAGA stalwart, having served as Trumps chief defender on the House Judiciary Committee during the former presidents first impeachment. But he wont take Trumps word for it that Walker is ideologically kosher: The current Republican front-runner for the 2022 Senate nomination needs to publicly pledge his allegiance to culture-war causes like banning abortion and outlawing any outlawing of a single gun.

Certainly, abortion and guns represent two major issues on which any sort of heterodoxy is disqualifying for nearly all Republican candidates. The once-robust pro-choice Republican caucus in Congress is now down to two veteran senators: Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. A good indication of how obligatory anti-abortion views have become was provided by recent party-switcher Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey. He had a strongly pro-choice voting record as a Democrat, but one of his first House votes as a Republican was on behalf of a failed effort to force a bill banning all abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy onto the floor. Similarly, one of the vanishingly few congressional Republicans open to any kind of gun regulation, Senator Pat Toomey, is retiring next year. On both of these cultural issues, Republican opinion seems to be hardening. The ascendant conservative view on reproductive rights is now fetal personhood as a matter of federal constitutional law, rather than simply a reversal of Roe v. Wade, and a return of abortion regulation to the states. And on guns, the big conservative trend is constitutional carry, a rejection of any firearms licensing provisions, which is closely associated with the even more dangerous idea that the Second Amendment was designed to give teeth to a right to revolution against a tyrannical government.

But these are hardly the only litmus tests of true conservatism that survived or even flourished in the Trump era. Tax increases remain verboten, as evidenced by their absence from the recent bipartisan infrastructure package in the Senate. Anti-government rhetoric, an inheritance from the Goldwater-to-Reagan conservative movement that was intensified by the tea-party phenomenon of the Obama era, now has even greater power thanks to the Trumpian doctrines of a traitorous deep state and a corrupt Swamp dominating Washington. Hostility to organized labor is now universal in a party that used to more than occasionally secure union endorsements for its candidates (unless you take seriously the eccentric endorsement by Marco Rubio of an effort to organize Amazon workers or the more general revolt against woke corporations).

There are obviously some tenets of traditional conservatism that Trump has called into doubt as orthodoxy. Several are really restorations of Old Right thinking: the abandonment of free-trade principles for a return to the protectionist creed that animated Republicans from the Civil War to World War II, an America First repudiation of neoconservative commitments to alliances and interventionism, and a return to the nativism that has always been just under the surface in Republican politics. While Trumps sometimes incoherent views on these topics havent become totally obligatory for Republicans just yet, gestures in his direction probably are required. Its hard to imagine, for example, more than a smattering of Republicans vocally opposing a border wall, or calling for closer trade relations with China, or saying something nice about NATO, much less the United Nations. In international relations, Trumps determination to throw money at the Pentagon and his unremitting bellicosity have made his isolationist tendencies more acceptable to the Cold War set.

Theres one very loud new habit of Republicans that Trump has elevated from a fringe extremist preoccupation into a near-universal habit in the GOP: the attacks on political correctness, wokeness, cancel culture, and now critical race theory that present a violent antipathy to cultural changes deemed threatening to white patriarchal hegemony (or, stated more neutrally, to the Great America Trump has promised to bring back). All these phantom menaces are nicely designed to make old-school racism and sexism respectable.

All in all, its a complicated landscape that ambitious Republicans must navigate to safely rise within the Trumpified GOP. The safest are hard-core conservatives of the old school who downplay Reaganite views that are now out of fashion and who add in conspicuous personal loyalty to Trump and whatever he wants at any given moment. Examples of this formula are Ted Cruz, the members of the House Freedom Caucus, and, above all, Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Mo Brooks, who is still doing penance for endorsing Cruz in 2016, in part by personally participating in Trumps January 6 insurrectionary rally. Trump is close to the once-unlikely accomplishment of making true conservatism and Trumpism identical. The big question is whether his personal presence as a presidential candidate or a hurricane-force disrupter is necessary to seal the deal.

Daily news about the politics, business, and technology shaping our world.

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Its Tough to Prove Youre a True Conservative in the Trump Era - New York Magazine

Media should speak for moderates, tooFox News gets a large amount of attention from left wingers.On the other hand, I dont notice NPR, CNN, or Mother Jones getting much attention from the right.By focusing so much on this one right-wing source, it would appear theyre acknowledging theres less of them.The mainstream media tends to lean Democrat.Just like with the government, those who dont consider themselves liberal or conservative (the huge number of Americans who tend to decide elections) are not represented much in the media.Would it change anything if they did have influence?I cant speak for other moderates who dont consider themselves liberal or conservative, but here are some questions I could see a mainstream media which doesnt lean Democrat that could be asked:Given that Blacks suffered greatly from policies Joe Biden helped create, why would the intelligent Barack Obama pick him as vice president? Why do anti-war candidates like Tulsi Gabbard and Howard Dean never become vice president?Why does peak oil get so much more attention than other resources that are also depleting?Given the claim that organic produces higher yields in developing countries, food is wasted giving it to farm animals, and vegan food is cheap, why should we believe a mostly vegan and organic diet cant feed the world?Since Wall Street gives huge donations to both parties, maybe they should stop donating if voter suppression bothers them.Colin YunickCharlton

