Texas senator says Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke licenses amid Jimmy Kimmel suspension ‘right out of Goodfellas’

Senator Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, compared Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr’s threats to revoke the broadcast licenses of ABC stations over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s commentary to “mafioso” tactics similar to those in Goodfellas, the 1990 mobster movie.

“Look, Jimmy Kimmel has been canned. He has been suspended indefinitely. I think that it a fantastic thing,” Cruz said at the start of the latest episode of his podcast Verdict with Ted Cruz. There were, however “first amendment implications” of the FCC’s role, the senator, a Harvard Law School graduate who clerked for US supreme court chief justice William Rehnquist, added.

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Harold Pinter theatre, London
Almost 30 years on, the Irish playwright’s intimate drama brims with painful memories and comedy – brought to dazzling effect by a flawless cast

Conor McPherson’s rural Irish bar-room drama seeps into your bones. Almost 30 years since its first production, I can still recall the chill that came across Rae Smith’s snug set, hear the humorous sneer in the line “the Harp drinkers” and sense the despair beneath the banter.

McPherson’s aptitude for atmosphere was later deployed in his Bob Dylan musical Girl from the North Country , set during the Great Depression, and will be tested when he evokes the dystopian Panem for an immersive version of The Hunger Games . But first here is The Weir, back for another round, designed again by Smith and this time directed by McPherson in a revival of such exactness it appears effortless.

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Since July, the state of Oklahoma has been consumed by important investigative questions, including:

• Why did naked women appear on a state-owned TV set during an official Board of Education meeting? Was someone in the room inadvertently streaming pornography from a personal device to the TV? Will anyone be prosecuted for what happened?
• Were the board members who complained about the video directed by the governor to "lie about me," as the state's pugnacious, hard-right Superintendent of Education asked?
• Why was a "chiropractic table" involved in the scene? And why did the video feature, as one board member noted, a retro vibe and "a guy with a white hat, kind of a Gilligan-type hat"?

We now have answers to all of those questions.

After a lengthy investigation by the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office and the State Bureau of Investigation, and then a lengthy consideration of their reports, the Oklahoma County District Attorney this week announced that "there is insufficient evidence to file criminal charges."

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The Belfast rap trio said they would be taking legal action against the ‘deeply malicious’ allegations

The Canadian government has banned rap trio Kneecap from entering the country over allegedly “glorifying terrorist organisations” – with the band announcing they will take legal action against the “wholly untrue and deeply malicious” accusations.

The Belfast group, made up of Naoise Ó Cairealláin, Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh and JJ Ó Dochartaigh, are known for their provocative lyrics and merchandise, as well as their pro-Palestine stance .

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Singer cancels shows in Connecticut and Massachusetts out of ‘abundance of caution’, days after threat also issued in Ottawa

Morrissey has cancelled two shows in the US over a “credible threat on his life”, according to his official Facebook page.

The former Smiths singer, 66, was due to appear at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut, on Friday night, and at MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston, Massachusetts, on Saturday.

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We would like to hear from people who are involved in a UK volunteer-run film society

On any given night, film societies up and down the country screen everything from new releases to arthouse and foreign language films at community cinemas.

Some are shown in village halls, others may be in a room above a pub.

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Theatre schools are in crisis. More must be done to nurture young talent like Owen Cooper across the country

As well as the urgent social problems raised by Adolescence – online misogyny and radicalisation – the show’s phenomenal success has drawn attention to a growing cultural issue: the importance of grassroots drama schools and clubs, and working-class representation on TV.

Last Sunday, 15-year-old Owen Cooper became the youngest male actor to win an Emmy, for his performance as the teenage murder suspect Jamie Miller. Amid the celebrations, the founders of Drama MOB in Manchester, where Cooper attended weekly classes for two years, rightly pointed out the crucial part this training played in landing him the role, an impact the young actor acknowledged in his acceptance speech .

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here .

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The choreographer has paired the tragedies of Oedipus Rex and Antigone in a monumental double bill, Jocasta’s Line, which refuses to spoon-feed audiences

When Stravinsky composed Oedipus Rex in 1927, Jean Cocteau wrote a French libretto based on Sophocles’s tragedy, which was then translated into Latin, a language Stravinsky called “not dead but turned to stone”. It was to be mere syllables to sing notes to, immune to “vulgarisation” as he put it – a way to tell a tragedy without too much pesky drama getting in the way.

In choreographer Wayne McGregor’s production of Oedipus Rex, paired with a new ballet based on the myth of Antigone and premiered by the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, there is drama, but it is of the stark, unsentimental kind. The double bill is entitled Jocasta’s Line, as Jocasta, queen of Thebes, sees her husband/son (spoiler, they’re the same person!) and daughter meet tragic ends. It is visually striking and exciting in scale – the first half austere, the second softer – and pristinely danced, but still with a sense of distance, as of the gods from mere mortals.

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Readers respond to Jonathan Jones’s view that the chain of galleries is losing its identity as more dynamic rivals flourish

The analysis by Jonathan Jones of what’s gone wrong at Tate was spot-on ( Shrinking audiences, a cash crisis and rivals on the rise: what’s gone wrong at Tate?, 12 September ). All the truly memorable exhibitions we have seen this year were in the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, the Wallace Collection and the Royal Academy. Frankly, the Tates have not had a single show that excited us since Peter Doig (2008), Lynette Yiadom‑Boakye (2020), Frida Kahlo (2005), and Richard Deacon and El Anatsui in 2016.

The universally loved, wondrous art of painting is eschewed in favour of performance nonsense, boring videos and hideous installations.
Ann Eastman
London

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