#Arkansas times

[sixbucks]

Trial began today for man who shot the crotch out of Johnny Cash silhouette in Kingsland water tower

Rhett Brinkley

The trial began today in Cleveland County for Timothy Sled, the man charged with two felonies tied to vandalism for shooting a hole through the crotch of the Johnny Cash silhouette on the Kingsland water tower in May of last year, successfully making it appear as if Cash was urinating on his hometown.

Of course, the news went viral, and Kingsland mayor Luke Neal provided one of the standout quotes of 2022.

From KLRT-TV 16’s report last year:

“Somebody shot our water tower, shot the silhouette of Johnny Cash in a very sensitive area,” explained mayor Luke Neal, glancing up at the Man in Black. “It’s been leaking for the last almost week.”

Neal said last year that the leak caused the tower to lose about 30,000 gallons of water a day and warned residents to expect discolored water while the tower was being repaired. He estimated the repair to the tower to cost about $5,000.

“It might seem small in bigger places,” Neal said of the cost, “but for here it’s a pretty large number.”

Officials with the Cleveland County sheriff’s office said Sled is facing a felony charge of criminal mischief and a charge of impairing the operation of a vital public utility.

[arkanistan]

Bloodthirsty Tom Cotton is going to get someone killed

By David Ramsey

There he goes again. Sen. Tom Cotton, our robotic junior senator, overcome once again with teenage bloodlust, continues to call for violence against American citizens.

His blanket depiction of pro-Palestinian campus protestors is a naked lie and grotesque bit of propaganda, but if a leader is going to call for a Kent State redux, the first move is to squeal that the kids on campus are pure evil. Just in case, say, the violent response that Cotton is calling for winds up hurting or killing American citizens for merely protesting.

Cotton is not dumb. He knows what he’s doing.

He has already asked for vigilante violence, urging citizens to go outside the law and violently assault peaceful protesters if they cause an inconvenience. Senator Sicko fantasized about all manner of gore: People should throw protestors off the bridge or worse. “It would probably be pretty painful to have their skin ripped off,” Cotton mused. “But I think that’s probably how we would handle it in Arkansas.” No law enforcement would be necessary to carry out the torture, assault and potential murder, he was quick to clarify. He encouraged people to “take matters into their own hands.”

Cotton himself would not do this, mind you, but he thought maybe he could inspire someone back home to give it a try.

But Cotton’s lust for violence is best served by the authorities. If you really want some death and destruction, you need to send in the cops or the troops.

And there’s no mystery about what can happen if universities send in revved-up police units in riot gear or if state governments start calling up the National Guard.

The protests convulsing American universities generally aren’t violent. Mind you, the crime that Cotton is so mad about is trespassing: In many situations, the students who have set up encampments are violating university rules or state or local laws.

But Cotton, as ever, wants to insert violence where there is peace. We have seen this play out on campuses from Columbia to UCLA already in recent days. The authorities initiate a violent confrontation, carry out thuggish arrests, knock professors down to the ground and provoke physical altercations with those who don’t comply with their orders. Many are arrested and dragged off to jail, only to have the half-baked charges dropped.

Do this enough times, and eventually, something very bad will happen.

College kids aren’t children, but they are our youngest cohort of adults. Cotton wants angry men with guns storming onto campuses to take them down.

Cotton led a press conference Wednesday alongside several other grandstanding GOP senators to sputter his contempt, with the standard canard that protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza are “pro-Hamas.” He called the protesters’ encampments that have sprung up on college campuses across the nation as “disgusting cesspools.” The protestors themselves — young Americans expressing their opinion in a democracy! — are “fanatics and freaks.” They are “lunatics.”

The dehumanizing language, while certainly natural to Cotton, has a strategic edge. If you can depict people as fanatics and freaks, the hope is that others will lose sympathy for them as fellow human beings. They are the dangerous “other.”

Cotton wants to grease the wheels: It is OK to wage war on these kids, he’s implying. They’re just a bunch of freaks. If something really goes wrong, and someone gets seriously hurt or killed — well, that life was not a valued life. Just a lunatic.

In a kind of reversal of Christian ethics, Cotton has a quasi-Pagan belief that virtue is earned via crushing the weak. Violence is his God. You can see it running throughout his career: His zeal in wooing hardliners in Iran to try to kill the Obama nuclear deal; his call for the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza; his unreconstructed neocon support for George W. Bush-era misadventures in the Middle East; his frequent cheerleading for U.S. military action against Iran; his truly unhinged call for federal troops to be sent in and commit war crimes against Black Lives Matter protestors.

He is the kind of history buff who skips around to the gory bits. For him, the slaughter taking place in Gaza is not enough. You shudder to think what would happen if he ever had access to the nuclear button.

Cotton, perhaps trying to overcompensate for his leaden and soporific speaking style, keeps coming up with ever more bombastic ways to broadcast his violent urges. This is mostly because he’s hungry for attention. But there’s an even more depraved element to the behavior of Cotton and the other lawmakers at Wednesday’s press conference. This is an election year, and they’re making a political calculation. Cotton thinks that spasms of violence at otherwise peaceful protests will benefit the Republican Party. The longer that campus protests stubbornly remain peaceful, the more Cotton wants to change the dynamic by initiating a violent response.

