Category Archives: Politically Incorrect

The Karnataka government has tabled the Kannada Language Comprehensive Development Bill in the legislature in the week gone by. The bill seeks to establish the primacy of Kannada in Karnatakain education, communication and its use through establishments such as the government and its many offices, banks and institutions of higher education.

The bill is comprehensive, even as segments of media pick up the more noisy issues to highlight. In many ways, the bill picks its direction from the Sarojini Mahishi Report (1984), which made as many as 58 recommendations to safeguard Kannada (and, in turn, Kannadigas) by and large. Finally, Kannada and its primacy seem to be a stated goal of the government.

Election-time conspiracy theories apart (whether true or imagined), the bill at hand looks robust. Its stated intent is solid. To an extent, it copies what other states in India already have in placeand in additionit adds a couple of dimensions that other states just might follow in the future, as each state goes on to establish the primacy of its own language.

The beauty of the bill to me is that Kannada gets primacy in Karnataka. And rightly so. Tamil must get primacy in Tamil Nadu, just as Marathi must get primacy in Maharashtra. Indian states were really divided on a linguistic basis for a start. Today, in many ways, our 28 States and 9 Union Territories are language homogenous structures which have become entities that exist and govern themselves.

Federalism is the bed on which the states and the Indian Union sleep. Language, to that extent, is the one big binding force. A force that knits the state together, just as it separates one state from another. In many ways, it is not the political border of the various states that divides one from the other; it is the language that is spoken, the language that is lived, and indeed the language that is experienced by its peoples.

Every state is more homogenous than the country at large. This is seen in the food, culture, custom, dressing style and more. This homogeneity of a state is finally wrapped together by language. The language that is spoken, written, read and assimilated in all else as a culture. Language is, therefore, important. Very important.

This bill in Karnataka comes at an opportune time when there is plenty of social and political angst in the South of the country on the subject of Hindi imposition. Tamil Nadu leads vociferously in this debate, and all South Indian states follow. West Bengal and Maharashtra are not too far away in order of protest decibel levels. There is a very passionate call that asks for the primacy of the local language to be maintained at completely high levels.

I do believe the BJP Basavaraj Bommai government in Karnataka has read the pulse of the people of Karnataka right, and here comes the billall dressed up and ready to run.

The proposed legislation is a positive one for me if it establishes Kannada in its rightful place in Karnataka. A lot of us have forgotten to speak the language when we must. Many of us do not read enough of it, even if we know how. A lot of us pass qualitative and elitist value judgments on people who speak different languages. Many imagine the English-speaking to be at the top of the pyramid of language hierarchy, followed by the Hindi-speaking ones, and those that speak the local language occupy a different peg altogether. We need to think differently now. This is a completely politically incorrect thing to write, but write it, I must.

By default, English is considered today to be the language that gets you corporate jobs. Hindi is the language that gets you Central government jobs. And Kannada is the language that gets you local state government jobs. Its time to churn this pot up a bit now. The local language of the state should be able to get you the best corporate jobs, just as it should be able to get you the best government jobs.

We need to establish in every Indian state pride in the local language that is spoken, written, and read. We can have one tax. We can have one market. But we need to have many languages. The many languages of India. This is indeed the strength of the real India. Unity in its diversity. We need to get closer to the local language than we are now. And that makes us local. And that makes us belong.

Even as the media focuses on the proposed noisy diktat in Karnataka that no incentives will be given to firms not giving first preference to Kannadigas in jobs, I do believe this is not the way to do it. I divide sops into two. A first-mile sop and a last-mile sop. Merit must always take first place at the last mile when it comes to jobs. I am okay with the state government giving me a first-mile sop. Give me the best facilities free of cost in educational establishments of every kind and in vocational and tech training centres operated for the purpose of helping the Kannadiga with competence building. Give me incentives as a Kannadiga to run as good as the rest, if not better. This is a first-mile sop. But do not insist on reservations of jobs at the last mile. It will kill my animal instinct to perform, compete and out-beat everyone else out there. As a Kannadiga, I do believe I can. Instill in me the pride of achievement through competency building, not through a process of reservation by diktat. It will kill my animal instinct. I am big on this. I am good as anyone else is.

At the end of the day, an act is only as good as its implementation is. We just may get a great act in place after due discussion by our lawmakers, but God is in the implementation. As is the Devil. Therefore lets wait and watch, as even this bill shall pass!

Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults Inc

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The primacy of Kannada has finally arrived - The New Indian Express

Is Donald Trump charismatic? Surely not. And yet

Charismas a bit like that old line about obscenity: I cant define it, but I know it when I see it. Or perhaps better, when I feel it.

US historian David Bell remarks of the enthusiasms driving the Trump movement: Trumps base [is] tied to him by one of the most remarkable charismatic relationships in American history. But what does this mean? Probably most people reading this will be nodding without quite being able to explain what theyre assenting to.

Some say charisma emanates from everything thats most sacred. Others say its revolutionary, that it breaks with everything. Some say certain people or things just have it; that in some sense it is in them. Others insist that charisma is completely situational: you just had to be there. Is charisma a power or is it a relation? Is it a substance or is it an experience? Is it a force for good or does it lead us straight to hell? Is charisma compatible with democracy or does it undermine it?

Lets hold back on the urge to define, as if a definition would make the moving parts line up properly. Lets sit a bit, instead, with the movement, paying attention to what comes up. What kinds of desires, what kinds of anxieties.

Cornel West, in a talk given to a church congregation on the South Side of Chicago that I wont hesitate to call a sermon, once remarked, Donald Trump isnt charismatic; hes cathartic. It makes sense that West should have drawn that distinction in a sacred space. After all, the term charisma comes down to us from early Christianity. Its one of the disciple Pauls ways of talking about the power of Gods grace. So what the devil am I doing invoking Trumpian charisma? Even if we use charisma in a secular way, shouldnt we still be careful to separate the revolutionary leader from the sinister demagogue, the shepherd of souls from the maleficent mesmerizer? Maybe we cant have one without the other.

The concept charisma is itself charismatic, and in just this ambivalent way. It attracts and repels. It seems to point beyond normative questions to an energetic zone. A reminder that our political life depends on infra-political energies and attachments. Maybe charisma is the liveliness of those energies and attachments? It certainly seems to hover close to phenomena and experiences that feel at once quite familiar and quite extraordinary. A proposition, then: thinking charisma means considering the activation of the latent dimensions of social and political life.

Max Weber (18641920) is the canonical social theorist of charisma. There is a great deal that could be said and has been said about Webers thinking on charisma. There is also a tendency to imagine that every discussion of charisma in social theory either has to affirm or refute Weber. Lets not get caught up in that. Instead, lets consider two aspects of Webers theory of charisma that seem particularly useful in these Trumpish times. (No, Trump is no longer president of the US as I write this in July 2022. But he could be again. In any case, Trumpishness will outlive him. Those energies and attachments will findare already findingother forms.)

