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How co-writing a book threatened the Carters’ marriageAP Sports SummaryBrief at 9:24 p.m. ESTOutrage after Target fires woman over 'dress code issue' By RACHEL BOWMAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM Published: 20:56, 23 November 2024 | Updated: 21:24, 23 November 2024 e-mail View comments A North Dakota Target is facing backlash for firing a woman who wrote 'Trust in Jesus' on her name tag. Denise Kendrick, an employee of the store in Fargo, said she was fired on November 16 over a dress code issue. She put 'Trust in Jesus' and a drawing of a cross on her name tag for that shift, but was approached by a manager who told her she could not wear it, according to KVLY . 'I replied, "Well, I've seen people with rainbows on theirs. I'm going to continue to wear this name tag," and then they said, "Well, you can't work here anymore,"' Kendrick said. She said she asked for a reason why she was fired, but was only give a list of information about the dress code policy . 'I said, "Can I get it in writing why you're firing me?" and they refused to do that,' said Kendrick 'They gave me this paper with all these phone numbers on it and said, "If you have any questions about the violation of the dress code, just call one of these numbers." And he just kept repeating it, and we just kept going back and forth, and it was going nowhere.' Kendrick said she was wearing a plain long sleeve red sweatshirt and jeans when she was fore. She said she had been wearing other religious apparel for months and never had an issue. Denise Kendrick (pictured), an employee of the store in Fargo, said she was fired on November 16 over a dress code issue She put 'Trust in Jesus' and a drawing of a cross on her name tag for that shift 'I had no problems with anyone approaching me with my Christian shirts,' said Kendrick. According to Target's policy, 'Target is an equal opportunity employer that prohibits discrimination and will make decisions regarding employment opportunities, including hiring, promotion, and advancement, without regard to the following characteristics: race, color, national origin, religious beliefs.' Outrage social media users called Kendrick's firing discrimination and said it was hypocritical to allow some people to write on their name tags but not her. 'I don't shop at Target! I hope that lady sues Target for wrongful termination! I am so sick of the intolerant left! They are all so wretched,' one Reddit user said. 'I'm done with target too expensive and their quality is not any better. I'm sick of their left policies. If they're gonna allow people to put rainbows and pronouns they have no reason not to allow her to put that,' said a another. 'How about a simple "you only wear the approved uniform and nothing else" policy. No "flair" or other garbage, just the corporate stuff required,' a third person said. 'Suddenly all of the problems go away. But of course the lefty "feelies" crowd won't be able to virtue signal if that happens.' Another person said, 'You'd think Target would allow their employees to express themselves. At least that's what they are giving off, but apparently not.' Kendrick said a manager approached her and told her she could not wear her name tag and then fired her Following her interview with the local news station, a Target spokesperson released a statement rehiring Kendrick Following her interview with the local news station, a Target spokesperson released a statement rehiring Kendrick. 'Upon learning of the situation, we conducted a review and determined that the team member should not have been terminated. We apologized to her and offered to reinstate her immediately,' the spokesperson said. 'We are taking the appropriate steps to address the actions taken by the individual leader involved in this situation and are working with the store to ensure our policies are appropriately followed moving forward.' Kendrick said on Facebook, 'My job has been reinstated, and yes I will continue to wear "Trust in Jesus" on my name tag.' Reddit North Dakota Share or comment on this article: Outrage after Target fires woman over 'dress code issue' e-mail Add comment
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In mere months – March, to be exact – cult comedian Kate Berlant will complete her first-ever trip to Australia to perform. What she’ll perform when she gets here, though, she’s not yet sure. At this stage, she doesn’t even have the title. “What is the show?” Berlant deadpans, looking skyward as though contemplating a philosophical quandary she has no literal answer to. “That’s a really good question ... I mean, it’s just standup. I’m really just going to be doing standup.” Anyone familiar with Berlant’s comedy – her taped special , for example; or her decade-long partnership with outlandish foil John Early (including their sketch special ); even her podcast (a play on GOOP) with fellow comedian Jacqueline Novak, and its spin-off – would understand that “just standup” is a loaded concept with Berlant. Although well-recognised from her acting work – she’s starred in films including , and , and on TV in , and – her cerebral comedy, an act of onstage pomposity that folds the form in on itself with absurdist, and delightfully silly, abandon (“intellectual vaudeville”, a critic once branded it), has made Berlant a beatified icon of alt-comedy. If the fact she hasn’t got her new show sorted four months out from her booked dates fills you with secondhand anxiety, fear not: this is how Berlant works, working bits out on stage with the improvisational acuity of a surgeon. Since February, she’s been regularly taking the stage at Largo’s in Los Angeles, her hometown club, to riff on “themes of contemporary alienation”, with the goal of putting together a