Black leaders should denounce vulgarityThe BET awards, which highlight Black achievement, awarded Cardi B a Grammy and a Video of The Year award for her Megan Thee Stallion-assisted No. 1 hit WAP. A celebration of deviant sexuality was also part of the evenings festivities.If youre like me, who had a hard time keeping up with the cool kids, the acronym WAP might bestir a memory from the Dark Ages, when a similar term was used by cloddish xenophobes in regard to Italian immigrants.No, that would be totally out of place in this gathering, where delicate sensibilities and political correctness charge the atmosphere.If, like me, you dont have a confidant whos not only wise to the ways of the world, but tech-savvy to boot, to provide the lyrical content of this masterpiece.Im a bit tongue-tied to even attempt to gently describe the content. Hint: Its about sex and its graphic. Most likely the easiest way to access this, what I would call trash, would be your teenagers smartphones. Caution: It could provide some mutual embarrassment.Black leaders should denounce events such as the BET Awards.They arent true allies in helping boost Black societys PR problem, if one exists. I see them as a Trojan Horse.Gordon F. SchaufelbergAmsterdam

Caroline Streets issues are not newThere have been problems on Caroline Street since Caroline Street became the late night place to party in Saratoga Springs.The commissioner of Public Safety should know this, and I am sure the assistant police chief knows this.The problems have not started with BLM or are caused by gangs from Albany.The city has been trying to solve this problem for years.One former Public Safety commissioner tried to get the bars to close earlier. The bars fought this for months and the city backed off.The city needs to address the problems on Caroline Street, but trying to blame outside influences will not solve the problem.We are in the summer season, and it is discouraging that the Public Safety commissioner and the assistant police chief seem so unprepared to handle a problem that the city faces every summer.Karen KlotzSaratoga Springs

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Letters to the Editor Tuesday, July 6 - The Daily Gazette

I learned the same things during the pandemic that many of you readers have learned quiet time is valuable, simple hugging is underrated, we need our service industries, church services indoors, and being sick can take on new meaning.

Then I learned more:

I missed having my dog who died before COVID. She would have been underfoot, being tail-wagging-happy that we were always home, and I recalled how much her eyes melted my soul.

I missed the experience of the library and the attentive staff, and that dropping books into a shoot was impersonal and awful.

I missed the chit-chat of the local store employees and seeing whole faces. Indeed, we resembled designer bank robbers, and I found myself ordering glittery masks, animal masks and matching them to my clothing.

I missed Thanksgiving with my extended, noisy family and cooking for them, too.

I missed family-room time with friends and decided that snowflakes are often identical, regardless of what science says. I had hours in which to study this.

I found out vinyl records are joyful things, and listening to 60s folk music made me real with memories of hippies, peasant dresses, long-haired male singers, and clanging bracelets.

Pedaling on the recumbent bike (birthday gift, courtesy of sweet family) to Born to be Wild was the exciting highlight of Monday-Friday. The excitement of Saturday? Eating a dessert I had earned.

I found that we all changed and everything familiar seemed upside down except for one great man Jesus. He remained the same, always seeking my heart, always caring and kind, always a friend I could chat with and even hear back from.

It was humbling to know that through the ravages of sickness to the eventual healing, and then the great restlessness, Jesus remained steady. In the past, I read many Scriptures that spoke these truths, but living them gave me clearer insight.

It has been a long road back from COVID. I am one of those folks with some lingering side effects including breathlessness in the wee hours. It is that lonely time when I must sit upright and take deep inhalations and try not to be frightened.

I called on Jesus many a night and when I concentrated on his I will never leave you nor forsake you message I relaxed, and breathing was not as labored.

There have been several plus sides of COVID: people will work from home regularly (and not be tense due to bad driving weather), we have explored cooking together more, and many have done new charitable works. I found contentment in the sunset and in hearing different bird calls and taking on more faith-based volunteer work and being with people again is wonderful.

We have learned so much from this plague, and though we will be grateful when its totally eradicated, the lessons gained are priceless. I am less interested in political correctness, and far more inspired to please God.

I hope we can be sensitive to one another, not because of popular beliefs, but because we are in this brief time here, together.

Would we see this without COVID? Perhaps. But it certainly shed light in a few dim places for me and for some of you, too.

Happy next phase to all of us.

Jeannie Croyle is an area freelance writer and author who resides in Central City.

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Jeannie Croyle is an area freelance writer and author who resides in Central City.

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Jeannie Croyle | What I learned from the pandemic - TribDem.com

Austin (KXAN) A 416-page book released just a month ago is causing waves in Texas and beyond.

