Derbyshire breaks it gently to Andy McCarthy:
Someone once called New York City “the capital of a country that doesn’t exist.” It’s an odd sort of place. Personally, I love it, and it’s made a great contribution to the USA. It is not, however, all by itself, the USA. In fact—you might want to sit down for this, Andy—large numbers of Americans hate New York.
While I am one of the multitudes who despise New York City, I would find it very difficult to decide which city I would rather see destroyed by asteroids, Biblical plagues or global warming: New York, Washington D.C. or Hollywood. It’s hard to choose because America would be much better off without all three.
Strangely enough, I would be very sorry to see San Francisco swept beneath the waves. But while San Francisco is a freak show, it’s not one that forcibly imposes itself on the rest of the country. The same is not true of the Axis of Urban Evil.
And they try to SCARE us with stories of ocean-swamped coasts….