Just take the compliment

It sounds like some distant editor’s discretionary choice wholly unsupported by hard empirical credibility.

I don’t care. I’ll take it.

Little Rock’s history is to get punched hard in the nose nationally and internationally-sometimes fairly, sometimes not, sometimes in between.

A pitiably weak governor brought global shame to Central High School over racial integration in 1957. Little Rock’s public schools have been mired in race-troubled litigation ever since.

In 1973, our city fathers blundered at a stratospheric level. They let fledgling FedEx move to Memphis for advantages that Little Rock wouldn’t extend.

A Governing magazine columnist called Little Rock’s error the biggest of the century at the municipal level. The Memphis airport is the largest air-cargo facility in the country and second-largest-to Hong Kong-in the world.

In the 1990s, Little Rock got hammered by an HBO documentary on its horrifying inner-city gang violence.

It also got smeared by mostly overblown charges, mainly advanced by Republicans trying to discredit Bill Clinton, of an incestuous and corrupt political and business culture.

So on Thursday, word spread through the often-cowering capital city that kiplinger.com, the online incarnation of the venerable Kiplinger business newsletter, had presumed to rank the 10 “greatest” small to midsize cities in which to live in the United States.

And it had put Little Rock … well, that’d be number one.

My first thought was that Kiplinger meant Fayetteville.

But, no, it said Little Rock and it meant Little Rock.

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The rankings were based on jobs, affordability and activity. Little Rock was adjudged to lead the nation among small to midsize cities by possessing:

1. A lower unemployment rate than the nation.
2. Housing prices that are uncommonly low and stable in comparison with elsewhere.
3. The Clinton Presidential Center, an expansive Riverfront Park, plenty of opportunities for biking, jogging and hiking, a commitment to art, a spirit of youthful entrepreneurship and an “eclectic” neighborhood in Hillcrest.
4. A transportation system of relative ease owing to the close proximity of destinations and the absence of major gridlock.

What Kiplinger did was compile data and settle on 10 top cities, then send reporters to each of those. It was the on-site visit that lifted us.

Little Rock bested, in order, Burlington, Vt.; Bryan-College Station, Texas; Santa Fe, N.M.; Columbia, S.C.; Billings, Mont.; Morgantown, W.Va.; Ithaca, N.Y.; Anchorage, Alaska; and Dubuque, Iowa.

It was a strange grouping. Little Rock has a metropolitan area population of 700,000, far larger than most of those competitors. So it seems to have benefited from bigger-city amenities.

But, again, we’ll take it. We’ll brag about it.

Most importantly, we’ll be buoyed by it.

Roscoe the beagle and I walked a little more briskly and proudly Saturday morning through our newly famously “eclectic” Hillcrest neighborhood.

We ventured to the funky farmers market in front of the moderate Baptist church. There I picked up peaches and corn.

Roscoe squeezed between a couple of people chatting at the base of a small tree, then hiked his leg to relieve himself thereon-the tree, not the people, though it was close.

Life was good there in the nation’s greatest small to midsize place.

Still, we must keep a level head. We cannot dare forget that the quality of Little Rock living is based largely on neighborhood and race.

But maybe we can attack those problems with a little more confidence and optimism, from a position not necessarily of strength, but of less weakness. Maybe we can deploy an attitude other than pessimism or fatalism.

What would be absurd would be satisfaction.

What I’ve always said is that Little Rock is a quintessential American city.

That’s because it has everything-world-class wealth, national-caliber poverty, stark division by race, fine dining, sophisticated medical research, relative unhealthiness, gay neighborhoods, fundamentalist megachurches, violence, struggling public schools and a history shameful in part and proudly preserved in part.

And if I’m right that a place is only as strong as the quality of the free expression of its home-grown malcontents, then Little Rock seems to thrive.

A presumably local person commented online at kiplinger.com to say, yeah, Riverfront Park in Little Rock is great, all right, with all the homeless people urinating on public facilities.

Another presumed local resident posted that he dares not walk around Little Rock without a concealed weapon.

As I said, we have it all.

But let’s keep some perspective. And let’s keep the faith.

Somebody just said ours is the best place to live in the country.

So let’s try to act like it.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.