RIVER CITY JOURNAL: TIME JIGGERS GEOGRAPHY TO REPORT ON OUR PULSE

* In case you missed it, the magazine didn't write a lot of goofy stuff about us. They just didn't write about us. Ouch!

Time magazine came out this week with its report on the big float trip down the Mississippi River back in April.

Naturally, I've been waiting for this.

It's like Providence, you know? Sometimes a column just walks in, hops up in your lap and gives you a big hug and a wet smooch.

Heck. This is easier than making up some more stuff about the World-Famous Downtown Championship Golf Course.

As it turns out, Cape Girardeau got off pretty easy following the careful, meticulous scrutiny by the Time whiz kids -- the same kids who came to town to tell us we have a heap of trouble right here in River City and, by gosh, we're going to rub your nose in it.

Now we all know how our beloved family pets felt when we were housebreaking them.

Walter Isaacson, managing editor of Time and skipper of the U.S.S. Gimmick, devoted a handful of words to our fair city. Among those few words were these two: "racially divided."

The guys from Time were more than a little miffed when they found out we weren't going to try to cover up the scrap last year over on Good Hope Street.

They weren't quite prepared for hospitality, Cape style, which means when you come to town to pick a fight, we offer refreshments and ask if you'd like to sit a spell.

Trust me. No one ever sits a spell within the boroughs of New York not unless you've died from hunger or a drug overdose while huddled on the front stoop of a shuttered business while thousands of passers-by avert their eyes and hold their noses if you start to stink like the garbage that collects on the sidewalks.

But, thank goodness, New York isn't racially divided.

So the bosses at Time decided to give Cape Girardeau the cold shoulder in its "Pulse of America" stories.

Well, almost.

Instead of saying nothing at all, Skippy Isaacson decided to throw in his backhanded "racially divided" slur.

It's almost as if someone -- someone with a lot of clout at Time headquarters -- decided not to let readers see the whole body of Cape Girardeau. Just its black eye.

I suppose that makes sense. Time said its report would be the "pulse" of the nation. It never intended to do a medical textbook about the circulatory system.

You want to know what else the Time editors did as a gut-punch afterthought?

They took us off the map.

Yep. Cape Girardeau is no longer one of the fabled cities by the river. We've been relegated to the same status as Commerce and Neely's Landing which, by the way, have interesting stories to tell that Time readers would really enjoy.

When Time pushed off from the riverbank in Hannibal, it invited folks to visit a Web site that would keep track of the trip down the river. Each day, the line of blue (the color of water, according to some Time artists who obviously have never seen the Mississippi) would extend a little farther south. If you wanted to read about each stop the Time crew made, all you had to do was click on the name of the town.

When the magazine version came out this week, there was the familiar map. Yessiree, it's a dandy map. But Cape Girardeau is gone.

Missing.

Vanished.

Poof!

Frankly, I haven't decided yet which is worse:

Being told I live in a racially divided city.

Or finding out the City of Roses doesn't exist anymore.

At least not in the minds of Time's best and brightest.

This is how I look at the whole Time mess:

We didn't come off well in the seven or eight words Time devoted to Cape Girardeau. That's the bad news.

The good news is Time won't be back.

Now that the "Pulse of America" is out, we can all stop holding our breath. We can get back to the normal routine of a racially divided city.

Whatever that is.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.