Here is where you might say that if something like that happens, Cotton would have blood on his hands. But that’s the sickest part of all: Cotton seems to genuinely want all the blood he can get.

[gchoate17]

The Arkansas Times asked me to write about the top ten meals I ate in the state this year. This is always one of my favorite writing assignments. I'll post my overall -- and most disappointing -- lists soon.

[statementlou]

the thing about Niall's current tour looks is that he looks Like That (coded hanky and all) because Bruce Springsteen looked like that but the thing about Bruce Springsteen looking like that is that he hung out in seedy gay bars and fucked drag queens and picked up his fashion there and I'm... not sure Niall knows that that's why Bruce wore leather vests and back pocket hankies...

[nubimera]

However I just want to say that it isn't talked about enough that "I Know Those Eyes/This Man Is Dead" from the musical The Count of Monte Cristo is the perfect song for Jason

[andoutofharm]

apparently i am a homing beacon for fob fans in tiny oklahoma towns and i think that’s beautiful

[sweaterkittensahoy]

While keeping to my general "Fuck historical accuracy" rule for this rosielemmons, I am actually from Arkansas and knew the state paper of record (The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) was previously two different papers, so I wanted to know which one was more likely to be read by Ken Lemmons.

Which led to this wikipedia line:

The Gazette and the Democrat exchanged words that soon escalated into an exchange of gunfire between the owner of the Democrat and a part-owner of the Gazette.

Because of fucking course it did. Rednecks are gonna redneck.

[mastersoftheair]

part of raff law's interview with GQ magazine. you read the rest of the interview here

[sixbucks]

Today in Sarah’s Shit

Social media is all atwitter this weekend after the unceremonious Friday afternoon heave-ho of a newly appointed but already quite popular head of the Arkansas Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism.

A June 2 press release from the governor’s office gave no clues as to why Mike Mills was out less than six months after he took on the job.

Some are speculating that the Department of Parks, Heritage and Tourism might soon be under the bold, conservative leadership of the first gent. Bryan Sanders already chairs the Natural State Advisory Council, a new effort created by the governor in January to promote outdoor recreation and the outdoor economy. And politics is the family business, after all.

[arkanistan]

I hate it when the Arkansas fuckery hits the nation news.

(Sorry for the odd format/spacing. I don’t want anybody miss this story because of some petty paywall at (Arkansas Times.)

Appalling details revealed in lawsuit over the death of a mentally ill Arkansas inmate

Austin Bailey

NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE

Starved to Death in an American Jail, the Man Who Couldn't Pay $100 Bail

A lawsuit filed Friday recounts the haunting details of the death of Larry Price Jr., a mentally ill Fort Smith man who wasted away in his prison cell after being held in solitary confinement for more than a year because he couldn’t make his $100 bail.

The complaint is gruesome and horrific. During the year leading up to his death, the 6’2 Price ate his own feces and drank his own urine and acted in other ways that made clear he was spiraling and in grave need of mental health care. But Price remained in the jail, where he dropped from 185 pounds to just 90 pounds over 12 months and was ultimately found unresponsive on the jail floor in a pool of toilet water and urine.

You can read the entire 29-page filing here, but be warned. It includes photos of Price after his death.

Known to Fort Smith Police because his sometimes erratic behavior connected to his mental illness, Price was arrested in August of 2020 for pointing finger guns at Fort Smith police. He was charged with terroristic threatening and jailed for lack of $100 to pay his bond, according to court filings. He languished in solitary confinement in the Sebastian County jail for just over a year before he died a most gruesome death, per the complaint filed by a Seattle attorney for Price’s family Friday.

Because he was jailed during the height of pandemic lockdown precautions, Price’s family could not visit him and was unaware of his deterioration, the filing says.

Erik Ferkenhoff at Newsweek has an exhaustive story on the case, and there’s no paywall, so brace yourselves and go read it. But be warned, there are lots of photos.

Sebastian County is named as a defendant, along with Turn Key Health Clinics, a for-profit company contracted to provide medical services to inmates. The company is based in Oklahoma, but has multiple contracts for Arkansas jails, including in Benton and Pope counties.

[gchoate17]

People are loving my Top 10 Arkansas Meals this year. LOVING IT. Go read it here.

[theflyfishingartist]

You meet the best people on the water! Colorado! Tight Lines!!

[thelastspeecher]

btw I've decided that the tornado that takes Ford away in Storm Chasers AU is the F5 Guin, Alabama tornado from the 1974 Super Outbreak.

how does he wind up in Gravity Falls if he was taken by a tornado in Alabama? well, on the Discord we decided to relocate Gravity Falls to Arkansas, which is, of course, closer. and I'll just say that like, idk, some updrafts or something carried him the rest of the way after the tornado dissipated.

supernatural updrafts.

[princehatterene]

foobaw tomorrow :]

[frogayyyy]

my brain nonstop for the last three days: DONT TELL MY HEART MY ACHY BREAKY HEART I JUST DONT THINK ITD UNDERSTAND

[andoutofharm]

i love when people who know what's coming go to fob shows with people who don't