"The Capital of Morons"

     Before us lies the editorial column of the Shenandoah Valley News, a small paper published in Waynesboro-Basie Va.  “The New Yorker” is the caption of the column, which is devoted in its entirety to comment on this city and its people.
     We should like to quote all of it, but a tabloid newspaper has its space limitations.  There are portions, however, that you simply may not miss.  Read the following extracts:

     The most provincial minded person in the world is the typical New Yorker.  . . .  He believes the sun rises just over the East River and sets behind the Palisades. . . .
     The typical New Yorker was actually amazed at the advent of Prohibition.  Now he comforts himself with the belief that it was “a put-up job.” . . .
     When pressed to it, the New Yorker will never admit his ignorance of anything.  If he actually doesn’t know he assumes that you don’t either, and then proceeds to tell you impromptu.  . . . .
     To tell the New Yorker anything is impossible.  Perhaps that is why he so ignorant.  Even Greenwich Village is sophisticated to the last degree, hardened in its own imbecility.  Humor . . . is totally lacking. . . . The typical New Yorker never laughs.  To him it is a confession of credulance.  
     New York is the capital of flappers, the home of a girlhood robbed of everything but an empty sophistication.  . . .
     New York is unquestionably the cleanest city in the world—morally; but it is mentally inhibited and spiritually depraved.  It is the capital of morons.  . . .
     Have we overdrawn our picture?  Perhaps we have—they say familiarity breeds contempt.  At any rate we are glad to be in Virginia.  We are glad to be in the noblest finest and most human set of people we have ever set eyes upon.

     And there, as Robert E. Lee said to U.S. Grant as he handed over his sword, you are.  And here, as Grant replied in handing it back, you are.
     The Virginia outburst carries a feminine note.  Corroborating that we find listed among those who control the paper’s destinies, “City Editor, Dorothy Brand.”
     One wonders what crass and cruel New York City editor changed Dorothy’s fond familiarity to caustic contempt; or what Sunday editor failed to appreciate her humor because he was so shy on “credulance.”
     What is a typical New Yorker?  He differs basically not a whit from the typical Iowans, Vermonters, Texans, Oregonians, Missourians, Virginians, or other members of the so-called human race.  He has the same ambitions, hopes, fears, loves, hates; some of him is bad, some good; some boneheaded, some brilliant, the same as other humans.
     New York City “the capital of morons”?  Well, to complete the editorial cycle we must return to the introductory sentence:

     “Before us lies the editorial column of the Shenandoah Valley News . . .”

[New York Daily News, October 11, 1923, editorial page]