The first Weberian thought that seems relevant here is that charisma is economically alien. It exceeds and disrupts everything that has to do with ordinary economies, with householding from day to day, with expected ratios of effort, reward, and virtue. Charisma interrupts a world that is all about keeping things ticking over. Weber says that there is an ausseralltglich quality to charismasomething extraordinary in the sense of disrupting, or being external to, the everyday. The Biblical messiah who simultaneously evokes and rejects the given law says: It is written, but I say unto you

From the sublime to the banal: management and leadership theory, which has tried to domesticate charisma for its own ends (Top Strategies for Leveraging Your Inner Charismatic!), preserves something of this extra-economic dimension even at the heart of the business world. Its there in the distinction between transactional and transformational leadership; between the leader I might follow because theres something in it for me, and the one who makes me feel that my work is more than a job.

The second Weberian observation that is useful here is that charisma is always in statu nascendi: it is always in a state of being born. Psychoanalytic theorists of charisma have seized on this thought, since it implies that charisma has something to do with the force of what is latent. The force of some version of the Freudian unconscious. This means that charisma cant just be explained as the strategic or cynical performance of positions or identities that are already fully manifest and known. Rather, theres always something emergent and unpredictable about charismatic activation. Something that hovers at the very edge of what we can say at any given time. Here lies an important reason not just for the force of charisma but also for its deep moral ambiguity.

What Im after here is not really an argument about American politics. I am suggesting that thinking charisma helps us to understand Trump and Trumpism, and vice versa. But also, more broadly, that thinking Trumpian charisma gets us to the heart of something fundamental and yet persistently ambiguous about social and political life as such. What? I want to say that Trumpism manifests, with unusual openness, something that is always true. Namely, that social life everywhere and at all times rests on energies that are in themselves amoral, beyond good and evil. Energies in which anxiety is riveted to enjoyment, fear to fascination. Trumpism may be pathological. But thats not the same as saying that its a symptom of something pathological.

So what about this supposedly disruptive, anti-economic quality of Trumpian charisma? Sure, Trumps behavior, both as a presidential candidate and as president, broke with every expectation regarding the suitable comportment of someone aspiring to any elected office in the US, let alone the highest elected office in the land. But surely this was just a symptomatic expression of long-standing underlying tensions, not least the yawning gap between all the solemn, pious talk about the dignity of the republic and the reality of extreme poverty and racialized violence? Surely Trump was just a more extreme version of the cult of narcissism that has long inflected American public life? Wasnt this just the raging peak of a long arc of faltering white privilege? And what sense could it make to say that Trumpian charisma is economically alien, given that Trump built his profile around his splashy career as an entrepreneur? Wasnt Trump actually the first US president who was already a consumer brand?

The first thing to remember here is that Trumps record as a businessman has always been exceedingly bumpy. Its always been more about visibility than about economic reason. Trump brought to his political career what he had learned as a celebrity: a curious capacity to redeem incompetence as a kind of immediacy and authenticity. In any case, it was ratings gold. Still, decades before Trump ran for office some insisted that this kind of hyper-mediated, branded charisma should at most be called pseudo-charisma. Its not the real thing, the argument goes, because its been pre-engineered by spin doctors and marketing mavens. There are two problems with this position. First, is it not on those occasions when Trump has to read from a teleprompter, when he has to stay on script, that his charisma most palpably wilts? Second, calling hyper-mediated charisma inauthentic implies that whatever it is in us that responds to it is also inauthentic, or regressive to the point of being politically invalid. It may of course be that the whole complex turns out, looking back, to have been evil. But thats a different matter.

I often think of David Aberbachs formula for the false prophet: Though the man was a fake, the longing was real.

Is charisma intentional? Isnt charisma all about manipulation? Does Trump know what hes doing, moment to moment, at the level of strategy? Isnt he perhaps more of a political idiot savant, uncannily skilled at reading his crowds and actualizing their latencies? And isnt this apparent lack actually what it is all about: the fascination of a leader who, for a change, seems completely to lack interiority. All those features of the normative liberal subject: self-reflection, considered intention, conscience and so onnone of that matters, none of that is there.

Instead, there isfully, hotlythe external drama of untrammeled action, even as the Trump administration routinely struggled to push through its marquee initiatives. (Consider the difference between an administration [Trump] that thrives, energetically, on being thwarted, and one [Biden] that dwindles ever further into nothingness for the same reason.) The storming of the US Capitol by a crowd of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 was the logical culmination of this fixation on untrammeled action. The aimlessness of the insurrectionists, once inside the sanctum sanctorum, was consistent with a drive to visible presence above all else. To those with eyes to see, the storming of the Capitol was a version of the kind of super-efficacious result that, when it comes to prophets, is sometimes called a miraclethe kind of exception that is a standard feature of charismatic authority.

Speaking of prophets, a good third of Trump voters were in fact Evangelical Christians. On the face of it, as David Bell observes, this seem unlikely: Has there ever been a more perfect walking embodiment of the seven deadly sins? But sin is closer to grace than it is to reason. The moral drama of the dialectic of sin and redemption has a charismatic potential that reasonable career politicians like Joe Biden cannot hope to match.

Isnt the prophet who fails his followers quickly rejectedor worse? How is Trump able to sustain his popularity? How was he able to thrive amid the countless scandals and non-achievements of his presidency? The intensity of fact-checking and lie-detecting during his television appearances would routinely threaten to break the internet. But it did nothing to crumple Trumps mojo. How come? As Ive argued in detail elsewhere, its not so much that Trumps followers believed Trump as that they enjoyed him. The currency of Trumpian charisma is elation rather than facts. Trump inciting chants of lock her up! or boasting that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it have everything to do with the fascination of a life beyond the law. (It is written, but I say unto you ) Such a primal master, even in buffoonish guise, is by definition both exciting and appalling.

To say that Trump-fans enjoy Trump is also to say that they enjoy themselves in him. Charisma involves an elated experience of shared bodily substancein that, too, there is an uncanny line that runs from the early Christians to Trumpism. For the disciple Paul, the holy charism (Gods grace) stood against nomos (lawboth Roman and Jewish). It marked and animated the Christian community as a shared body, at once physical, spiritual, and political. Every time Trump voters are dismissed as a basket of deplorables, the attack isnt just symbolic. Its substantialfelt as an assault on a shared body. And on the world in which that body wants to live. The more liberals enjoy calling out Trumpian lies, the more they in turn escalate the charismatic enjoyment of his followers. Peter Hessler, writing in the New Yorker, quoted a Trump voter in Colorado: Ive never been this invested in a political leader in my life The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.

