On Boxing Day, the NFL announced that it was cancelling the Eagles-Vikings game. The reason? It looked like it was going to snow.
I couldn’t believe it. Tough men playing in brutal conditions is (or, I suppose I should say, was), an unshakable pillar of the football mystique. No matter how bad it gets, the game goes on. Look at the mighty Green Bay Packers, for example, playing all those games up there on the Frozen Tundra at Lambeau Field, wearing their short-sleeved jerseys with the temperature below zero. Think of all the games we’ve seen in swirling blizzards, where the groundskeepers could hardly keep the yard-lines and hash-marks visible. Think of all the games we’ve seen in monsoon-like downpours that turned the field into an acre of cleat-sucking mud. I even remember a Bears game I couldn’t see at all, because the field was completely shrouded in fog.
It was clear to me that this pigeonhearted decision, which should live in infamy, was yet another depressing, and in this case deeply symbolic, example of an America gone soft. Arrayed against us, all around the world, are implacable foes: lean and obdurate men, their eyes burning with unquenchable fire, stubborn and unyielding in their cause even in the face of certain death. Meanwhile, such pampered milksops have we become, such cringing, sniveling quake-buttocks, that we can’t even play football — and yes, we are talking about football here — in the snow.
Well, it seems I wasn’t the only one who felt this way. Here’s what Dennis Prager has to say about it.
6 Comments
It is because of lawyers. They’re everywhere.
Ill thought title Malcolm.
“Turn out the lights?”
Somebody might stump a toe. You wouldn’t Eric Holder on your tail, would you?
I agree that we are becoming (or have become) a nation of weenies, although there are plenty of groups I would exempt from this characterization. I think recent immigrants are an exception, as becoming a stranger in a strange land is a gutsy move, regardless of the circumstances. The military and their families are an exception. However, I think that American society in general is complacent, self-satisfied, and whiny.
I think the root causes are affluence combined with a generation of political leadership which strives to maintain the illusion that things are hunky dory, and hence there is no need to sacrifice or struggle. Jimmy Carter recognized this national malaise and was ridiculed for pointing it out, and no subsequent leader has been willing to invite similar ridicule for suggesting that the populace is anything but wise, brave, and otherwise entirely admirable. It is much easier to flatter than to point out flaws.
Do you agree?
Yes, Peter, I agree in general with both you and ‘Frederik Von smellsburg’ above — though I will say to FVS that we wouldn’t have such a litigious society if our body of law and culture of personal irresponsibility didn’t make lawsuits so attractive to potential litigants, and so enormously profitable for opportunistic lawyers.
JK, I never heard “stump a toe” before, but it makes perfect sense, given the closeness in meaning of “stump” and “stub”.
I guess it’s a Southern idiom. Thanks!
I’ll also add, Peter, that even though I rail against our lax approach to illegal immigration, and think that even our legal immigration policies need a dramatic tightening, it’s hard to blame the immigrants themselves; they are simply looking for a better life, as anyone would in their circumstances. I’d want to get the hell out of Mexico too.