KaGee
Admiral
- Joined
- Aug 14, 2004
- Messages
- 7,069
Is Fort Wayne, Ind., 1 beer short of six-pack? <br />
<br />Craig Wilson<br />USA Today<br />Jan. 20, 2005 12:00 AM <br /><br />FORT WAYNE, Ind. - Landing at Fort Wayne International Airport, you don't sense anything is amiss. In fact, it's all quite pleasant.<br /><br />Grandmotherly types hand out sugar cookies to arriving visitors. The Avis clerk is downright friendly and efficient. And driving into town, you pass golf courses and garden apartments, high schools and one of the locals' favorites, the Oyster Bar.<br /><br />But once you arrive downtown, you start looking at the natives with a keener eye. Are they really as dumb as people say? Hard to tell, although the hockey team is called the Komets. Yes, with a K. advertisement <br /> <br /> <br /><br /><br />This heartland city of 255,000 has been dubbed the dumbest town in all the land by Men's Health magazine. It came in dead last, losing out at the bottom of the heap to the likes of Laredo, Texas.<br /><br />The survey is the talk of the town or at least among those who read, and there appear to be thousands. <br /><br />A front-page column in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel last week came with the bold, all-caps headline: SO THEY SAY WE'RE NOT THE BRIGHTEST BULB IN THE BOX ... WHAT DO THEY KNOW?<br /><br />Columnist Kevin Leininger suggested their "F" was basically "an evil liberal media conspiracy." He threw out the fact that 8 of the 10 smartest cities were in blue states, and eight of the dumbest were in red states. He doesn't think it's a coincidence that "a certain amount of cultural elitism was at work here."