{"id":255976,"date":"2010-01-31T17:00:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-31T22:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/?p=64382"},"modified":"2010-01-31T17:00:51","modified_gmt":"2010-01-31T22:00:51","slug":"fdl-book-salon-welcomes-dotty-oliver-mistress-of-the-misunderstood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/255976","title":{"rendered":"FDL Book Salon Welcomes Dotty Oliver, Mistress of the Misunderstood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dotty<\/a>[Welcome Dotty Oliver<\/a>, and Host Warwick Sabin<\/a>.] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book. \u00a0Please take other conversations to a previous thread. – bev]<\/p>\n

Mistress of the Misunderstood<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Here in Arkansas, we know Dotty Oliver as the brave, smart, fun and irreverent woman who published the Arkansas Free Press<\/em>, which started around the time Bill Clinton became president in 1993 and lasted until 2008.<\/p>\n

The Free Press<\/em> (known locally as the FREEP) was the very<\/span><\/em> alternative free weekly newspaper in Little Rock, as opposed to the Arkansas Times<\/em>, which was merely the alternative free weekly newspaper.\u00a0 Those of you who believe that liberal, uninhibited expression doesn’t exist in the South would have had your preconceptions significantly altered by a brief confrontation with the FREEP.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of course, Dotty Oliver was not the typical Southern girl.\u00a0 She left her Little Rock high school to enroll in an all-male trade school, and shortly thereafter moved to Los Angeles in 1968 and joined the psychedelic scene there.\u00a0 Back in Arkansas a couple of years later, she lived in a commune with the band Black Oak Arkansas.\u00a0 All of these experiences gave her a rich template to draw from for her writing, which has been called “a cross between Gloria Steinem and Hunter S. Thompson with a hint of Mark Twain thrown in for good measure.”<\/p>\n

The glory years of the FREEP coincided with the long gubernatorial administration (1996-2007) of Mike Huckabee, and many of Dotty’s columns and stories collected in “Mistress of the Misunderstood<\/strong><\/a>” concern him.<\/p>\n

Dotty’s column on July 7, 1999 begins: “On June 23rd, I received a knock at the door.\u00a0 It was a lawsuit being delivered for Gov. Mike Huckabee suing me for allegedly printing malicious lies.”<\/p>\n

Instead of being intimidated, Dotty goes on to discuss the Christian Coalition, the war on drugs, the media, and women’s rights, before finally concluding: “So Gov. Huckabee, what is the real reason you are suing me?\u00a0 Is it because I say what I’m thinking in my columns and it’s offensive to you and the Republican Party?”<\/p>\n

It is that kind of honesty, openness, fearlessness and free-thinking that Dotty brings to all of the topics in “Mistress of the Misunderstood<\/strong><\/a>,” whether it is pop culture, politics, human rights, or sex.<\/p>\n

You don’t have to be from Arkansas to appreciate or understand this book.\u00a0 In fact, considering that we brought you Bill Clinton, Mike Huckabee, and a long list of associated phenomena, you might find this book surprisingly helpful and enlightening.<\/p>\n

At the very least, you will find it fresh, entertaining and exciting, as Dotty’s writing and perspective\u00a0is a product of her turbulent and unusual life.<\/p>\n

\"Share <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Welcome Dotty Oliver, and Host Warwick Sabin.] [As a courtesy to our guests, please keep comments to the book. \u00a0Please take other conversations to a previous thread. – bev] Mistress of the Misunderstood Here in Arkansas, we know Dotty Oliver as the brave, smart, fun and irreverent woman who published the Arkansas Free Press, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}