It was not until the last days of 2010 that we finally determined what was wrong with America. It was left to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a man who doesn’t mince words, to set us straight.
We’re a bunch of wusses, he said. Repeatedly. To any news outlet that would listen.
He said it so often he eventually hit a bipartisan nerve, which is a rare strike these days.
And so, there were Republicans racing to praise a Democratic governor. And there were Democrats urging Rendell, who is about to leave office, to join the White House team, which apparently is in need of some toughening up. What I mean is, if Rendell gets a fat lip, you can be sure he won’t need any stitches.
Sure, we’ve heard it all before. This was the year, after all, in which we had been ordered to man up. And yet, we’re afraid of terrorists or we’re afraid of being groped. We’re afraid to eat dessert or we’re afraid not to eat dessert.
We’ve gone so soft that we keep giving unemployment insurance to the unemployed, as if we owed them something for losing their jobs.
We’re told that our country, while, of course, exceptional, has gone to hell. The reason we know this — and here’s where Rendell comes in — is because we’re afraid of the snow. That’s right, snow. Once, when America was great, we walked 10 miles in the snow to school or at least we had a grandparent who said he did.
That was a different America, when John Wayne had true grit and you smoked ’em if you had ’em. Now, kids don’t walk at all. They carpool while texting to their friends in other carpools.
And before you you know it, in the face of a predicted blizzard that would shut down much of the East Coast, the Philadelphia Eagles had postponed their game last Sunday night, putting public safety ahead of, well, football. And Rendell, a major Eagles fans, asked what had happened to America.
This is how bad it was. In an op-ed piece Rendell wrote for the Washington Times, the subhead read this way: “Canceled Sunday game a sign Americans losing their greatness.”
What would the founders have thought? They didn’t cancel the Revolutionary War because of snow at Valley Forge. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie didn’t cancel his trip to Disney World, either, saying it was more important to spend time with his kids. You think Christie was going to nanny-governor New Jersey through a few feet of snow?
Rendell said he hated to think what Vince Lombardi might say. It can’t be long before someone starts making WWVLD (What Would Vince Lombardi Do?) bracelets. Made in China, of course.
Snow has long been a test of manhood (personhood?). As I drove home from work the other day, I saw a car slammed into a tree, and I, of course, shook my head in disgust. As we all know, traction is the real mark of a man.
Still, it can’t be as simple as that. If taking on snow were the ultimate test, we’d all move to Buffalo, where no one is afraid of the snow, or Canada, where they fear neither snow nor nationalized health care, or maybe Norway, where they used to have Vikings, or Minnesota, whose Vikings were set to play in Philadelphia before the wimps took over and called the game off.
Philly likes to think of itself as a tough town, where a fan would boo his grandmother for slipping on the ice. But as Rendell wrote: “First, to call off this game because of snow is further evidence of the ‘wussification’ of America. We seem to have lost our boldness, our courage, our sense of adventure and that frontier spirit that made this country the greatest nation in the world.”
He goes on to cite Will Bunch, a writer for the Philadelphia Daily News, who said that if the NFL played games in China, 60,000 Chinese would march to the game through the snow while doing advanced calculus. We seem to be losing to the Chinese in everything, but when someone at Huffington Post actually checked, it seems Chinese soccer games rarely sell out, even in good weather. Must be the math homework getting in the way.
And not everyone thinks Rendell is as tough as he talks. The author Buzz Bissinger, who wrote a book about Rendell and also wrote “Friday Night Lights,” tweeted this: “Ed Rendell has not driven a car in 20 years. Let him drive to the game from Harrisburg. Then talk wuss.”
Still, Rendell has a point about the wonder of NFL snow games — say, the Broncos vs. Packers, Monday Night game, 1984 — when sleeveless linemen went sliding with bone-chilled quarterbacks through the snow while 62,546 fans gladly risked frostbite for the, uh, thrill of being there and apparently to help make America great.
I once covered a playoff game in Cleveland, where fans are famous for turning up in bad weather and where teams famously always lose the big one. It was 1981, the temperature at game time was 4 degrees and the game was lost when Brian Sipe was intercepted in the end zone. Usually the Browns lose a game like this to the Broncos. This time they lost to the Raiders. Most people were too cold to tell the difference.
I was in the press box, typing with gloves on, which may not exactly be a sign of toughness. I looked up to see maybe half a dozen possibly inebriated young men pull off their shirts to show what they thought of cold weather.
And I remember thinking: “That’s the America I know.”
Mike Littwin: 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com
