Take That!

Chicagoans are taking umbrage at an NYT article dissing the City of Big Shoulders:

Chicago is a great literary city.

Not just because we have many great writers, but because a book review can stir up a real shit-storm here, as in the last few days with the brouhaha over Rachel Shteir’s “Chicago Manuals” in the New York Times. This gang-review of three books is the sort of hatchet job this town hasn’t seen since the Battle of Fort Dearborn in 1812. Or since A.J. Liebling’s “The Second City” in 1952.

Liebling fathered one enduring literary tradition: New York writers lording it over Chicago. Sometimes it happens in book reviews.

But Ms. Shteir doesn’t just smack down Chicago books. She dope-slaps “poor Chicago.”

Ms. Shteir hates it here, the city where she attended college (University of Chicago) and now works (De Paul University). She despises its crime, corruption, expensive parking meters, racial segregation, macho bragging and awful winters.

Welcome to town, professor. Chicagoans hate all of that, too.

Not enough to vote the crooks out of office, of course.

Things that go unmentioned in the article linked above include that the Chicago theater scene has been more vibrant than its New York counterpart for decades. New York’s theater depends much more on out-of-towners than ours does. Other than the Met the classical music scene here, too, is miles beyond New York’s despite New York’s much larger market. The CSO is still the finest symphony orchestra in the country.

New York is no longer the center of culture for the United States. New York is the center of New York. Without the vast federal subsidies it’s enjoyed over the past decade or so it wouldn’t even be that.