East Coast elites gonna East Coast elite

My car broke down on the outskirts of Gary, Ind., in 2003. I've never worked so quickly to get a car running in my life before or since. That place was a hellhole.

 

What I need to know is if Lena Dunham has ever been to Gary, and what is her opinion of it? The Times has really dropped the ball.

 

Before she adopted it, her rescue dog Lamby dramatically escaped from Gary, Indiana, where it had lived a long, hard life as slave labor in a steel mill.

 

After spending one night in the bed with Dunham, Lamby realized he didn't know what true horror was and tried unsuccessfully to return to his former life.

 

It's the Travel section. Inevitably, there's going to be a bit of randomness to it.

Right now, on their main page, they're featuring the likes of Romania, Kazakhstan and Hamilton, Ontario. And the title on the lead story admonishes readers - perhaps optimistically - to give Brussels "a second look."

 

Spent 20 minutes in Gary one day and it was the dustiest 20 minutes of my life.

 

The thing about downtown is that, other than the baseball stadium and City Hall, there really isn't much there. I doubt there's much crime downtown because it's a ghost town. You have to get into some of the neighborhoods themselves to find trouble. Like most places, outsiders who find trouble in Gary mostly invited it.

 

"Fact is, mister, you start screwin'
with our beach, I'll personally
hide-strap your ass to a pine rail
and send you up the Monon Line!"

 

The NW Indiana beaches are one of the more surprising travel destinations you'll come across. They're far nicer than anybody who's not been there would imagine (especially the Dunes SP), and a glaring contradiction from the rest of that grim industrial corner of the rust belt.

So I don't have much problem with the NYT's tone. They are in truth a surprising thing to discover, and not just to eastern elites, but many midwesterners as well.

 

I await the NYT's piece headlined, "A University in, Yes, New Haven, CT."

 

I'm really surprised after reading the NYT's headline and this thread that Democrats have had such a difficult time relating to working-class voters in the Midwest, who they apparently think all live in grim squalor.