The Texas-sized drama about Penguin Random Houses Forget Alamo: The Rise and Fall of American Myths begins on Friday after Austins Bob Block Texas State History Museum withdrew from discussions just hours before the book was set up. Start.

The museum has decided to stop discussions by the board, including conservative Governor Greg Abbott, Speaker of the House of Texas Dade Phelan, and Vice-Governor Dan Patrick, who reported 300 attendance confirmations. Explained that it was behind.

Later on Friday, Patrick publicly acknowledged that the event had been cancelled. The event investigated a review of a book of historical stories about the Battle of the Alamo. In particular, the hero is not necessarily a good man, and maintaining slavery is a motivating factor in the fight against Mexico.

As a member of the Conservation Committee, I told the staff to cancel as soon as I learned of this event, Patrick wrote. Friday tweets.. There is no such fact-free rewrite of Texas history at the Bobbrock Museum, like the effort I quit to move The Cenotaph.

Brian Burrow, Chris Tomlinson, and Jason Stanford, authors of Forget Alamo, claim they havent advertised. Oblivion San Antonios landmarks and their battles, to contextualize what happened to the Americans and how the story turned into a story about a heroic white man.

According to Penguin Random House, the book How the story over time, due to the contribution of Tejanos from Mexico, who fought with the Anglo rebels, and the origin of the Mexican conflict, which was removed from the record. Im looking for a twist. Push to abolish slavery written on paper.

In a statement, the publisher explained that the Brock Museum is facing great pressure on social media regarding the event, in addition to pressure from the board. Abbott is one of them. Texas Tribune Report.

In a Friday interview with KXAN, Tom Linson explained:

I think its politics. They distort what critical racial theory means, just as they distorted the political correctness and multiculturalism of the past. Its just part of the publicity.

Chris Tomlinson, author

As of Saturday, Governor Abbott has not responded to requests for comment.

I think the nature of the Block Museum has changed forever, Tomlinson added.

Nationally, Texas Republicans, especially Patrick, were pointed out for being said to be hypocrisy and authoritarian.

Read the explanation to find out why the Texas Republicans are working hard to kill a well-studied book about Alamo and how the story has turned into a myth. Its slavery, racism. Includes racism, and many other ugly things that pretend that Republicans never existed, writes the New York Times best-selling author. Kurt Eichenwald..

Many have pointed out the obvious hypocrisy of cultural cancellation. This is a GOP issue regarding the tendency of people and content to be publicly censored, banned, or cancelled by actions or statements.

journalist Judd Legum A prominent opponent ofcancellation culturehas taken advantage of his political position to cancel the discussion of history books on Alamo, he directly called on Patrick.

Cancellation of the event occurs in an ongoing discussion of the alleged teachings Critical race theory In public school even though it is very unlikely that you will encounter a doctrine outside of law school Where they were born.. The CRT is not a single lesson, but it examines American history and its unfair legal treatment of black and brown Americans.

Texas legislators Focused on the asserted teachings of critical racial theory, Abbott says they might be Go further In a special session that will start soon.

Meanwhile, the conversation about forgetting the Alamo continues nationwide as authors, publishers, and supporters continue to move their mission forward. Prank is not intended..

The canceled Forget Alamo book event ignites criticism of the Texas Republicans behind it

Source link The canceled Forget Alamo book event ignites criticism of the Texas Republicans behind it

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The canceled Forget Alamo book event ignites criticism of the Texas Republicans behind it - Illinoisnewstoday.com

What have been the all-time game-changing TV comedies? I Love Lucy in the 1950s definitely; the social realism of Till Death Us Do Part in the 1960s perhaps; and then onwards through the decades by way of the absurdist humour of Monty Python and the long character story arcs of Cheers. And then on a Monday evening early in the new millennium the 9 July 2001 to be precise a sitcom by first-time writer-directors and set in the Slough offices of fictional paper merchants arrived completely unheralded on BBC Two. The Office would go on to change TV comedy for the next 20 years.

With no laughter track and borrowing the style of the then ubiquitous docu-soap, a genre kick-started by the 1997 fly-on-the-wall series Driving School and often coming with similar blandly descriptive titles like Airport and Vets in Practice, an urban myth has grown up that there were those who initially didnt even recognise The Office as comedy.

Most of us certainly wouldnt have recognised the cast the now very well-known likes of Martin Freeman, Mackenzie Crook, Lucy Davies and of course Ricky Gervais, who wrote and directed The Office alongside Stephen Merchant. The title sequence featuring the drab, brutalist exteriors of Slough the roundabout, bus station and office blocks set to the wistful Mike DAbo song Handbags and Gladrags (as sung by Scottish rocker Fin Muir) also didnt offer many clues that a sitcom revolution was afoot.

The interior setting (actually an unused office at the BBCs Teddington Studios) was instantly recognisable as somewhere we might all have worked at one time or another a beige universe of trilling phones, paper being shuffled and (this being 2001) the occasional churning of a fax machine. Watching today, over a year into mass working-from-home, The Office might either induce wistful longing for a lost communal way of being or wonderment at how we ever spent our lives in such crummy environments.