This kind of participatory elation, this kind of enjoyment, involves a double dynamic: identification and activation. This is where things get more psychoanalyticwhere we grapple with what it means to say that charisma involves the activation of latencies, that charisma appears in statu nascendi. Psychoanalytic takes on charisma after Freud, starting with Heinz Kohut, have argued that charisma is a bond in which narcissistic injuries come alive on both sides of the encounter, in a kind of mutually amplifying feedback loop between leader and followers. The charismatic leader tries to repair their own wounded self-regard by seeking attention and adulation through outsized public gestures. Witness Trumps addiction to mega-rallies even after he has long since gained (and later lost) the Oval Office. The follower, in turn, finds in the superhuman scale of the leaders gestures an ego-ideal that overcompensates for their own humiliations. This helps to explain the extraordinarily powerful seduction of Trumps seeming invulnerability to scandal and his refusal of politesse. For his followers, it is an opportunity to participate in omnipotence.

One of the great advantages of grounding charisma in unconscious latencies is that we dont get stuck in the kind of tautological culturalism that is too often used to explain the charismatic effect. This kind of argument says that a leaders message resonates with its audience because it overlaps with their already existing beliefs: their culture, their values. If we assume, conversely, that charisma only works by activating latent resonances, then it cannot, by definition, be (only) a question of strategically appealing to something already known. Instead, in psychoanalytic terms, we could say that charisma works by transferentially animating needs and conflicts which, until that moment of animation, havent been articulated. This helps to explain the intensity of charismatic experience, the way its described as a life-changing break with how things have been: Ive never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life.

It also helps to explain how charismatic experience often feels like telepathy, precognition. Like the charismatic person knows what you need before you do. In that sense, charisma is the active externalizationand by the same token, the external activationof the unconscious: the place where we dont know that we know. Charisma, writes Donald McIntosh, designates the force of the externalized unconscious tendencies which slip into awareness in the guise of an external force. And: The aura of magic springs from the resonance between what is perceived to be the external reality and the unconscious thought which is the real source of the experience.

Actually, I dont think we should be too quick to say that the unconscious thought is the real source of the experience. Because without the external force of the charismatic being, there would be no slip[ping] into awareness, at least not in this intensely evental form. And to speak of the charismatic being only in terms of force downplays, I think, the concrete specificity of their magic. That its this word, this gesture, not that. As much as its critics might want to dismiss it that way, charisma is never generic. As Weber knew, charisma can be routinized. It can be ritualized. But in that case, it becomes citational rather than evental.

What about the puzzling fact that deeply flawed, even repulsive people are routinely experienced as charismatic? Charismatic attraction has little to do, at root, with moral approval. Freud taught us that attraction and attachment are fundamentally ambivalent. And it may be that the most charismatic person is the one who activates the deepest ambivalences. Ambivalences that go way beyond good and evil. This is the mark of jouissance, the intensity of an enjoyment that goes beyond pleasure and pain. The flame that burns where vitalization and self-destruction are indistinguishable. A Trump voter told Tom McCarthy: If I have to lose it all, I need for him to win.

Can the charismatic effect be predicted? After Trump won in 2016, pundits, psephologists, and social scientists fell over each other to ask forgiveness for their failure. How could this have happened? quickly turned into If we had only asked the right people, looked in the right places But perhaps the lesson of charisma is that its eventality precludes adequate prediction. If the grounds of the charismatic effect are latent or even repressed, then its quite possible that the decisive factors that lead to a particular electoral outcome arent actualized before that decisive moment in which they make all the difference. Which also means that they cant be documented in advance. At least not in the guise that they will assume in the emergence of the event.

This is also why Trump isnt simply politically incorrect. Its not just that he says what others are thinking but are afraid to say. Its also that he ismiraculouslyable to say what others didnt even know they wanted to sayand often, I suspect, what even he didnt know he wanted to say until he says it.

Mainstream political analysis of charisma heaves with melodrama. The stench of appalling atavisms and totalitarian teloi. But its too easy to lunge for the f-word every time Trumpish charisma comes up for discussion, even if the Trump movement often evinces clearly fascistoid tendencies. For good reasons, liberal critics are alarmed by charisma, seeing in it only unreason and in unreason only falsehood. For good reasons: charisma requires that we think politics in terms of psychosocial factors that cant simply be dismissed as regressive or as unworthy of a mature public sphere. But thats exactly how charisma is too often treated. That stern, arms-folded line-holding against charisma, like a secularized version of the priest praying ever more fervently in the presence of the demon: Get thee behind me, post-truth! Down, down, myth and spectacle! The same flicker of panic, of terrified recognition behind the staunch stance.

In fact, Trumpism is a liberal wet dream. It makes it all too easy to reduce the power and potential of charisma to an obscene cartoon. This is a massive lost opportunity to suspend our normative anxiety long enough to understand something more fundamental. McIntosh put it admirably half a century ago:

The ability to tap these forces lies behind everything that is creative and constructive in human action, but also behind the terrible destructiveness of which humans are capable. White and black magic have the same source. In the social and political realm, there is no power to match that of the leader who is able to evoke and harness the unconscious resources of his followers.

Is Donald Trump charismatic? Hell yes.

This essay is a distillation and reworking of a longer piece, Populist Leadership and Charisma, in Elgar Research Handbook on Populism, ed. Yannis Stavrakakis and Giorgos Katsambekis (Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming).

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Charisma in the Age of Trumpism - Notes - E-Flux

Jordan Strauss/Invision/Associated Press

Social media has again targeted Maroon 5 frontman and former coach of The Voice, Adam Levine, by turning his alleged DMs into sarcastic memes. This happened last Monday, September 19 when the 43-year-old pop star was accused of cheating on his wife Behati Prinsloo with Instagram model Sumner Stroh.

Stroh released a series of chats from their conversation last week that proves the duo probably shared a bond beyond friendship. Stroh took to TikTok on Monday and clarified that both she and Levine were texting each other for over a year before they lost contact.

One of the messages that was circulated by Stroh showed Levines comment where he called her body absurd. The message by Levine read: You are 50 times hotter in person. And so am I hahahah. Another screenshot shared by Stroh read: That body of yours is absurd. Levine, who has been married to former Victorias Secret Angel for the past eight years and went on to become the father of her children, vehemently denied the cheating allegations made against him but took full responsibility for crossing a line.

Speaking with TMZ, Levine said: I used poor judgment in speaking with anyone other than my wife in ANY kind of flirtatious manner. I did not have an affair, nevertheless, I crossed the line during a regrettable period of my life. In certain instances, it became inappropriate. I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family. I have addressed that and taken proactive steps to remedy this with my family.

Twitter, however, isnt ready to let go of this leakage and turned Levines private messages into outrageous memes, some of which can be identified as politically incorrect. The specific message that ignited this uproar is that body is absurd. As expected, the tweets are going viral with this phrase. Most of the tweets showed images of bodies that are not particularly appealing by conventional standards.