new hour. “Relying so much on improvisation is terrifying and oftentimes I’ve been doing standup and thought, wow, it would be so nice to just know what you’re gonna say every night,” says Berlant of her process. “But so much of standup is about hiding the work, hiding the fact that you’ve said this thing a million times, and I’ve always struggled with that because it’s just hard to keep up that performance in a way that feels authentic.” It’s a dry autumn afternoon in Los Angeles when we speak over Zoom, and the twilight sun splashes through Berlant’s bedroom window (not to mention her incredible curls) like Cheezel dust. She’s spent the day dealing with a sudden and, at 37, completely unexpected allergic reaction to tomatoes and nightshade. “If I sound a little weird it’s because my mouth is inflamed,” she offers apologetically. And yet, she’s eager to discuss her return to standup because for the past couple of years she’s been focused entirely on her play, . Berlant ended in February after a string of sold-out runs across New York, Los Angeles and London. A one-woman show about a flailing actor’s desperate bid to be taken seriously, the conceit went deep. Shows reportedly featured Berlant herself mingling in crowded foyers before doors opened, holding a sign saying “Ignore me”. It premiered off-Broadway in September 2022, and earned rave reviews for its metatextual skewering of artistic self-indulgence. labelled it the “one-woman show to end all one-woman shows”. Berlant says it was her biggest success yet. Which begs the question: why did she end it? Why is she not just bringing to Australia? “Again, a really good question,” Berlant jokes. “It’s not that I’ll never do it again, but I do think it’s healthy to step away from things. I think things ripen and they absolutely rot. It just felt to me like it was time to do something else, just for my own brain.” She very well could have kept going, Berlant concedes. But her hope is that, as the show operates in a separate universe to her standup, she can revive it a year from now, or two years from now, or even five years from now, and the material will organically grow with her. In the meantime, she’s been in discussions with her director, Bo Burnham, to potentially film and release it. “But that’s something for down the line. Because the show is extremely meta, it’s not just a show you throw a camera in front of,” says Berlant. “I just wanted to step away from it for a second and get back to what I really love doing the most, which is standup.” When I speak to Berlant, it’s the week after Donald Trump’s crushing win in the US election – a desolate new landscape in America made real. “It’s scary, it’s dark, it’s intensely depressing, and kind of just surreal. It’s such a bizarre time to be alive,” Berlant says, staring into the camera, eyes like saucers to underscore the understatement. “It’s a really bizarre, rather depressing time.” Is that mood already affecting her new standup? “I’m reacting to it maybe in, like, a subtextual way, but not directly,” says Berlant. “No, certainly the show I’ll be doing will not be about me wrestling with, like, how to live in America under Trump. Like, I would sooner die.” It’s for the best. Because if there’s a through line to Berlant’s work, it’s that her performances have always been about the act of performing. Onstage, whether in a scripted play or in a standup set, she’s Kate, but she’s also “Kate”. The persona she’s made her own is of the self-serious artist desperate for attention, for fame, to be noticed as special. A piss take of the narcissism inherent in showbiz, it’s also a well-wrought personification of today’s wider condition, where social media has given everyone main character syndrome. “It just turns out that way with everything I do. My comedy is often about comedy and my performance is usually about performance, and so inevitably with my standup it’s hard for me to ignore how bizarre standup is when I’m doing standup, and it’s hard for me to not kind of call out how inherently strange the dynamic is and how strange it is as a form,” says Berlant. “The idea of a person standing there and just talking about what’s on their mind, it denies that standup is such a highly constructed persona and performance, down to the shoes you wear. I’ve always looked at the conditions of performance as being really bizarre and also funny. And also just the fact that performance is, of course, a naked plea for attention and adoration. I can’t pretend that that’s not what’s going on in the room, you know?” The focus on performance is never far from Berlant; she’s been thinking about it forever (she even has degrees in the cultural anthropology of comedy and performance studies from New York University). A child actor, she scored her first onscreen gig at 15, playing Student #2 in an episode of , and believed it would set her on a path to screen stardom (it didn’t). There was enough self-awareness in her failure to fuel another mode of expression: when she started doing comedy at 17, she quickly found that her standup landed on a self-referential conceit. “I would end up kind of talking about standup in the standup. Which sounds awful,” Berlant laughs. “But, I mean, just talking about the encounter between performer and audience, and how performing is inherently embarrassing and, I would say, something to be avoided if you can.” She’d experienced something similar to that indescribable ick in her upbringing, too, as the only child of two artists – her father Tony Berlant is a prominent US sculptor; her mother Helen Mendez performed in experimental theatre before becoming a set designer. In an episode of Netflix’s , she portrayed an insufferable Marina Abramović type, lampooning the pretentious art world egos she’d witnessed growing up. “The