Ep. 96: The Arkansaw Image

Bear Grease

MeatEater

Wilderness, Sports

4.8 • 7.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2023

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What do you think of when you hear the state, Arkansas? This is Clay Newcomb’s beloved homeland, and on this episode he dives deep into the long-standing national image of Arkansas. It hasn’t always been great. Scholars say it was the most picked on state in America in the 20th century and to this day remains the most “hillbilly” state per the internet. But is that truth, or just the results of branding and strong stereotypes? Clay interviews Dr. Books Blevins, Dr. Jeanie Whayne, and Dr. Bob Cochran to get to the bottom of this image. It’s fascinating, entertaining, and in the end you may wish you were bare-footed and grinning ear-to-ear, living the highlife in Arkansas. Clay visits one of the nation’s premiere American art museums, Crystal Bridges, in Arkansas. He visits the Walmart museum to talk to Sam Walton’s hologram, and lastly, he’ll release a never before heard interview with Arkansas’s first son, Bill Clinton -- for real. All this will prove that there are really two Arkansas’s -- the stereotype and the real thing. We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	1851 Moby Dick gets published. There's one mention of Arkansas. Arkansas was portrayed
0:12.0	as crazy, violent, and stupid, only one line. I've waited my whole life for this opportunity.
0:20.8	Perhaps this was even the primary reason for my birth and what some have called the creation
0:25.9	state. The bear state, my beloved Arkansas. If this is the last bear grease podcast I ever
0:34.1	make, my soul will be satiated by the sweet nectar of having had the last word by being
0:41.3	given a chance to explain things that the world and its frivolous pursuit of progress
0:47.1	has yet to slow down enough to understand. I'm quite certain this is the greatest place
0:53.6	on planet earth. But on this episode, we're going to talk about the Arkansas image. Some
1:00.0	say it was the most picked on state in America in the 20th century, but there are a lot of
1:05.4	other places kind of like us. So why? We've been branded as a haven for barefoot, uneducated,
1:13.1	fudent, and poverty-stricken folks gifted with an inferiority complex and defensiveness
1:19.0	as part of our cultural inheritance. It's time we set the record straight and separate
1:24.3	fact from fiction. We'll learn those characterizations weren't far from the truth, but they
1:30.1	were oversimplified and myopically viewed by a nation who deeply wanted us to be that.
1:36.2	We'll explore the power of regional identity and why Arkansas is still shaken its frontier
1:42.5	image. We'll talk with Dr. Brooks Blevans, Dr. Genie Wayne, and Dr. Bob Cochran to understand
1:49.0	the roots of this image, its impacts both good and bad, and we'll have some surprise
1:54.4	guests that will certainly shock you. We'll talk with the curator of one of the finest
1:59.5	museums of American art in the country. We'll hear from the founder of Walmart. Yeah,
2:05.9	I said we'll hear from him directly. And we'll hear a never before released interview
2:13.5	with none other than Arkansas's own first son, Bill Clinton. You think I'm kidding, but
2:20.2	I'm not. And regardless of if you care anything about Arkansas, you're going to learn something
	...

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