Amarillo, Texas is as Normal as Ever

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Faulkner once explained that he set most of his stories in Yoknapatawpha County because there was such an inexhaustible wealth of material contained within that one slice of Mississippi there was simply no reason to branch out. That’s kind of the same way I feel about this 128-word AP news item:

A man who last year swiped a Quran from an Amarillo preacher planning to burn the scripture at a park was arrested at another event featuring the evangelist.

Police say 24-year-old Jacob Isom of Amarillo was planning to disrupt a David Grisham event Sunday that also featured the Rev. Terry Jones, a Florida preacher who gained notoriety last year for threatening to burn a Quran. Grisham, who is running for mayor, was holding a campaign rally.

You probably know Jones as the Quran-burning preacher from Gainesville. You may know Isom as the shirtless skateboarder-turned-Internet-meme who, while shirtless, broke up a planned Quran-burning in Amarillo by filching the Quran. You probably don’t know David Grisham, but he was the preacher whose attempted Quran-burning was broken up by the shirtless Isom at a rally last August. Grisham is also the founder of Repent Amarillo, an organization devoted to waging spiritual warfare against strip clubs, gay bars, and the city of Houston. He also shot Santa Claus.

As you were.

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