It doesnt seem like the allegations had any major impact on the couples marriage as the day after the great reveal, Levine and Prinsloo were seen picking up their children Gio and Dusty from their school in Montecito, California. On Wednesday, both were spotted happily holding hands and running errands. It seems like everything is fine and sorted with the couple and they are ready to welcome their third child despite the deluge of sarcastic attacks.

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Twitter having a little fun with 'that body of yours is absurd' viral tweet. - We Got This Covered

Bill Maher says indicting Donald Trump would likely turn him into a martyr, but that the former president has to be held accountable for what he did.

Theres always a risk of everything with anything controversial and anything important, the Real Time host told ITK in an exclusive Thursday interview, when asked if an indictment against Trump could ignite a civil war.

Its a valid argument, Maher said, Youre going to gin up the other side to an unbelievable degree. And there is going to be violence.

Trump has repeatedly said in interviews that he doesnt believe the American public would accept him being indicted, and has warned there would be big problems if he were.

But the alternative is worse. You cant allow someone to try a coup! Maher, 66, exclaimed of Trumps role in the deadly Jan. 6 riot last year at the Capitol.

I mean, this country cant even do a coup right, the HBO personality cracked. In other countries, when theres a coup and it fails, there are repercussions: jail or, in many places, worse.

Im not suggesting worse for Donald Trump, but I am suggesting that if you try a coup I mean, for fs sake, he still hasnt conceded the last election, Maher said of the 45th presidents unsubstantiated claims of election fraud in his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.

And hes plotting to do it again, as Ive been saying for years, Maher added.

The DOJs probe into Trumps handling of classified and top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago, the ex-presidents Florida resort home, should also lead to criminal charges, according to Maher.

You cant steal nuclear secrets and put them in the shed with the croquet equipment. What the f are we talking about here? Maher said in an incredulous tone.

This guy cannot run again. And he has to be held accountable for what he did the last time. This cannot go on, Maher said. Enough of this nonsense of we only count elections when we win them.

But someone who Maher doesnt necessarily want out of the political picture is Biden.

If you asked me six months ago, I would have said no, but now Im not so sure, the comedian said when ITK questioned whether Biden should run again in 2024. While the commander in chief said in an interview last week that he intends to run for reelection, he told 60 Minutes that he hadnt made a firm decision.

Critics have cited Bidens age as an issue, noting that he would be 81 in 2024. But Maher defended the 79-year-old president.

I do think age is the last acceptable prejudice we have in this country, ageism, Maher said.

I think its ironic would be the most charitable word I could think of for people who cant stand any kind of bigotry, but have no problem with that kind of bigotry, he said.

Im not saying you should necessarily be president when youre 100, but Ive seen people on television who are 100 who were interviewed and they seem to have all their marbles. What this country seems to forget is that experience does matter, Maher contended.

Ticking off a string of legislative victories for Democrats, including Biden signing the CHIPS and Science Act, as well as putting his signature on a sweeping bill to lower health care costs and address climate change, Maher said, I think the reason why Joe Biden has had a really great last six months, is because hes 80 years old, or whatever he is, because hes seen it all before. Thats what age does, you see the patterns come up over and over again.

But Maher says despite recent political wins, Democrats desperately need some new blood.

I think they need 100 new faces, Maher said with a laugh.

The Democratic Party I think does look at the moment like they have a weak bench, but maybe that will change in primary season.

Famously liberal Maher who described himself earlier this year on Real Time as an unmarried, pot-smoking libertine has made headlines and won glowing coverage on the right in recent months for speaking out against Democrats. He said in an interview this week with Variety that the biggest problem for Democrats ahead of 2024 was their woke baggage.

I am happy that everybody else is too cowardly on the left to call out their own people when theyre plainly crazy about stuff. And it leaves more comedy for me because I go where the comedy is. If youre going to be ridiculous, Im going to call you out, Maher told ITK.

I do get a lot of coverage on Fox News now, but they will only talk about like the 10 percent of the show where I say something rotten about the left always deserved, I think and theyll leave out the 90 percent where Im criticizing Trump and the Republicans, Maher said.

The people who watch my show understand.

But does criticism from the left sting at all?

No. Its a badge of honor. Everybody should be doing it.I mean, people on the left understand how nutty a lot of the stuff is thats coming out from the left, Maher said, bringing up a piece published earlier this month in The Atlantic that detailed efforts to stop separating school sports teams strictly by sex.

Its not that Democratic lawmakers believe that the perfect people to read to five-year-olds are drag queens, said Maher, naming a number of hot-button, cablenews topics du jour. Its just that they wont they wont say anything about it, so it looks to the whole country like the entire Democratic Party is thinking that its equally possible for men to get pregnant, or abolishing the police, or whatever nonsense theyre on to these days.

Maher said the current polarized political climate with some Americans fearing about the future of the nations democracy doesnt make doing his job as a comedian any harder. The former Politically Incorrect host is certainly staying busy. In addition to his weekly HBO show, he launched a podcast this year, Club Random, in which he delves into hourlong conversations with celebrities including Woody Harrelson, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers and Saturday Night Live alum Leslie Jones on everything except politics. And hes touring the country doing stand-up, including a Nov. 12 appearance at Madison Square Garden as part of the New York Comedy Festival.

Comedys always gonna be there, said Maher. After every president leaves, they always ask the same question in the press: What are you going to do [now that President] Bush is gone? Youre right. Im just gonna give up and go home. Nothing will be ever be funny again, he quipped.

Especially on the Republican side, they constantly come up with crazier, and nuttier, and more ridiculous candidates. I mean, I thought Bush was bad. And then, you know, [2008 GOP vice presidential candidate] Sarah Palin stepped up.And now we have [Republican Reps.] Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (Fla.).

They never know any bounds, the Republican Party. Ill give them that. There is no bottom. You think youre at the bottom, then they will come up with somebody worse. And theyre also masters of nominating the are you fing kidding me? candidate.You know, Donald Trump, Maher said.

Comedy is fine. And my comedy, especially, is great because I get more of a mixed crowd. I wouldnt say Trump people exactly, butI get so much love when I go into the critique of the left, he continued.

And I think a lot of them are Democrats who want to hear that message. They want their party to get back to a sane, center-left position, and they dont see anybody voicing that for them.

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Maher wants Trump indicted, says former president has to be held accountable - The Hill

Some books of regional interest for September:

Treasure State by C.J. Box (Minotaur Books)

In C.J. Boxs latest Cassie Dewell novel, the PI agrees to take on the case of a wealthy Florida widow bilked out of her fortune by a smooth conman named Marc Daly. A previous investigator traced the mam to Anaconda, then disappeared. Funny thing is, Anacondas founder was named Mark Daly. Cassie discovers Marc has bilked other women, using the names of different Montana copper kings.