The manager David Brent (Gervais) sees himself as an entertainer and all-round brilliant boss even when making grossly unsuitable remarks to receptionist Dawn (Davies); equally self-deceiving is bored sales-rep Tim (Freeman), who tells himself that this isnt his destiny as he bickers over the stapler with desk-sharing creep Gareth (Crook).

It captured that particularly modern form of the office that late-capitalist, neo-liberal mixture of ennui and anxiety, says Ben Walters, who wrote about the show in a book for the British Film Institutes TV Classics series. The double bind of being stuck in this god-awful situation that might be taken away from you at any time.

The naturalistic depiction of mundane everyday life at Wernham Hogg was helped by the absence of a laughter track but was chiefly enhanced by the then-innovative mockumentary format, the characters acknowledging the cameras with a sly glance or (in Brents case) a full-on cheesy grin. Although the mockumentary form had been around for a while, most notably in the films of Christopher This Is Spinal Tap Guest The Office was the first time many television viewers had experienced it.

The characters acknowledgement of the camera really upped the cringe factor, says Walters. When you had them looking into the lens, looking right at you, that really pulls you into the situation in a really uncomfortable way.

The Office launched the career of Mackenzie Crook, pictured here with Gervais

(BBC)

Indeed, along with Steve Coogans Alan Partridge and Garry Shandlings Larry Sanders, The Office marked the genesis of a whole new genre that came to be known as cringe comedy, and nowhere was this more cringey of course than when Brent was tying himself into knots of political correctness when faced with non-white or disabled characters. We thought it was interesting to write about the hypocrisy of people who think theyre politically correct, and the resultant awkwardness when they try too hard, as Gervais put it at the time.

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Brent may have been what Walters calls a pathetic ogre in the tradition of Captain Mainwaring and Basil Fawlty, but over the course of two series and a brace of Christmas specials, he went on a redemptive journey the tragic clown getting a reprieve. Importantly, there was compassion here as well as cringe. But if you were looking for the real heart of The Office, it was to be found in the romance between Tim and Dawn.

The traditional sitcom storytelling mode is circular, says Walters. By the end of the episode everyone is back where they started. But in terms of David Brents career and Tim and Dawns romance, it does develop. Indeed, Richard Curtis, whose sitcoms include Blackadder and The Vicar of Dibley, has said of The Office: It got better in ways I hadnt expected that it would have proper tragic and romantic dimensions was a shock.

Office romance: Tim (Martin Freeman) and Dawn (Lucy Davis)

(BBC)

We intended the show to have a happy ending, but we wanted it to be moving and uplifting without being mawkish, Gervais has said, and Walters reckons the Tim-and-Dawn romance was innovative in British sitcoms. There had been these big US sitcoms Friends especially where the romantic plotting had become as important as the comedy, he says. And having the presence of the cameras being acknowledged added another layer to the office flirtation, with cameras picking up every little glance and touch on the shoulder. It upped the ante and made it more suspenseful and affecting.

With a total of just 14 episodes two more than the similarly self-truncated Fawlty Towers The Office has been far more influential than John Cleeses comedy classic. This is partly down to the huge success of the American remake, which ran for nine seasons and made a star of Steve Carrell, while four failed attempts were made at transporting Fawlty Towers to an American setting.

Arguments have raged ever since about which of the two versions of The Office is the better, a pointless dispute that Gervais deflated in a recent podcast when asked about how he felt about claims that the US version were bigger and better. F***ing rich, he responded (Gervais and Merchant were executive producers of the American remake and therefore earned a considerable payday from it).

Steve Carell leads the cast of The Office US

(NBC)

But its The Offices mockumentary approach that has proved most influential a style now so ubiquitous in both British (This Country, Pls Like, People Just Do Nothing, Twenty Twelve, Come Fly with Me and so on) and American sitcoms (Modern Family, What We Do in the Shadows, Arrested Development, Parks and Recreation, etc) that David Baddiel was once driven to complain about this idiot idea that this is the only sort of sitcom we should have.

But if the likes of Miranda and Mrs Browns Boys have since clawed back some of the demand for traditional studio-audience sitcoms, the mockumentary goes from strength to meta-strength one episode of Disney+s WandaVision even being a pastiche of Modern Family and The Office.

And all this has its roots in a goatee-bearded middle manager with a talent for self-deception. If there is another reason that The Office has stood the test of time, reckons Walters, its because its chief protagonist, with half an eye on the camera and in constant need of affirmation, anticipated social-media culture. David Brent was very much an early adopter who took very seriously creating a narrative and self-image though being filmed, he says.

Here was this pathetic micro-celebrity but David Brent loved it and was all over it, and while he was not very good at it, actually that was the future and we all live in it now. To a greater or lesser degree, we all keep an eye open for where the camera is. Pathetic as he was, unfortunately these days most of us are David Brent.

