Arkansas Times - January 25, 2018

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The story follows Emily Doe, the victim of the January 17-18th sexual assault case of 2015 at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. The story shows the trauma, fear, and blame one faces after being the victim of sexual assault. With an ensemble of her peers telling the story, Emily must relive her experience one last time in hopes of shedding light on American rape culture and how our society blames victims and normalizes sexual violence.

A spectacle I

f the recent brief government shutdown accomplished nothing else, it sent President Trump into hiding for three days, no small blessing. Somebody convinced him that golfing in Florida would look bad, and his minders didn’t trust him to do any AN ORIGINAL PLAY WRITTEN BY HSU STUDENT, MAGGIE-LEE PRESTON actual negotiating, so the president holed up in the White House watching TV and yakking on the phone. Incidentally, can’t Melania do something about his low-rent habit of wearing a hat in the house? Assuming that she’s RECOMMENDED FOR even talking to the big dope in the wake MATURE AUDIENCES of this porn star business in The Wall Hosted by CALS Ron Robinson Street Journal. Theater & Arkansas Coalition Anyway, if I want to see a countAgainst Sexual Assault down clock in the corner of the screen, I’ll watch a ballgame. The TV news 100 RIVER MARKET AVENUE LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS 72201 networks’ turning congressional politics into ratings-building melodrama, SATURDAY, JANUARY 27, 2018 complete with good guys, bad guys and 7:00PM-9:00PM manufactured suspense, definitely ain’t helping. It rewards dogmatism over THEATER: (501) 320-5715 ACASA: (501) 246-3276 pragmatism, reducing complex issues to a simple game with clear-cut winners and losers. That’s what the NFL playoffs are for. But it’s basically the opposite of what the Founders intended the U.S. Senate to be. Sure, Election Day can be exciting, but the shutdown drama was just bad TV. Cable news channels devoted last weekend to showing politicians milling about in Senate chambers waiting for something to happen. Evidently nothing of interest was taking place anywhere else in the world. Observing the spectacle, it easy to agree with Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana): “Our country was founded by geniuses, but it’s being run by idiots,” he said. Kennedy probably didn’t mean to say that the head idiots are named Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. But the GOP does control Annual Open House Now accepting the White House and both houses of Now accepting Sunday, January 28, 2007 applications for Congress. And it’s important to underapplications for the the 2007-08 stand how those worthies connived to 2010-11 school year. Freshman Entrance Exam school year. Now accepting applications for the February 10, tempt Saturday, 2007Democrats into picking a fight they couldn’t possibly win — pretty 2014-15 school year. much as the party’s embittered leftAnnual Freshman Entrance Exam AnnualOpen OpenHouse House Freshmen Entrance Exam CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL wing now insists minority leader Sen. Sunday, January 26, 2014 Saturday, February 8, 2014 Sunday, January 28, 2018 Saturday, February 3, 2018 FOR BOYS Chuck Schumer of New York should 12:30 - 2:30 12:30 - 2:30 6300 Father Tribou Street have done. Little Rock, Arkansas 72205 New York Times columnist Michele Website Goldberg led the charge. “ ‘Make no misCATHOLIC HIGH501-664-3939 SCHOOL www.lrchs.org take: Schumer and Dems caved,’ tweeted FOR BOYS lrchs.org Fox News’ Brit Hume. ‘What a political 6300 Father Tribou Street fiasco.’ It makes me sick to say it,” GoldLittle Rock, Arkansas 72205 berg wrote, “but he’s right.” 501-664-3939 Goldberg also quoted one Ezra Levin,

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identified as the co-founder of a leftwing advocacy group modeled on the Tea Party. “It’s Senator Schumer’s job as minority leader to keep his caucus together and stand up for progressive values and he failed to do it,” Levin said. “He led them off a cliff. They caved.” But probably because I spend more time watching ballgames than MSNBC, I tend to see things differently. See, there’s no such thing as a six-run home run. You can’t throw a GENE Hail Mary pass for LYONS a 21-point touchdown. Poker players understand that when you’re holding a pair of sixes, it’s time to fold and play another hand. Which is basically what Schumer did. Did shutting down the U.S. government in 1995 help Newt Gingrich prevail in a budget struggle against President Clinton? It did not, and it led to Clinton’s easy re-election. Did Republicans’ shutting down the government in 2013 lead President Obama to ditch the Affordable Care Act? No. What’s more, for all its huffing and puffing, the GOP still hasn’t been able to kill the law. Schumer simply didn’t have the votes to make anything happen. Meanwhile, the top trending hashtag pushed by Russian bots on Twitter was “#SchumerShutdown.” Trump’s Kremlin supporters, see, have a strong interest in promoting ethnic and racial discord in the U.S. They hope to use the DACA, or “Dreamers,” issue to divide and weaken the country. So do hardline anti-immigrant Republicans, such as White House aide Stephen Miller and a minority of GOP hotheads in the House. But they haven’t got the votes either. Not even close. Indeed, even the most recent Fox News poll shows 83 percent of Americans support granting permanent resident status to the “Dreamers” — young workers, students and soldiers — brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents as small children. Would even Trump be willing to start deporting these young Americans to countries they’ve never known? It’s hard to imagine. Indeed, compromise DACA legislation passed the Senate in 2013, and will almost surely pass again unless Senate Majority Leader McConnell goes back on his word in the glare of the spotlight Schumer’s compromise has put him in.


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