Marc turns out to be so friendly and charming that Cassie falls for him. His friend, the deputy sheriff, however, is a vicious killer, and hes on to Cassie.

Meanwhile, folks in Montana, including a friend of Cassies, are hunting for a treasure chest with more than $3 million in gold, hidden somewhere in the West. Clues to the location are on a poem posted in a restaurant. Its all a bit like the Forrest Finn treasure hunt of a few years ago, except that the perpetrator is unknown. When a man calls Cassie claiming he hid the treasure and offering her $25,000 to identify him, she wonders if hes a nut job. Then an envelope with $2,000 is left for her. Cassie takes on the challenge.

Wanna bet Cassie solves both cases?

The Paradise That Lurks in Female Smiles, by Gary Reilly (Running Meter Press)

So what do you do if youre a fortyish creative writing teacher at night school and the sexiest, most beautiful woman in the world walks into your classroom and says she wants to be a writer? And all you can think about is bedding her? You tell her shes a brilliant writer and lie about sending her manuscript off to a nonexistent editor friend at the New Yorker. Mission accomplished.

Well, beware of what you wish for. Linda Hathaway quickly moves in with Charley Quinn, bringing with her a case filled with more pills than you can dream of. Its enough to make him think hes gone to heaven. But not quite. Linda has too many secrets and an unsavory past. And bad things keep happening to Charley.

Drew, Charleys perennial student, shows Charley an acceptance letter he received from the New Yorker. Charley realizes its not only a fake but was written on his own Smith Corona. Then Charley loses his part-time janitorial job. He cant help but wonder if Lindas involved.

The story is written in stream-of-conscientiousness style, with Charleys jaded view of both men and women. Women are crazy. They think that men are weak and can be defeated, Charley thinks. And men know it. They play women for chumps and take everything they can get.

The Paradise That Lurks in Female Smiles (the title comes from Confessions of an English Opium-Eater) is No. 16 of 25 novels written by Gary Reilly, a Denver cab driver who died in 2011. When Reillys friends writer Mark Stevens and former Denver Post cartoonist Mike Keefe read the manuscripts, they were so impressed that they established Running Meter Press to publish them. The works show enormous variety and originality, and you wonder why no publisher picked them up during Reillys lifetime. The Paradise That Lurks is sometimes crude and sometimes politically incorrect, but it is also a stunning work.

Hell and Back, by Craig Johnson (Viking)

Walt Longmire has never faced a challenge like this one. He wakes up lying in the middle of a street in a snowstorm and cant remember who he is or why hes there. Then, things get worse. Time periods change, and its Groundhog Day all over again. And its always 8:17. Whats a cowboy to do?

Right off, Walt discovers his name in a tag on his hat. Then he realizes hes a sheriff from Wyoming, but this is Montana, and whats he doing there? He finds a missing person poster in his pocket for an Indian girl named One Moon (who disappeared in a previous Walt Longmire book), but Walt has no idea why he has it.

Walt learns hes in the town of Fort Pratt, in a time period a few years back. But hes also at the towns namesake, the Fort Pratt Industrial Indian Boarding School, more than 100 years ago. The school burned down back then with all the students inside at least thats what hes told. But when he sees the school, the boys are there, along with their greedy superintendent. It dawns on Walt that maybe he died and this is hell.

Meanwhile, Walts buddies, Vic Moretti and Henry Standing Bear, are out looking for him, and they run into some pretty strange situations, too.

Walt Longmire fans will most likely enjoy the book, although its one weird Western.

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There are two winless teams left in the NFL this season.

One of them is the Texans, which probably doesnt come as much of a surprise given the low expectations they carried into the year. The Raiders being 0-3 is a bit more unexpected, but thats where they find themselves after a late rally fell short in a 24-22 road loss to the Titans.

That loss comes after the Raiders blew a big lead against the Cardinals at home in Week Two and wide receiver Davante Adams said the early season results are not sitting well with him.

Frustrated and angry, Adams said, via SI.com. Expect more. Its not easy to win in this league. We know that. Nobodys naive to the fact that nobodys just going to lay down and just give you a victory, but at the end of the day we expect more and we will do better as we move forward.

Adams later said frustration is OK as long as you do something about it and the challenge for the Raiders moving forward will be figuring out how to execute at a higher level quickly enough to keep the season from going completely off the rails.

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DeSantiss focus on television was prescient. Ron was obsessed with Fox. Thats how he got on Trumps radar, a former adviser said. Multiple Republicans who interacted with DeSantis told me DeSantis began tailoring his policies to appeal to Fox viewers. His first question was always, How will that play on Fox? If you give an opinion he doesnt like, he says, I dont think that will play well on Fox, a prominent Republican said. Fox was on in the office 24/7. Ron made it abundantly clear he would only do Fox, a former staffer remembered. Getting Ron booked on Hannity was a high priority, another former DeSantis staffer said. According to a source, DeSantis texts with Hannity and Fox host Laura Ingraham.

In 2015, DeSantis was among a group of nine Republican House members who founded the hard-right Freedom Caucus. He courted the groups then chairman, Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. Jim would call Ron from across the room, and Ron would go running over, the former DeSantis staffer recalled. But DeSantis was dismissive of his peers. Ron didnt respect Mark Meadows. I could see it in the way they interacted, a former staffer said. Ron hated Kevin McCarthy. Same with Boehner. He thought he was smarter than them, a former staffer said. DeSantis was particularly turned off by social conservatives like then Utah congressman Jason Chaffetz. He also thought the Freedom Caucus guys were all nuts, a former staffer recalled. Ron had a Do Not Disturb sign and hed put it on his door anytime Chaffetz was coming by the office, another staffer said. A onetime staffer told me the sign, when hung, applied to all staff and visitors, save for Casey.

A former local newscaster, Casey DeSantis is by far her husbands closest confidant and advisersmoothing his rough edges and repairing relationships.RON SACHS/ABACA PRESS/ALAMY.

Like many elected Republicans, DeSantis was appalled when Trump ran for president. Ron made more fun of Donald Trump than anyone I know, one of the former DeSantis staffers told me. He thought Trump was fucking nuts, said another. Two staffers remembered DeSantis was particularly shocked by Trumps appearance at the Republican Jewish Coalition meeting in Washington in December 2015. This room negotiatesperhaps more than any room Ive spoken to, maybe more, Trump told the audience. Ron came back to the office and said, I cant believe Trump said that! Then we pulled up old SNL videos of Trump doing Dominos pizza commercials and stood around the computer making fun of Trump for 30 minutes.