See the article here:

The Office at 20: Why were all David Brent now - The Independent

An MSNBC anchor,who will remain nameless,recently called the new book by Ben Rhodes, who served as Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, "dark" inits descriptionof where our nation's democracy finds itself today. Rhodes's book, "After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made," is actually not dark.It's just a brutally honest look at where our nation is heading. Everything Rhodes writes, and everything he sharedin our Salon Talks conversation, should be seen both a warning and a clarion call to action for those who believe in our republic.

In defense of that MSNBC anchor, many people still don't fully grasp the nature of thethreat democracyfaces today. Not just from Donald Trump, but more broadly from today's Republican Party,which, as Rhodes and other experts have documented, have been embracing the autocratic playbook long before Trump slithered down that famous goldenescalator to launch his 2016 campaign. It's just that Trump made it impossible to ignore, especially given the Jan6 act of "domestic terrorism," as the FBI has defined it, andwhich himself Trump incited.

As experts on democracy noted in the fall of 2020, the GOP now lessresembledan American political party than it does theauthoritarian ruling party in Hungary headed by Viktor Orbn.Indeed, in his book, Rhodes lays out how Orbn's right-wing party and today's Republicans utilizesimilar methods to attract support, from culture wars to the rejection of political correctness to an overt embrace of a right-wing interpretation of Christianity.As Rhodes explains, "None of this happened because of Donald Trump."

Rhodes also detailed how other authoritarian regimes,such as Russia and China,mandate teaching students not the accurate history of their nation but a mythology that helps them remain in power.This should sound familiar, since Republicans haverecently been enacting laws to ban"critical race theory," but what they're truly doing is copying the Chinese Communist Party tactic of only allowing the teaching of "history" that helps them politically.

Rhodes said something that has stayed with me since our talk:For the first time in his life he had "to consider what it meant to be an American while living in a country that no longer made sense to me." I share that sentiment. Neither of us isbeing "dark."We are simply being direct about where our nation finds itself.

Watch my Salon Talks episode with Ben Rhodeshere, or read a transcriptof our conversation below, lightly edited for length and clarity.

"After the Fall." It's intense. You went to several continents to write this, and it was written over four years, up until the pandemic. Share a little bit about that.

Yeah.Well, it's not enjoyable. The subject matter is why things are moving in the wrong direction in the world. But I hope what's enjoyable is it's told through the stories of other people. It's not just analysis. And the root of it for me essentially was, I was kind of knocked on my back after the 2016 election. I wanted tomake sense of what's happening in America, what's happening around the world. And I started to travel and meet people. I ended up going to Hong Kong and immersing myself with the Hong Kong protest movement there, talking to Alexei Navalny and opponents of Putin in Russia, talking to democracy activists in places like Hungary. And through their stories, trying to understand: Whyis the world all moving in this direction, and how is America connected to it?

The jumping off point for me was when I was meeting with a young anti-corruption activist from Hungary. Hungary has gone from being a democracy to a single-party autocracy in a decade. And I said, "Hey, how did this happen? How did Viktor Orbn, your prime minister, do this in 10 years?" And he said, "Well, it's simple. He got elected on a right-wing populist backlash to the financial crisis. He redrew the parliamentary districts to entrench his party in power. He changed the voting laws to make it easier for his supporters to vote. He packed the court with far-right judges. He enriched some cronies who then bought up the media and turned it into a right wing propaganda machine. And he wrapped it up in a national us vs. them message. Us, the real Hungarians, against them Muslims, immigrants, liberal leaders, George Soros."

And I'm listening and I'm thinking, "Well, he's describing America." So what I realized is, by traveling to all these places and kind of inhabiting all these stories, I can understand not just why democracy is threatened globally, but why it's threatened in the United States, what we may have done to contribute to that, and what people aredoing to fight back?

You have a great line, "In 2017, I was forced for the first time to consider what it meant to be an American while living in a country that no longer made sense to me." From your point of view, why didn't Americamake sense to you at that moment?

It's interesting because I mean, for me, that line also speaks to the fact that I've known people who live in countries where they're repulsed by their own government. They don't see themselves in the power that represents them. But even though I didn't agree with the Bush administration, it wasn't the same kind of visceral reaction that you have to someone like Trump, where you're like, "This person stands for the opposite of everything I believe in, and he's in the highest office." Apart of what I had to realize in writing this book is thatI came of age around the end of the Cold War. That's where my first political consciousness happened. And the narrative was that everything was moving in one direction. The history was settled that freedom and democracy and open markets were going to kind of continue to spread.

What we've experienced since then is the recognition that, "Well, no. History never ends." And the same conflicts over nationalism versus democracy, authoritarianism versus the capacity of people to have individual rights, those things are constantly playing themselves out through history. We're fighting those battles today, just like people have had to do in the past. While America doesn't offer the promise that that's all settled, it at least gives us the opportunity to have the fight. But it speaks to why we can't be complacent, given the threats to our democracy around us.

