new column: what's so great about being the greatest?

As my wife and I prepared for a family Thanksgiving gathering at our home, we had the TV set to the Macy’s parade. Big balloons, floats, marching bands; the whole shebang. At some point, a modestly sized float came into view, a large urban landscape crowning a giant apple. But it wasn’t the float itself that took my attention away from some last-minute cleaning-up. It was the commentator announcing the float with something more or less along the lines of “and here’s the float for New York City, the greatest city in the world.” My first reaction: Sorry, but New York is not the greatest city in the world. My second reaction: What is this obsession with being “the greatest?”

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