DeSantis pivoted after the 2016 election. He hung out at Trumps Washington hotel, pushed a bill to defund the Mueller investigation, and shilled on Fox News. I liked him because he was out there defending me very strongly on the Mueller hoax, Trump told me in an interview last year. In November 2017, DeSantis earned an invitation to fly with Trump on Air Force One to a rally in Pensacola, Florida. DeSantiss congressional staff lamented his transformation. Ron is one of the smartest people Ive come in contact with. He had such potential, but he became nothing but a Trump suck-up. Its really sad, a former staffer told me. Ron is an intellectual. And then theres this persona hes a populist-like Trump figure, which is very clearly crafted, another said.

DeSantiss MAGA makeover paid off when he ran for governor in 2018. During the GOP primary, Trump gave DeSantis two endorsements and propelled DeSantis to close a 17-point deficit on the front-runner, the states moderate agriculture commissioner, Adam Putnam. Ron went through the roof as soon as I endorsed him, Trump said. A month before the primary, DeSantis aired a campaign ad that showed him reading Trumps Art of the Deal to his infant son, Mason, and encouraging his toddler daughter, Madison, to build a wall with toy blocks. DeSantis beat Putnam by 20 points.

DeSantis yoked himself even tighter to Trump when he faced Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum in the general election. DeSantiss campaign went sideways out of the gate when he told a Fox News interviewer, The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by electing Gillum, who would have become Floridas first Black governor. DeSantis insisted the apparent racist dog whistle was unintentional and privately blamed his staff for failing to clean up the controversy. He has a hard time taking responsibility for anything that goes wrong, a member of the campaign said. A month before the election, polls were deadlocked. To right the ship, DeSantis hired Trumps 2016 Florida campaign chief, Susie Wiles, to run his campaign. Meanwhile, a parade of MAGA royalty campaigned for DeSantis, who defeated Gillum by 30,000 votes. Trump dragged Ron across the finish line, a longtime Trump adviser told me.

The biggest complaint you hear about DeSantis is that he never says thank you.

A rift between the two men opened almost immediately. DeSantis seems to be making the political calculation that, whether Trump runs in 2024 or not, the 76-year-old former president has an expiration date. Trumps list of legal and political liabilities continues to grow. During the week of August 8 alone, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to retrieve hundreds of government documentsmore than 100 highly classifiedTrump allegedly took from the White House; a Manhattan judge ordered Trumps company to stand trial in October for criminal tax fraud; and New York attorney general Letitia James deposed Trump in her long-running investigation into his business practices.

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Three Republicans running in what should be winnable races this year have been all but abandoned by the national GOP, leaving them in limbo with just over a month to go until Novembers midterm elections.

In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastrianos bid for governor is failing to gain traction. In Arizona, Senate nominee Blake Masters has seen funding dry up for his bid to unseat incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly. And in Ohio, J.R. Majewskis challenge to the longest-serving woman in the history of the House of Representatives was hobbled last week after a national Republican campaign group pulled its advertising for him.

To be sure, all three candidates could still win in November. But right now theyre struggling, and their fellow Republicans dont seem keen to help.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., on Sept. 3. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

Doug Mastriano won the May primary for the Republican gubernatorial nomination easily, securing more than 40% of the vote in a crowded field. This came despite an unsuccessful effort by more moderate Republicans to consolidate around an alternative candidate, which was undercut by former President Donald Trumps last-minute endorsement of Mastriano.

A former Army colonel, Mastriano didnt rely on traditional advertising during the primary. Instead, he played to hard-right Pennsylvania Republican voters on social media, and won a following by opposing anti-COVID-19 efforts and supporting Trumps baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

GOP power brokers in the state were trying to stop Mastriano because they felt his views were too extreme for general election voters in Pennsylvania, a key swing state. Mastriano attended the Jan. 6, 2021, rally in Washington, D.C., and has sued the committee investigating the events of that day for wanting to question him. Hes also said that he would put in place new voting restrictions and has called for a complete ban on abortion.

There is also concern that if elected, Mastriano would try to throw out Pennsylvanias election results in 2024 should the state be won by a Democratic presidential candidate.

Story continues

Former President Donald Trump and Mastriano at the rally in Wilkes-Barre. (Mary Altaffer/AP)

The Republican Governors Association has not thrown financial support behind Mastriano, instead focusing on other races. At an event last month, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey the RGA chairman said the group would not fund lost causes.

You have to show us something, you have to demonstrate that you can move numbers and you can raise resources, Ducey added, in remarks recently reported by Axios.

Last week a Mastriano campaign adviser called for supporters to push the RGA to get involved in the race. Appearing in a Facebook livestream, Mastriano noted he was really not finding a lot of support from the national-level Republican organizations. Mastriano has avoided talking to the press, and a Saturday rally in the state capital of Harrisburg was sparsely attended.

The governors race was seen as winnable. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, who is not running again due to term limits, is unpopular. But the Democratic nominee going up against Mastriano, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, has already won two statewide races, emerged unscathed from the gubernatorial primary in which he was the only candidate, and has been a successful fundraiser, giving him a major financial edge.

While Mastriano has been mostly absent from the airwaves, Shapiro started running ads criticizing Mastrianos positions before Mastriano had even won the GOP nomination. Shapiro explained the tactic to Yahoo News in May, saying he felt it was apparent Mastriano would win the nomination and adding, We think theres a clear contrast in this race and we want to make sure were out in front highlighting those differences and getting a jump on the general election.

Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvanias Democratic nominee for governor, at Franklin County Democratic Party headquarters on Sept. 17 in Chambersburg. (Marc Levy/AP)

Jim Wertz, the Democratic Party chairman in Erie County, told Yahoo News that hes had some Republican donors approach him at events asking how they could help Shapiro. Erie is one of the states most important swing counties, with Trump winning it in 2016 while winning the state and Joe Biden doing the same in 2020.

Its a real sign of trouble for the Republican Party that they continue to nominate characters that a sizable portion of the party cant support or defend, Wertz said. That said, we take nothing for granted. There is still a large contingent of election deniers and insurrectionists in the heart of the Republican Party, and we cant ignore their enthusiasm for extremist candidates and how that might affect the outcome of these midterm races.

The Mastriano campaign did not respond to Yahoo News request for comment.

Recent polling on the race has been both sparse and varied: While some surveys show Shapiro with a double-digit lead, others have Mastriano within a few points.

Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters at a rally on July 22 in Prescott, Ariz. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)

Blake Masters won a crowded GOP Senate primary thanks in large part to the financial backing of billionaire Peter Thiel and Trumps endorsement. But since August, the fundraising gap between Masters and his opponent, Democratic incumbent and former astronaut Mark Kelly, has only grown.

Thiel and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell fought over who should be on the hook for backing Masters in the general election. As a result, a super-PAC aligned with McConnell canceled nearly $10 million in booked advertising across television, radio and digital last week. Thiels super-PAC, meanwhile, has bought ads supporting Masters, but Thiel himself has been reluctant to spend more of his personal fortune on the rookie candidate.

