LIMBAUGH PROJECT ONE OF 70 IN STATE

Missouri tax dollars are being spent to promote gambling, drinking, outlaws and an atheist as well as a conservative radio talk-show host.

Seventy tourism projects for communities from Kimmswick to Kansas City are tapping $1 million in state tax dollars to promote whatever makes a place unusual.

Cape Girardeau's $9,200 grant has been the target of recent criticism around the state and the nation, because tax money is being used to promote Rush Limbaugh's boyhood haunts.

But consider this:

-- Caruthersville will spend $18,330 in state tax dollars to promote riverboat gambling in the city.

-- Washington will spend $1,832 wooing travel writers to visit the Missouri River Wine Country. The invitation is mailed in a plastic wine bottle.

-- Nevada will spend $2,150 for a brochure inviting visitors to the "Bushwhacker Capital of the World."

-- Hannibal will spend $30,878 promoting the boyhood home of Mark Twain, who became an atheist later in his life.

Dean Brooks, who coordinates the grant program for the Missouri Division of Tourism, said the idea is to help communities attract tourists.

"There is not any intention to promote Rush Limbaugh," Brooks said. "It is to promote landmarks in Cape Girardeau, which people who do like Rush Limbaugh might want to see."

The projects, which were developed by each community, were designed to make use of whatever makes that community unique.

Funding was approved based on the likelihood a project would lure visitors to the state. As long as it was legal and moral, Brooks said, evaluators passed no judgment.

Cape Girardeau's Limbaugh tour is the only one he is aware of that has drawn complaints.

An editorial in the Joplin Globe newspaper took Cape Girardeau to task for "getting rich on Rush."

"Cape Girardeau is not the only city that has waddled up to the tourism tax trough," the editorial writer said.

The editorial writer was right.

Joplin "waddled up to the trough" itself for $3,502 in tax dollars to promote its "Blast from the Past" motor coach tour.

When contacted Thursday, a Globe editor said he was unaware of Joplin's grant.

Terry Triplett, director of the Joplin Convention and Visitors Bureau, said Joplin will use the money to promote a dinner-theater event whose floor show features townspeople dressed in costumes and lip-syncing to music from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Triplett admits it is hokey, but he claims tourists love it.

"Anything you can do that will turn a dime, do it," he said.

The Kansas City Star conducted a telephone poll of readers asking: "What do you think about plans to use local and state tourism dollars to promote a Rush Limbaugh tour in Cape Girardeau?" Most callers objected.

The story said Kansas City would be using $23,000 to promote retail sales in January and February. The story omitted that Kansas City will receive $116,000 in state money to promote the city.

Most of Kansas City's grants will be spent on television and radio advertising as well as a tour video.

Don Northington with the Washington Area Chamber of Commerce on the Missouri River west of St. Louis doesn't think the tour of wineries promotes drinking.

"We're promoting tourism," he said. "We're selling the area, and the area is wine country." Eleven wineries, including those in nearby Hermann, are on the tour.

Lynda Jones with the Nevada Chamber of Commerce said bushwhackers offer a dubious claim to fame for the community. "It's not real popular with some people here in town," she said.

Nevada was home to a band of southern sympathizers during the Civil War called bushwhackers. They conducted guerrilla warfare against nearby military posts until 1863 when the militia burned virtually the entire town of Nevada -- and most of western Missouri.

Jones said many of the bushwhackers were outlaws, including Jesse James -- who is promoted as a tourist draw in St. Joseph, where he was killed.

"The reality is it's very good marketing. People will pick up your brochure," Jones said.