Splendid reader Ed Mason points out some new elements in the Great GQ Dress-Down of Boston, the magazine’s 40 Worst-Dressed Cities in America feature.  (The hardworking staff’s earlier post here.)

Today’s Boston Herald reports on the uproar created by this sentence in the magazine’s review crowning Boston the Number One fashion victim: “due to so much local in-breeding, Boston suffers from a kind of Style Down Syndrome, where a little extra ends up ruining everything.”

Reaction was predictable:

“I’m horrified,” said Dafna Krouk-Gordon, president and founder of TILL Inc., a Massachusetts nonprofit that provides community programs for people with disabilities. “This is vile. It sets us back as having to work so hard to eliminate the stereotypes that people with any kind of disabilities have had to live with for hundreds of years.”

“They are doing societal damage by using those kinds of examples. It is especially hurtful for someone with Down syndrome who would not be in a position to advocate for themselves,” Krouk-Gordon said.

Except its not there anymore. GQ quietly (if not quickly) removed it.

One more thing – and this comes from the hardworking staff, not Ed: Look at the pictures in this Herald sidebar. Now look at yourself. Now look at the pictures. Now look at yourself.

What ranking would you give Boston?