As of the most recent filings, Kelly had raised $52 million versus $4 million for Masters.

Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist who has worked closely with Thiel for years, won a contentious primary for the GOP nomination by hewing close to Trump. Masters has promoted the conspiracy theory that Democrats are plotting to win elections by importing immigrants to replace native-born voters; called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot a false flag operation, claiming that one-third of the people outside of the Capitol complex on January 6 were actual FBI agents hanging out; has blamed Black people, frankly for Americas gun violence problem; and has suggested privatizing Social Security.

Masters has been particularly hard-line on abortion, calling for a federal personhood amendment, which would criminalize the procedure nationwide.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in the U.S. Capitol on July 27. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

Last year Masters said support for abortion rights had become demonic and likened the procedure to religious sacrifice. Yet amid waning polls and fundraising numbers, Masters scrubbed his website of extreme language pertaining to reproductive rights last month. Abortion remains a key issue in Arizona, where a judge ruled last week that a near-total ban dating back to an 1864 law should go back into place.

According to a recent New York Times report, Masters was in Washington, D.C., last week at an event with McConnell pressing potential donors, saying, We dont need as much money as Kelly, just enough to get the truth out.

Polling earlier this month showed Kelly with double-digit leads on Masters, but two recent surveys indicated the race has tightened. Both the nonpartisan Cook Political Report and University of Virginia Center for Politics give Kelly the edge and have the race rated as lean Democrat. In their decision to move the race from a toss-up toward Kelly last week, Cook analyst Jessica Taylor wrote that Masters was emblematic of candidates beset by problems and anemic fundraising.

Republican congressional candidate J.R. Majewski at a campaign rally in Youngstown, Ohio, on Sept. 17. (Tom E. Puskar/AP)

Republican groups were fully behind Majewski in his race to defeat Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who represents the Ninth District, which runs along the states northern border with Lake Erie. Kaptur became a top Republican target earlier this year when a redrawn Ohio map made her district significantly more Republican.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy campaigned with Majewski in August, and the political novice spoke at a Trump rally earlier this month. All of this support came despite Majewskis attendance of the Jan. 6 rally and his ties to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

However, last Thursday, multiple outlets reported that the National Republican Congressional Committee had withdrawn a nearly $1 million ad buy. The day before, the Associated Press reported that Majewski had misrepresented his military service. According to military records, he was primarily stationed at an Air Force base in Japan but served a six-month deployment in Qatar loading planes to support the Afghanistan war effort in 2002.

Majewski, right, at the VFW Post 2529 annual corn roast in Sandusky, Ohio, on Aug. 20. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

This is in contrast to the language of his campaign, where he refers to himself as a combat veteran, and a biography published by national Republicans, which refers to him as part of a squadron [that] was one of the first on the ground in Afghanistan after 9/11. The AP also found that Majewski had likely exaggerated his professional experience, unable to find evidence to support his claim that he was an executive in the nuclear power industry.

Majewski has said the AP report is incorrect. At a press conference Friday, he said that his deployments to Afghanistan were classified, he had photos of himself in Afghanistan he might share and he was considering suing the AP over the story.

Let me be clear, Majewski said. Anyone insinuating that I did not serve in Afghanistan is lying. I served in our United States of America, across multiple countries in many roles, but that didnt matter to the liberal media, who wrote a politically motivated hit piece on me.

Kaptur's campaign released a statement saying the appearance left Ohioans with more questions than answers.

His misleading claims need to be addressed, and its incumbent upon him to provide honesty and clarity not continued evasiveness and deflection, said campaign manager Kyle Buda. He has provided no evidence refuting these reports, and Ohioans need to know the truth.

Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, at the VFW corn roast. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images)

Kaptur has also taken pains to separate herself from national Democrats in her newly drawn district that Trump would have won by 3 points if it had been in place in 2020. In August she even released an ad criticizing President Biden for his China policy.

Marcy Kaptur: She doesnt work for Joe Biden; she works for you, the ad says.

Cover thumbnail photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Mary Altaffer/AP, Rick Scuteri/AP, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images

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A thriller on a serial killer who targets critics I had a good laugh when I learnt of the theme of Chup: Revenge of the Artist since it sounded like certain filmmakers fantasy more than a concept for a film. It took me back to an interview in which director Rohit Shetty had told me he views critics as frustrated people and vultures, adding: a few of them are even scared to meet me because they know that the moment I meet them, Im going to thrash them and go to jail for a day. (Source: The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic)

So yeah, the theme is unwittingly funny although it is dead serious. For the record, Chupis not directed by Rohit, but by R. Balki (Shamitabh, Ki & Ka, Padman) who has also written the story. The screenplay and dialogues are by Balki, Raja Sen and Rishi Virmani. And the mystery in the foreground is spun into a tribute to the film icon Guru Dutt whose Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) was famously trashed by critics and rejected by the audience, only to attain a cult status decades afterwards. He never officially directed a film again but is rumoured to have ghost directed the ones he produced in subsequent years, before dying tragically in 1964.

Guru Dutts biography is made-for-cinema material, but that is not what Chupis. The story does, however, feature elements from the filmmakers life, it overtly references his oeuvre, and in its technique and narrative style takes inspiration from the late legend.

A senior Mumbai policeman (Sunny Deol) in Chupis desperately trying to solve a series of gruesome murders of film critics. While he conducts his investigation, in the same city a young journalist called Nila (Shreya Dhanwanthary) dreams of becoming a critic. Nila meets a florist (Dulquer Salmaan), and they are immediately drawn to each other.

In the first half of Chup, Balki succeeds in creating an atmosphere of intrigue, with a blend of a deliberately languorous pace that is a curious contrast to the urgency of the polices task, Vishal Sinhas cinematography that is designed to hark back to the great V.K. Murthys play with light and shadow in Guru Dutts works, and memorable old Hindi film songs including Jaane kya tune kahi. The suspense lasts for a while after the murderers identity is revealed much earlier than you might expect, because the question of why and how next remain.

Despite this, the films grip loosens considerably as it rolls along, due to the weakness of the love saga at the centre of these proceedings. Chupis not constructed as a how/whodunnit or a police procedural, and its impact is heavily dependent on the appeal of Nilas gradually developing bond with her handsome boyfriend whose eccentricities are made known to the viewer early on but not to her. The scenes with them, however, seem more focused on looking and sounding like an old-world screen romance than feeling right. Shreya and Dulquer are both capable of fine acting, but any emotional resonance they might have achieved is overshadowed by the directors preoccupation with ambience and appearance.

The starting point of their affair is off-putting. When she is still no more than his customer, he follows her home, and one day lands up at her house with a bouquet. Instead of getting creeped out and/or terrified by such stalking or at the very least, being wary of him as almost every woman I know would be, she invites him in.

