One thing I've been surprised by is how many of the writers whose humorous pieces really chime with me are from the American Midwest specifically. Maybe there's a connection - there seems to be the same downbeat, self-mocking tone that you often see in us Brits, rather than the go-get-'em chutzpah we (wrongly it would seem) tend to expect of all our cousins across the pond. Is that a more coastal thing, while in the middle (at least the liberals and Democrats stuck in the middle) they are more hangdog?

I guess that could come of living under a flyover.