Boston Ascends to its Rightful Position: Named Meanest City in America.

DEAR BOSTON: Your personality test has been completed, and the results aren’t pretty. Actually, they are downright embarrassing. Two psychologists conducted a national survey, asking Americans questions designed to measure 24 “character strengths.’’ They grouped some of these strengths, like gratitude and valuing emotional connections, as “strengths of the heart’’ - a fancy way of saying kindness. And then, for each of the nation’s 50 largest cities, they calculated an average score. The conclusion: Boston came in at number 50. As in, dead last. As in, none of the country’s other major cities - not New York, not Los Angeles, not even Washington, D.C. - can match us for sheer smallness of spirit. We are officially the capital of mean...Now it would be easy, in typical Boston fashion, to get defensive at this point. Who do these people think they are - these outsiders, no less - taking potshots at our fair city? But there is a vital message here, one that we all need to hear. And I can assure you that these particular outsiders, the University of Michigan’s Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson, don’t have anything against us.

 Well thank goodness for that, I'd hate to think that we were becoming some ninny politically correct city like DC or the land of peace loving hippies, hipsters, and phonies like LA.  

And leave it to a bunch of outsiders complaining about us being "too mean" good lord people, pre-school was like 20+ years ago, newsflash you can't make it through life going around hugging and loving everyone you see while singing and dancing with an ambiguously gay purple dinosaur. Shit just isn't real life.

You're god damn right we're mean and guarded, it's the only way to keep everyone out of our business. Just let us be. We'll keep telling everyone how we're one of America's great cities and bragging about sports and the Greenway and shit, and making fun of people from other cities all we want.  Plus if you like everyone and every thing how do I know if you're being phony or not? Listen, no one is that happy-go lucky, we're just not full of shit like the rest of the country. We respect honesty, a solid 70% of the time people are miserable, worrying about bills, worrying about schedules and appointments, failing tests, projects at work, its all stressful, you've got to release it somewhere.

Plus, there's an us against them mentality here and its kinda served us well, if you believe you're the best and believe everyone else is inferior (even NY, though deep down what makes us so angry is that we know its not true), you'll be the best, so with all do respect, how about you shut the hell up and go bother some other city that maybe gives a care about what some dorky report out of Michigan says, because for the most part we're happy with they way things are...except for the goddamn winters, I hate the winters.