Your former boss and your good friendBarack Obamawas on CNNtalking about how democracy is not self-executing, and informing us you can't take things for granted. Oddly enough, thatconjured up Ronald Reagan's famous line, "Freedom is just one generation away." The idea we'll be telling our children one day what freedom was like.

And if Ronald Reagan were alive today, might say the same things, if he was not part of TrumpWorld. Freedom House says Hungary is no longer a democracy.At one point it was. Where do you think we're sliding, objectively as a nation and in terms of our government now? Not so muchunder Biden, but when you look at the Republican states and their continuing effort to make it harder to vote, to suppress peaceful protests, to ban what kids can learn in school unless it fits their mythology, which I can't believe. If you read about it in another country, you'd go, "That's not a democracy. That's some kind of authoritarian and fascist state." What is going on?

One of the things I did was to tracehow the Chinese government has gotten even more authoritarian over the last several decades. And one of the principalways was beginning tocontrol the curriculum in the schools. We have to recognize these kind of common tactics of authoritarianism in different places. You mentioned Obama. He's kind of a character in this book. He comes in and out of these conversations we've been having. And I relayed the eerie timing. He gave a speech to the Democratic convention, as people may remember, where he said, "Don't let them take your power away. Democracy is on the line here." I describe watching that speech and then I'm looking at my phone and getting the news thatAlexei Navalny, the opponent to Putin inRussia, has been poisoned. And in a way, that kind of drove home the stakes, that the extreme darkness where this strain can lead was evident in what happened to Navalny.

I think the takeaway from this book is, you've got people like Orbn, who kind of represent how nationalism has gotten a foothold again all over the world. People like Putin, who represent the lengths that autocrats are going to in the world today, the kind of steadily escalating behavior that we see on a regular basis from authoritarians. And then you look at China, and they have an alternative way of organizing society. That's kind of where the future is going, where youblend together capitalism and technology with this reallytotalitarian and intrusive government. America was the one force that was supposed to figure this out, to set an example of multiracial, multiethnic democracy.

And when you talk to people in all these other places and ask,"What do you need from America?" It's less our foreign policy and more like, what are we modeling at home? What are we doing?When you see people methodically passing laws, trying to prevent people from voting, whenyou see peoplemethodically trying to set the premise that elected officials could actually overturn a democratic election.

If America can't get it right, then I don't think anybody else can. Not because we're perfect, not because we're so much better than everybody, but because we're supposed to be the place that, again, figured out how to do this. And we're the country made up of people from everywhere. So I think the stakes are incredibly high and they're going to stay high. Joe Biden's election obviously didn't end this. The stakes are going to stay high for a few years here.

Florida just banned critical race theory, even though they don't use that term. We've seen more than20 Republican states introduce legislation to ban a topic because they don't like it. You touched briefly on China and authoritarianism and education. How was that intertwined? Why should people be concerned this is not just culture-war stuff, where you can roll your eyes at it?

Here's why, Dean. I wrote about Viktor Orbn in Hungary, and his efforts to control the past. I mean, autocrats always want to determine how people understand the past to suit their politics and the present. And what Orbn did, on everything from statues to curriculum Hungary in the20th centuryhad a bad right-wing history and a left-wing history. On the left, we had the excesses of the communist regime after World War II. But you also had Nazi collaborators. You had a far-right movement in Hungary. They collaborated with the Holocaust. Orbnhas slowly been whitewashing that history and he's been elevating the nationalist history of Hungary. And what does that do? It whitewashes understanding where certain kinds of politics go.

The kind of far-right turn Orbn's taken, history should teach us that leads to bad places. That leads to repression, that leads to conflict. Here in the United States, it's so important to understand the full dimensions of our history. In part, so that you understand just how dark a place white supremacy can lead, or an us vs,themxenophobic politics can lead. If you're whitewashing that stuff, then the expressions of white nationalism we see around us, people have not had the context for why that's so damaging and so dangerous. Obviously, it shouldn't happen anyway, but part of this is the guardrails. So what do you learn from history about what not to do? Partof that is learning the history of how people overcome those things and how you better a society.

And where I end this book is saying that American identity is supposed to be,not that we were born perfect, but that in America we do the work. It's about trying to live up to the story that we tell about ourselves. So in every way, shapeor form, banning critical race theory and trying to look away from the darkest parts of our past, that makes it more likely to happen again in the future. And it actually negates what I think is the better American story, which is that those things happened and people tried to make it better.

I find it alarming that we're seeing the people who claim they want academic freedom, who say they despise "cancel culture," have no problem literally defunding school. The Idaho law is to defundschools if they teach you about systemic racism. I find this deeplydistressing.

