Writers, Seek Your Fortune in Chicago

In certain shops in Chicago, you will find a bumper sticker reading, “Too Dumb for New York, Too Ugly for LA.” While grimly amusing, I find this, on another level, frustrating. The bumper sticker has a certain plainsman’s discontent to it, an angry determination to live with (presumed) mediocrity. “Sure, we’re stranded here in the flatlands, but we like it.” Is this level of self-deprecation, this inferiority complex, at all necessary?