Website names Florida worst state in America

Sunshine State trails Delaware, Ohio, Arizona -- and everyone else

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Well, let's not pretend we didn't see this coming.

Florida ranks dead last when it comes to rating the best states in the nation. That's according to Thrillist, the website most widely known (to us, anyway) for extolling the virtues of the Publix sub and being the second best source of listicles next to BuzzFeed.

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The article's authors based their rankings on "everything." But more specifically, they said they looked at things such as inventions, food/drink, famous people and physical beauty. They offered this explanation for the Sunshine State's dubious distinction:

When putting together a list such as this, there can be some temptation to defy popular expectations, and go against the grain. However, Florida’s awfulness resume is so staggeringly impressive that it couldn’t go any other way. You were born for this. Embrace it.

Fine. We'll admit it: Florida is a magnet for the cringe-worthy. It spawns hair-raising headlines -- from wild shootouts to accidental near-castrations to the occasional face-eating episode -- at such a dizzying pace that there is a Twitter account dedicated to tracking them all.

But without getting too bogged down in the details, let's briefly respond to some of these. Inventions? Try Amazon Prime, jabronis. Food? Pub subs, enough said. Famous people? Take your pick -- Bob Ross, Ray Charles & Sidney Poitier come to mind. Beauty? Look outside.

So we'll just have to agree to disagree. Besides, as the wise philosopher Taylor Swift once put it, haters are going to hate.

Now that we've gotten that out of our system, here are the states rounding out the bottom five: No. 49) Delaware; 48) Ohio; 47) Arizona; and 46) Utah. For what it's worth, Michigan came in at No. 1.


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