I mean, this is why I ended up having the subtitle of this book "Being American in the World We've Made." What the "Being American" refers to is thatwe have to figure out what our national identity is. That's not settled. I think the reason why you see such intensity in our politics right now isthat people can sensethat's kind of what's being debated right now. And by the way,thistoois something that's happening everywhere. It's a common political trend. But the reality is, when you hear, "Make America Great Again" when only certain people were in certain rooms and had certain amounts of power and thenthey're looking at a future where this is going to be a majority nonwhite nation, unless they arrest immigration entirely.

Which is part of what Donald Trump was trying to do, in the relatively near future. Is it a coincidence that the Republican Party is trying to entrench itself through minority rule, essentiallyleveraging the courts and the Senate and voting laws and other things, right when that demographic shift is taking place? I'm not sure that's a coincidence.One of the points I make in the book is that, in a way, we've always lived this competition.And Trump and Obama kind of represent them perfectly in opposition to one another. Is America's story of progress and greater inclusivity and extension more rights to more people? Or is it "We want to wind back the clock," and this is an exclusively white Christian nation that is only for some?

We've been living these two lives throughout our history. I mean, the Declaration of Independence says that"All men are created equal," bit it was written by a guy who owned slaves. At every step of progress, there's been a reaction. So I think that is happening right now, and that speaks to onereasonwhy the political debate is so intense right now.

Initially, President Biden kept talking about, "America's always been a push and pull between these two forces." He's right. We're seeing it now. Maybe it's not that new, what's going on, it just seems more intense because I'm living through it as an adult who follows politics closely.

Yeah,I think the stakes are higher right now. Again, part of why I wrote this book is because one reasonwhy the stakes are higher is that this is happening all around the world right now,and things are moving in the wrong direction. I mean, while I'm writing this book, the Hong Kong protest movement that I was kind of profiling, gets swallowed up essentiallyby the Chinese Communist Party. Alexei Navalnygets poisoned and put in prison. America has Jan.6.This is happening and it's not a coincidence. It's happening because there is this kind of drift towards nationalism and authoritarianism, for a lot of reasons that I described in the book.

I focus on the 30-year period after the Cold War. I feel like the Cold War was one particular period where America wasn't perfect, but we were for freedom and the Soviets were for the other thing, for communism and dictatorship. Then you have this 30-year period of American dominance. Trump clearly was a bit of a pivot point. Now we have to decide who we're going to be next. I think that's a very hotly contested question right now.

You write about the way the GOP became the one we see today, and you say,"None of this happened because of Donald Trump."Share a little bit more aboutthat idea.

Well, it's kind of the mirror image of that story I told about Hungary. I know people can go back and look at Newt Gingrich and look atthe things that Bush did. But this particular virulent strain of the Republican Party, I'd have the starting point be the Tea Party. And if you make it the mirror image of what happened in Hungary, the collapse of the financial system in 2008 generated a lot of anger and a sense of grievance,like, "Hey, this whole system is just kind of rigged." People, I think, were open to different kinds of appeals than they might've listened to in the past. You get all this anger and then you compound thapwith the fact that there's a Black President, and there's clearly a racialized component.

The Tea Party demonstrations, they're chanting, "Take our country back," and we're being told that it's about deficit spending. I'm not sure you "take your country back" because you're concerned about the deficit. But it breeds this kind of new andmuch more belligerent Republican Party, the people who got elected there. And at the same time, you have Citizens United, which takes away any guardrails on dark money in politics. So this kind of bottom-up anger is being fueled by a lot of top-down money from people like the Koch brothers, who are just dumping money into politics,at the same time that you have Republicans getting much more aggressive in passing voter suppression laws. I talkabout this in the book, there were like 25 passed at the state level while Barack Obama was president. The Supreme Court that the Republicans had designed guts the voting rights legislation, which allows those sorts of suppression laws to go forward and have a greater impact.

At every turn, the Republicans are busting norms and not even confirming a Supreme Court justiceif they'renominated by a Democrat. And by the time Trump rides down the escalator at Trump tower, he was the logical nominee. Of course he was the nominee. He was the frontrunner from the time he came down. Because the other thing that happened in this period was that with the collapse of traditional media, you have not just Fox Newsbut the explosion of Facebook and people getting fed, just on talk radio and online, more and moreconspiracy theory-based garbage about what's happening in the world, about Barack Obama, about Democrats.

So by the time Trump comes down the escalator, he's like the product of that. It's like suddenlythe Fox News viewer is the head of the party. And ever since then, at every turn, people are surprised when the Republicans take the dark path. "Oh, my gosh, I can't believe that they still believe the Big Lie. They won't even have a commission." Well, of course. Who do you think these people are? They've been telling you who they are for the last decade.

What do we do? Near the end of your book, you write, "We live in a time when the world is emerging into a single history, and we can feel the currents of that history moving in thewrong direction." So how do we move this in the right direction?

