Worst swap
In November, the voters of Arkansas’s Second Congressional District gave the seat previously occupied by the reliably liberal and courageous U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder to Republican Tim Griffin, a former aide to Karl Rove who has spent the last 10 years up to his eyeballs in Republican dirty tricks, including vote suppression in Florida and the Bush administration’s politically-motivated firings of several U.S. Attorneys (including former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas H.E. “Bud” Cummins, who was forced out so Griffin could have his job).
Worst cold
Single-digit temps three days running at the end of the year’s first week, with sub-zero lows over much of north Arkansas. Another big winter storm numbed northern two-thirds of the state at the end of January. February was one long icicle.
Worst lazy
Arkansas was ranked the third laziest state (behind only Louisiana and Mississippi) in a Business Week magazine survey of sedentary lifestyles published in July.
Best unfriending
In May, an Arkadelphia mother was convicted of misdemeanor harassment and ordered to pay a $435 fine and attend parenting classes after she was convicted of hacking her 16-year-old son’s Facebook account and changing his password.
Worst day for wearing a badge
In the middle of May, two West Memphis police officers were killed after pulling over a pair of anti-government extremists on Interstate 40 near that city. Later, it turned into a full-on firefight in a Wal-Mart parking lot, with the suspect and his son firing on police with an AK-47 assault rifle from their van. Before it was over, two more cops were wounded, several cars were turned to Swiss cheese and the two men in the van were killed.
Worst dry
By Oct. 18, Central Arkansas’s weeks-long dry spell finally got so bad that a large pile of driftwood that had collected against Murray lock and dam in the middle of the Arkansas River caught fire, blistering paint but not damaging the steel and concrete dam.
Best private
The obituary in January for Jim Cobb of Little Rock began by noting his death, and then it said: “Jim Cobb was a very private person. The only way this obituary could be published would be over his dead body.”
14 DECEMBER 30, 2010 • ARKANSAS TIMES
Best private (runnerup)
A Conway man won the state lottery’s first big Powerball jackpot in January. After taxes, he took home less than half the $25 million payout. The man shunned all publicity, and disconnected his phone — and a nosy reporter who ventured onto his property seeking an interview was chased off with a gun.
Best (or at least Supreme) Wallyism
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette sports columnist Wally Hall wrote in June that the expansion of the SEC into the Big 12 “seems not only probable, but likely.”
Worst caviar
Worst carpool
In September, a teen-age worker at the North Little Rock YMCA put 17 students just dismissed from Indian Hills Elementary in the bed of a single pickup truck and hauled them back to her place of employment, which almost instantly became her former place of employment.
Worst April showers
Tornadoes ripped through Arkansas on the last day of April and then again on May Day, killing one person and all but leveling the small town of Scotland.
Worst hate
A Heber Springs man and his brother-in-law brought home a long-nosed gar filled with roe from a spearfishing trip to Greers Ferry Lake in April, and decided to turn the fish eggs into caviar, which you can do with some species of Arkansas fresh-water fish, but not gar. Gar roe are toxic, which the family of four found out the hard way a few hours after feasting on these. A tough night and the day following but they all survived.
Clint McCance, a school board member at tiny Midland School District in Pleasant Plains, caused national outrage in October after he ranted on his Facebook page about his hatred for gays and lesbians, saying — among other things — that he would be happy if all homosexuals committed suicide. He eventually apologized and resigned.
Best irony
In the middle of the uproar over McCance’s remarks, George Takei — the openly-gay actor best known for portraying U.S.S. Enterprise helmsman Mr. Sulu on the original “Star Trek” — weighed in via Youtube video, saying: “Mr. McCance, you are a douchebag. That’s right. A douchebag. ... You apologized for your poor choice of words, but you are always going to be a douchebag.”
The paterfamilias in the gar egg eating story was Darwin Aaron, whose first name must have given ol’ Mr. Survival of the Fittest quite a chuckle up there in heaven.
Worst school spirit
A reporter for a local sports radio station was fired in August after University of Arkansas officials complained to her employer that she had worn a Florida Gators cap to a press conference following a Razorback football scrimmage, drawing the ire of Coach Bobby Petrino. The incident brought out the nuts, with the young woman reportedly receiving several death threats.
Best nuking from orbit
Best new holiday
Wormageddon, on March 21. (So-named because of the mysterious appearance above-ground of earthworms all over Central Arkansas.)