Bleep me in St. Louis

by Jack Stapleton, Jr.

“What do you get if you take St Louis and Kansas City out of Missouri? Arkansas.” St. Louis Deputy Mayor Mike Jones.

The above statement, according to a St. Louis newspaper columnist, drew loud applause recently from a roomful of attorneys and real estate professionals who had gathered to discuss Missouri’s tax credit programs. Since this columnist must allocate considerable space for corrections of his reports of hometown schmoozing, I decided to call Mike Jones to confirm that he had indeed uttered such an egregious banality.

The deputy mayor had enough sense not to deny his statement, although he entered a caveat that he was actually referring to events that occurred “seven or eight years ago and not today.” He later muttered something about a “lack of foresight.” I asked if he was referring to repeatedly unsuccessful efforts to resolve the St. Louis city-county fiasco but by this time he was in such a mumbling mode I couldn’t detect whether he was speaking English or St. Loueyian, a strange mixture of German, Italian and African. No reply; he had hung up.

I don’t know why I was shocked by this latest evidence of St. Louis’ disdain for the rest of the state. This is a perpetual view stemming from some sort of inbred parochialism, paranoia and a persistent, pessimistic, passive-aggressive pique. It’s been going on far longer than the city aldermanic days of Dick Gephardt, who stupidly offered a resolution calling for the secession of the city from the State of Missouri. Over the years it has become sheer habit for St. Louisans to refer to outstate Missourians as hoosiers, a term hardly complimentary yet not surprising in view of the growing lack of urban validation by our city cousins. I doubt if the Romans were very happy about their environment as they confronted the decline and then demise of their once- bustling empire.

The deputy mayor was obviously addressing a group, judging by its makeup, of individuals concerned about a badly needed review of the state’s tax credit programs, used by some sources to line their own pockets at the expense of local taxpayers, small businessmen and public schools, to name just some of those searching for ways to stem metro-area decay. Since some St. Louis-area lawmakers have already expressed concern about these tax raids, the deputy mayor’s remarks were all the more inappropriate.

Most of us hoosiers have grown accustomed to urban cheap-shot remarks. But the deputy mayor has opened a brand new keg of odoriferous worms when he also manages to insult an entire state, Arkansas, in his weak attempt at humor. St. Louis, which incidentally seeks to attract visitors form Arkansas, should declare it off-limits to parochial dribble after recalling that the state has recently produced a President of the United States, and is the home of the world’s largest, most successful retail chain, Wal-Mart, and the headquarters for a corporation that assumed the liabilities of another failed St. Louis landmark, Stix-Baer-Fuller. The latter firm, no longer in business, was part of a growing list of departed St. Louis institutions, ranging from McDonnell Dougles to General American Life to Boatmen’s Bank to Edison Brothers, ad infinitum.

Additionally it has been investment capital from Arkansas that has served as the principal source of funding for new professional athletic franchises in St. Louis. This money has come form Wal- Mart heirs who, I’m fairly certain, have never been called hoosiers in public, particularly in meetings focused on St. Louis enterprises.

Those of us who have been designated honorary citizens of Arkansas might want to recall that we, too, have a considerable investment in the allegedly cosmopolitan area so uniquely being promoted by the deputy mayor of St. Louis. We hoosiers have invested significant amounts of the $3.4 billion price tag to desegregate the state’s urban school districts, while spending huge amounts either to build or maintain athletic stadiums in both venues. Additionally, through sales and tourist taxes, by which St. Louisans and Kansas Citians avoid investing in their own improvements, we hoosiers are paying a double toll for these improvements.

Outstate Missourians should ignore demeaning urban insults if only to avoid contracting a brain- dead impairment.

[Missouri News & Editorial Service, Inc. Copyright (C) 1999 MNES Corp.]