Local Man Makes National News

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Mountain Home, Arkansas, (population 12,000 – give or take) is about fifty miles down the road from my town of West Plains, Missouri (population also 12,000 – give or take).  It is the first “town” of any size after crossing the Arkansas border, and it is also the county seat of Baxter County.   Mountain Home used to boast a large factory that produced medical supplies, and it still has an exceptionally fine hospital and medical community.   In fact, four of my medical providers have their offices in Mountain Home.  I was there yesterday picking up a pair of glasses – reading glasses, not shot glasses.

A young man from Mountain Home has been in the national news for the past several days, and Ozark Pride demands that whenever a local manages to standout as an example to the whole country, that his fellow locals doff their ball caps and mutter some praise. My contribution to that tradition follows.

Benjamin Craig Mattthews, age 39 ("young" by my standards), made headlines earlier in the week when he was arrested for making terroristic threats to CNN.  The police in Atlanta, Georgia, (where CNN has its headquarters) telephoned Baxter County Sheriff John Montgomery and reported that between October 31^stand November 2^nd CNN had received more than forty threatening calls from the same telephone number.  The cell phone number turned out to belong to Matthews, and the same voice, supposedly his, was featured in each and every call.

Matthews’ primary focus at CNN appears to have been black journalist Don Lemon, a frequent target of Donald Trump.   Matthews reportedly threatened to beat up Lemon in one of the calls, and he was abusive to an operator at CNN during another call.   On the second day of his telephone onslaught, Benjamin Craig Matthews is said to have made six calls to the television news network in a span of twenty-three minutes.

During one of his telephone tirades Matthews asked to be directed to Lemon’s “dead body hanging from a tree,” and at another point he asked the operator who took his call to help him kill Don Lemon.

During an investigation of Matthews this week it was learned that he also made calls to U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, Stormy Daniels’ attorney – Michael Avenatti, the Washington Speakers’ Bureau, and Planned Parenthood – most of which have been targets of Donald John Trump at one time or another.

Benjamin Craig Matthews is currently being held in the Baxter County Jail where he is unable to come up with $15,000 bond.   He is facing five counts of terroristic threatening, four misdemeanor counts of second-degree terroristic threatening, and nine misdemeanor counts of harassing communications.

Jail is undoubtedly an inconvenience to our local celebrity, especially if the deputies took his phone. But life behind bars is just a temporary setback.  Sooner or later the local GOP will swoop in and get him a seat in the state legislature – or Congress.  

Here in the hills we take care of our own!

MAGA!

(From a more measured perspective, people like this do pose a very real threat to social order and should not be written off as harmless cranks.  At the very least when Baxter County gets tired of giving Benjamin Craig Matthews free meals in jail and decides to send him quietly back into the hills, he should be made to give up his guns and his telephone until he undergoes a thorough mental evaluation.  Otherwise, the next time Mr. Matthews makes the national news, his story may include a body count.  Just sayin’ . . .)