Update: Paul Cella has to be our Maximos. I cannot endure the possibility that more than one person hates the English language so very badly.
In short, this question keeps pressing me as I watch the State Funeral: If, during the formative years of the late President, placid and steadfast Grand Rapids, Michigan, had been rather a place afflicted by the standard pathologies of our cities today; if children in the city-center could not play in the streets without confronting drug dealers and prostitutes; if all Grand Rapids’ local mores were replaced by the mores of Hollywood, all her heroes forgotten, all her sons and daughters turned lose upon the dissolution of the modern world without serious moral guidance or discipline — if all this were true, do you expect that men would stand today by the dozen, before cameras and audiences, to honor the virtues of this simple Midwesterner?
So Grand Rapids is filled with Hobbits. Gotcha.
Anyway, the fact that he begins this paragraph with "in short" is... well, precious and tender. I am... overcome.