The Richmond Palladium-Item takes a firm stand . . . against Tuesday Night Football. Actually, they're against the wusses who created the need for TNF by postponing the Sunday night game:
Good for Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell.
The feisty Democrat turned the National Football League's decision to reschedule Sunday night's game due to inclement weather into a fitting political broadside on our nation's lack of winning competitiveness.
Specifically, Rendell called postponing the game from Sunday to Tuesday night due to a blizzard forecast "a joke," adding, "Vince Lombardi would be spinning in his grave."
A day later, his anger unabated, Rendell saw postponement as part of a national disgrace ... " part of what's happened in this country."
The governor's contention, which the editorial supports, is that we've become a nation of wusses, which had led, among other things, to the Chinese kicking our butts in everything: "If this was in China, do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down."
He's certainly right about the wussification of America and the implications as we try to hold our own on the world stage. I'm not sure postponing a football game because of a raging blizzard is the right symbol for it, however. In fact, considering the effect of mixing a blizzard with thousands of fans, it could be argued that it should have been the city instead of the NFL that canceled the game. Continuing an amusment, a mere diversion, in the face of horrendous weather is not a sign of strength. It's deranged.
Besides, we got to watch an NFL game on Tuesday night for the first and probably only time in our lives. Don't they appreciate serendipity in Richmond?