self-importance of the art world, like the self-importance of Hollywood, there’s almost nothing to comment on because it’s so in plain sight,” Berlant says. “From an early age, I think I was aware of performance as not just being something people do on stage, but just as a child watching adults perform: perform being smart, perform being interesting, perform the performance of being an artist. “I mean, if you call yourself an ‘artist’ ...” she glances into the camera with an stare. “That’s quite a part to play.” Is she never not aware of the performance? Like, even in this interview: me, playing the role of the politely probing interviewer, trying to dig at some defining childhood trauma; she, the subject, playing at being revealing, as if she’s never considered these stories before. “Yeah, it’s hard to separate, I think I’m always aware of it,” says Berlant. “But what I really find funny are people who don’t know that we can see them performing. We live in a world now where everyone’s a performer, even people who aren’t performers are used to performing for social media. So there’s been a huge breakdown in those terms and in their definitions.” Complicating Berlant’s obsession with the artifice of authenticity in comedy and theatre is a sincere love of live performance. In a world where standup careers can thrive exclusively through crowd-work clips on TikTok, she still craves the sacredness of the club. “When I started standup, the only way to get good or build a career was to perform, do shows, as many shows as you could do. Even just, like, spiritually, I feel so lucky that was how I came up,” she says. “So I do think that in today’s world, it’s still very exciting when people show up physically to see a show. I think that’s something that will persist, but it is feeling more and more rarefied and less valued.” It’s why Berlant is excited for the set she’ll be bringing to Australia, whatever shape it ends up taking. After her journey with , a return to the spontaneous possibilities of her standup has been calling. “There’s something that feels good about just being like, okay, this is where I am right now in my life, this is how I’m reacting to it, and not being too precious about it or spending years crafting it. I think that’s what makes it feel alive, for me and the audience.”
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Sam Darnold added another exploit to his career-altering season, passing for a personal-best 377 yards and three touchdowns as the Minnesota Vikings hung on to beat the Green Bay Packers 27-25 on Sunday for their ninth consecutive victory that put them one win from the NFC's top seed for the playoffs. Darnold hit Jalen Nailor, Jordan Addison and Cam Akers for scores to raise his passing touchdown total to 35, the fourth-most in NFL history by a player in his debut season with a team. The Vikings (14-2) set up a final-week showdown in Detroit for both the NFC North title and the first-round-bye-plus-home-field-advantage package that comes with the best record in the conference. Jordan Love’s only touchdown pass for the Packers (11-5) came with 2:18 left, a 3-yard toss to Malik Heath that trimmed their deficit to two points and reignited the “Go Pack Go!” chants from the green-clad fans mixed in among the purple in another classic edition of this divisional rivalry. Despite another fierce climb out of a gaping hole against Minnesota this season, following a 31-29 loss in Green Bay on Sept. 29 that started with a 28-0 deficit, the Packers fell to a troubling 0-5 against the top three teams in the NFC. They were swept by the Lions, too, and lost the opener in Brazil to the Eagles. Darnold ran bootlegs for completions that gave the Vikings two vital first downs, a crisp one to fullback C.J. Ham and a low toss on third-and-2 that Akers snagged before it hit the turf to force the Packers to use their final timeout. Darnold went 33 for 43 with one interception as the Vikings ran 70 plays for 441 yards, their second-highest total of the season. Well-protected all afternoon, Darnold took full advantage of the tight early coverage on superstar Justin Jefferson and went to Nailor and tight end T.J. Hockenson often. Nailor was wide open on a corner route in the back of the end zone for a 31-yard connection in the second quarter that jump-started the offense. Josh Jacobs and Emanuel Wilson rushed for second-half touchdowns to fuel the late surge by the Packers after Will Reichard's second missed field goal of the game for the Vikings with 9:18 remaining prevented them from pushing the lead to 20. Darnold passed Brett Favre (33, Vikings, 2009) and Vinny Testaverde (33, Ravens, 1996) for fourth place in touchdown passes in a debut season. The third overall pick in the 2018 draft by the Jets trails only Matthew Stafford (41, Rams, 2021), Tom Brady (40, Buccaneers, 2020) and Peyton Manning (37, Broncos, 2012). Stafford and Brady won the Super Bowl those years. Manning is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Packers: WR Christian Watson (knee) was inactive. LB Quay Walker (ankle) missed his second straight game and CB Jaire Alexander (knee) was sidelined for the sixth consecutive game and the ninth time this season. ... Two backups, FS Zayne Anderson and DE Brenton Cox, entered the concussion protocol during the game and did not return. Vikings: OLB Patrick Jones (knee) limped off after Packers TE Tucker Kraft delivered a low, diving block that drew loud boos after the replay was shown on the video board but no penalty. The Packers host Chicago to finish the regular season next weekend, when the Vikings visit Detroit. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFLAlector Announces Results from AL002 INVOKE-2 Phase 2 Trial in Individuals with Early Alzheimer's Disease and Provides Business Update