http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/alice-walton-is-our-arkansan-of-the-year/Content?oid=2019700 Comments On: Alice Walton is our Arkansan of the Year by Doug Smith en-us Copyright 2013 Arkansas Times. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, Arkansas Times readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact Arkansas Times. robert@arktimes.com (Arkansas Times Webmaster) Sun, 19 May 2013 00:00:01 -0500 Sun, 19 May 2013 22:15:00 -0500 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Posted by towerdog]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2013 05:56:14 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by David Holsted]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:01:41 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by arkansasmediawatch]]> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:54:19 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Tortie_Tude]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:29:23 -0600 Arkansas Times
You want to be Arkansan of the Year, Alice? Do something for the little people...preferably NOT buying them a drink.
Posted by 11 of Me]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:48:51 -0600 Arkansas Times
Still, it's impossible not to observe the state's ceaseless inferiority complex, here so sadly evident in Dr. Gordy's comments.

""All of us who teach Arkansas history know the state was saddled by an image that outsiders gave us. But how can people come to beautiful Northwest Arkansas, and see that magnificent gallery, and go away thinking we're a backwater place."

To Gordy and many others, "outsiders" are responsible for Arkansas's enduring reputation as a bigoted backwater: since its Statehood, in fact. "They" saddled Arkansas with it. Arkansans themselves are blameless innocents. "How" can anybody think Arkansas is "a backwater place?"

Examples of Arkansans' ongoing isolationist provincialism, inferior education, poor economy, racism, homophobia, corruption and religious intolerance are rampant in the news as well as the threads on this blog. ("Love it or leave it" is the idiots' refrain: a simultaneous admission of guilty-as-charged and a belligerent refusal to change or to progress, relative to the rest of the country and the western world, in the 20th and now 21st Centuries.)

One needn't overlook the state's positives -- the exceptions that prove the rule -- to acknowledge those still-general truths that define the place to this day.

Denying facts and blaming "outsiders," as historian Gordy immediately feels compelled to do (and presumably instructs her students since, "All of us know"), perpetuates enabling everything that continues to "saddle" Arkansas with its unfortunate image, nationally and worldwide.

Surely Dr. Gordy isn't naive enough to believe than one Ozark art museum, no matter how valuable and important, will somehow magically renovate Arkansas's negative reputation any more than the impressive achievement that is UAMS has done.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, ""The fault, dear Brutus, is not in outsiders, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."

Meanwhile, one wishes Crystal Bridges every success and hails its existence as a source of lasting inspiration, education and pride.


Posted by Norma Bates]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:25:29 -0600 Arkansas Times Posted by Orville Fulbright]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:16:28 -0600 Arkansas Times
I grew up in LR's Hillcrest and Heights area, my rich friends' parents were like this and now their sons and daughters are repeating the process. Alice seems to fit that mold well.

I can't get passed this or the fact that her billions were made destroying small businesses around the state, only for Walmart to leave the little towns when the money dried up. I would prefer to have Main Street back across our state in place of the Sistine Chapel of the Ozarks.

Alice, you can't buy class.
Posted by Mean Gene]]> Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:36:22 -0600 Arkansas Times