I have lessons that I took away from all these people I talked to around the world.What are people doing that is working in different places? One thing for instance, in Hungary, is for the first time there's an election next year. They do have elections. Orbn dominates the media. It makes it hard for people but the opposition has their first real chance of beating him. And one of the reasons why is they've completely united. They've said, "Look, we have differences, but everything is on the line here. We're just going to put a big tent over all of our differences and we have to win this election." And I profile a young person who started a political party, but it's a very strange kind of polyglot coalition. But that's one lesson for us too, because part of what autocrats need to do is keep the opposition divided,apathetic or cynical.

I think we have to stay, despite all our differences, from the center to the left in our country. On the core things, particularly when it comes time to vote, people need to be absolutely united because there are more of us than them. If we vote and don't give up and don't get apathetic and stay with this, we will win. So one of those things is unity. Another is, if you look at even failed movements, like the Hong Kong protest movement, movements fail and fail and fail until they succeed. And they usually succeed in a big waywhen they do. They create a kind of culture around democratic participation and a culture around standing up for your rights. This can't be leftjust to politicians. Joe Biden alone can't fix this.

I think we need that kind of whole-of-society commitment to democracyas well. If you look at Navalny, the reason he was such a sore spot for Putin, the reason he's in prison, is that he'd found this huge vulnerability in exposing Putin's corruption. I think corruption is a common thread between all these autocratic movements, includingthe Republican Party.Because a lot of those voters that supported Trump are angry at a corrupt system. This is why Trump always talks about the "deep state."

Trump always talks about the system being rigged, but he is the ultimate beneficiary of the system. He's a white guy, a fake billionairewho can do whatever he wants, who's fabulously corrupt. We need to continue to drive home the message to some of those Obama-Trump voters about the absolute corruption of a political party that speaks one language and then just shovels tax cuts to corporations and breaks the rules themselves all the time. I thinkthat's the most potent argument we have to make.The last thing I'd say, though,is that the bigger structural problem is that the reason people are having an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan.6, the reason people believe in QAnon, is because of the radicalization that's happening online. We have to get our arms around that in this country, social media and disinformation.I'd like to see the Biden team take that on more. Because so long as our entire media is structured to mainline rage and conspiracy theories to people, we're going to be in this spot.

Follow this link:

Obama aide Ben Rhodes on the global crisis of democracy: It's real, and we have to fight back - Salon

We all know the phrases: Trojan Horse, Fox watching the hen house, Wolf in sheeps clothing, Spinning straw into gold, with the warning that if it looks too good to be true, it is.

These phrases are meant to educate and prevent the next generation from repeating mistakes. We learn by either making a mistake or observing others making them. We wonder why so many people still touch a hot stove before remembering it will burn them.

There is new phrase added to the cautionary list: Multinational Corporations are not Capitalistic. This wolf in sheeps clothing syndrome has infected multinational companies as they hate capitalism. This sheeps wool, disguises corporatism to look like businesses friendly to capitalism.

Technology has rapidly transformed the world, into a game of us vs them, with survival of the fittest a proverbial arms race. Their incentive is to marginalize, vilify and eradicate any and all mention of God and standards of civilization based on a Christian moral foundation.

The rationale behind this new me first culture is we must prioritize our own survival, at the expense of others. Altruism has morphed into apathy. The desire to do good has been preempted by an instinct toward greed. Recognition for true effort has been eclipsed by meaningless platitudes of achievement with participation trophy type awards and Critical Race Theory. The result is a plague of entitlement, indifference and mediocrity.

Multinationals want control over financial outcomes, where capitalism does not allow control over markets. Multinationals use lobbyists to generate legislative regulations that stifles competition. They are, by nature, anti-capitalist, but disguise their message with marketing platitudes that confuses the gullible masses. Capitalism is based on the principles of a free market which breeds competition. Multinationals abhor competition. Their totalitarian ideology wants to control everything under an empire.

The regulations on climate, race relations, energy, healthcare, birth and death, vaccines, abortion and euthanasia are all examples of manipulation for maximum profit and population control. These are all spawned by lobbying effort from multinational corporations.

The multinationals, which includes social and national media as well as communist countries, are funding mechanisms for the Uni-Party which both Democrats and Republicans benefit. The payment process by the multinationals for control of legislative outcomes, is the purpose of K-Street. In third-world countries, this bribery of elected officials is corruption. In the United States the bribery of elected officials is lobbying, but the process is exactly the same.

Because of these realizations, there is now a rapid growth of conservatism. There is hope! The mask hiding the difference between corporatism and capitalism must be removed. It violates all of our core values. It is based on failed agendas of political correctness that advances principles that lets multinationals erode capitalism, hijacking a message of harmony and good will. This explains Bidens passive interactions with Russia and China, the antithesis of those of Reagan and Trump. Peace through appeasement and surrender to intimidation, instead of peace through strength. Bidens policies are letting Russia and China take charge and call all the shots.

Keith has a regular commentary on WJAG 780 radio at 7:40 a.m. on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

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Point Of View: What is Corporatism? | Editorials - Yankton Daily Press