Here’s the guy who ranked OKC ahead of Chernobyl…

12:17 PM EDT on May 3, 2008

Over at OKCcentral.com, Steve Lackeymeyer has some interesting stuff regarding the fallout from Oklahoma City being named one of the Top 10 Hells on Earth. Originally, the article was posted on both AskMen and AOL Travel (the later being where we originally found the story). Once our mayor, local media and the web community found out about the story, AOL pulled Oklahoma City off the list pretty quick.

Here's some of what they said:

Thank you for your phone call regarding the content provided to us through askmen.com. Our AOL editorial team looked at the material and were unanimous in their agreement that inclusion of Oklahoma City in that kind of negative list was wholly unfair and poor quality journalism. We have since edited/modified the list online and plan to monitor our content relationship with askmen.com in a more careful manner.

AskMen.com, however, hasn't changed or edited the story. In a way, I kind of like that. Sometimes we write some stuff that people complain about or want edited (like our "where they live" series) and sometimes we cave. So...although I think the inclusion of Oklahoma City as one of the Top 10 Hells on Earth along with places like Chernobyl, Baghdad, and Yaktusk is stupid, I congratulate the editors for sticking to their guns and not removing or editing the story.

That being said, I would encourage them to get rid of the writer of the story, Nick Clarke, as their "Travel Specialist." And I'm not encouraging this because he's a bad writer, but simply because he looks like a absolutely privileged tool. If visiting his website, reading his bio and looking up his MySpace Page doesn't convince you, remember that the guy is a 23-year-old freelance writer who lives in Marbella, Spain, which really doesn't look like that bad (or cheap) of a place to live. He probably just has some rich parents who own some Marmalade factory in England who support him and his lifestyle, or maybe he's a traveling male prostitute, which maybe explains why he knows so much about the top hells on Earth. Who knows. Regardless, screw him.