Chupgets other things right. Its critique of criticism is largely on point, taking on financially corrupt reviewers, those who act like astrologers predicting a films box-office fate, and those with insufficient knowledge of cinema, all this without coming across as a condescending lecture and without caricaturing individual critics or lampooning the job. Chupis off the mark though in its portrayal of gender diversity in the profession, depicting the overwhelming majority of Mumbai/Hindi film critics as male, which is not the reality.

In an era when Christians have more or less disappeared from Hindi cinema, Chupgives us a rare protagonist from this religious minority, that too a chap who is shorn of the cringe-worthy stereotypes of pre-1990s Hindi film Christians back when the community was a familiar presence in stories. The late arrival in Chup of a second significant Christian character who is an alcoholic gave me pause, since drunkenness was once part of the stereotype, but the normalised representation of the hero without his religious background being over-emphasised has the effect of turning the other man into just another person with a drinking problem rather than a fellow fitted into the long-prevalent template of Tony The Drunk with the open shirt and massive cross on his chest who would say hum God se bolta and hum pray karenga.

The leading lady is southern Indian and of mixed parentage, another primary players name suggests that she is Parsi, again both are written and acted sans stereotypes.

That said, Pooja Bhatts character has a terribly politically incorrect, fat-shaming explanation for how she arrives at the gender of the murderer, and while I dont know if psychologists would agree with her analysis, the tacky manner in which she conveys the point had me sorely missing the intelligent dialogue writing of the American series Criminal Minds that is focused on serial killings. Poojas Zenobia, who specialises in the study of serial killers, gets some of the films most poorly written lines, and her acting makes them even more awkward.

Sunny Deol is unusually restrained in Chupuntil a Gadar-esque moment that ruins everything for him and is strangely out of character for the policeman he plays, when he screams the word bastard into emptiness and leaps out of a building in anger.

Chupnever fully rises above being interesting in theory. At one point, Nila makes a crucial career decision that should, logically, have had a strong influence on the murderers plans, but surprisingly, despite a build-up, does not. And the revelation about this violent persons motivations are clearly intended to be moving, but I found myself struggling to care.

Even Chups prettiness wears thin early on. V.K. Murthys lighting and cinematography always served to enhance the mood of a film while lending an aura to its characters and luminescence to their faces. Chupachieves the former in its pre-interval portion, but does not have the same visual outcome. And in the end, when Dulquer is called upon to replicate Guru Dutts body language and postures from well-remembered scenes, the effort is strained.

DQ, as the young superstar is known to fans, has made some excellent choices in Malayalam cinema during his decade-long career, with forays into Tamil and Telugu that have stood him in good stead. He is way better than any of the Hindi films he has done. Despite its positives, Chups aspirations to grandeur make it far less engaging than its uncommon theme might suggest. Balkis film fails to grasp the essence of Guru Dutts magic, which was rooted not merely in the beauty of visuals and music, but in the ability to use both to capture the pain, mischief, sense of humour, love and longing of his characters with empathy. In contrast, Chupfeels distant from its characters and uninvolved.

Rating: 2.5 (out of 5 stars)

Chup: Revenge of the Artist is now in theatres

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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Much of the current commentary on North American politics is still couchedtoo much sowithin the old left-right-centre conceptualization of political ideology and parties.

The Biden Democrats in the United States and the Trudeau Liberals in Canada both denounce their principal opponents as right-wing extremists. Conservatives in both countries accuse their federal governments of catering to the left far too often. Political moderates in both counties claim to be representing an ever-shifting, ill-defined centre whose distinguishing feature is that it is neither left nor right. And political pundits of all stripes continue to overuse the terms of left, right, and centre despite their declining relevance.

Canadians, especially younger Canadians, can rightfully question why we insist on discussing 21st-century politics within an 18th-century conceptual framework. Why should we be conceptualizing contemporary politics within a framework derived from the seating arrangement in Frances 18th-century post-revolution assembly, where members of the land-owning aristocracy sat on the right and representatives of the working class and pro-revolutionary forces sat on the left?

Is there a more reasonable and relevant framework for conceptualizing and discussing contemporary North American politics? Yes, there is! And ironically it is a framework suggested by a Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, in his famous book Democracy in America.

Although these words of De Tocqueville were written in 1840, they remain amazingly descriptive of the North American political landscape today:

[T]he secret propensities that govern the factions of America, (are) those two great divisions which have always existed in free communities the object of the one is to limit and that of the other to extend the authority of the people. I affirm thataristocratic or democratic passions may easily be detected at the bottom of all parties, and that, although they escape a superficial observation, they are the main point and soul of every faction in the United States.

And we might add, of every political faction in Canada also.

It is far more relevant today to categorize North American voters as pro-establishment or anti-establishment than it is to categorize them as left, right, or centristto separate the sheep from the goats by asking: Are you in favour of limiting or extending the influence of ordinary people in the political arena?

Today, the aristocratic passion resides politically, not so much in the old aristocracy of the wealthy but in an intellectual aristocracy that considers itself superior to the average voter, denounces bottom-up expression of political opinion at every opportunity, and seeks to limit rather than extend the authority of the people.

At the same time, the democratic passion is finding expression through a new breed of political leadership which draws its support from a growing segment of the electorate who feel increasingly disenfranchised by the political system and the elites who control its commanding heights. These voters resent having their opinions labelled as politically incorrect, their interests ignored or dismissed as illegitimate, and their political actions demeaned as misguided populism.

In Canada, we currently have a prime minister who typifies the modern political aristocrat: inclined to display his imagined intellectual superiority by lecturing the rabble at every opportunity and quite prepared to constrain the authority of the people whenever possible. But now, in the elevation of Pierre Poilievre to the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada, we have an alternative leader arising from humble circumstances and inclined to trust rather than mistrust the rank and file of Canadians. In other words, a leader animated by the democratic rather than the aristocratic passion.

As a Canadian voter considering whom to vote for in the next federal election, which framework best describes your optionsthe old left-right-centre framework or the aristocratic/democratic framework? The champions of the aristocratic framework will of course tell you that expanding the authority of the people is dangerous and leads to extremism. But that charge is best answered in the words of Thomas Jefferson, one of the original framers of the U.S. Constitution, when he was asked near the end of his life where the ultimate political authority of a free society should be vested.

Jefferson replied: I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves. And anticipating the objections of the aristocratic elites, he added: And if we think them (the people) not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Preston Manning served as a member of the Canadian Parliament from 1993 to 2001, and as leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2000. He founded two political parties: the Reform Party of Canada and the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance. Both of these became the Official Opposition in Parliament and led to the creation of the Conservative Party of Canada, which formed the federal government from 2004-2015.

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