LETTERS: ARTICLE BASHES SIKESTON

To the editor:

Glamour magazine recently took trash journalism to oceanic depths by publishing an article tagging Sikeston as Crank Central U.S.A. The community is collectively outraged, and rightly so.

The "evidence" author Robert Draper used to dump on Sikeston was anecdotal in nature. His conclusion, that Sikeston is Crank Central U.S.A., was unwarranted and not documented with accurate, solid, statistical data as specifically pertains to Sikeston.

One wonders if Draper bothered to look at Drug Enforcement Administration and other objective data relevant to Sikeston before making his sweeping and inaccurate conclusion. I doubt it.

To me, Draper (an editor for Texas Monthly) seemed much more interested in coming up with a catchy, even cutesy (to him), phrase, using it in what appeared to be a cavalier -- almost flippant, yet, to Sikeston -- manner.

In a condescending comment at the end of his piece, Draper wrote that he left Sikeston with a "shred of hope." (Gee, thanks, Mr. Draper!) Of course, he didn't bother to tell readers the basis for his belief. Did it result from our successful Weed and Seed program, something else or a combination of things? Draper didn't deem to enlighten us.

Draper's derogatory description of Sikeston shouldn't stick. Unfortunately, it probably will, at least for the foreseeable future, thus creating undeserved and unneeded problems for our community.

I imagine Draper has by now forgotten about Sikeston and the skewering he gave us and the Bootheel in general. He is, no doubt, already preoccupied with his next journalistic hit-and-run hatchet job.

Maybe we need to contact Draper and remind him of the degree to which he libeled us. However, if we do contact him, tempting as it may be to do otherwise, we must keep our cool and keep the contact verbal.

STEVE MOSLEY

Sikeston