Hey Brother, Can You Spare a Dime...?

I don't know about you but I think that Governor Rendell of Pennsylvania got it exactly right the other day.

He critcized the NFL for postponing the football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings on December 26th.

Why the postponement you ask? Ostensibly because of the snow.

Why, really, you persist?

Well Rendell thinks, and I agree, that it's because we, as a people, are unwilling to step up to the hard tasks that encumber our lives.

I'm not talking about all of the men and women who work their fantails off doing the country's business. They are much more the heroes of our culture than the overpaid morons on the field.

I'm talking about the deferring of responsibility and the denial of circumstance that plagues our society.

It's always someone else's fault and we are the victims. Nick Kristoff, in today's Times, writes about teaching our kids Chinese and Spanish as a way of preparing them for the realities of business and daily life that will be theirs in the future.

We don't seem to care about that. We don't see the necessity of being well educated and prepared. We postpone a football game because it will be uncomfortable (and between two teams that live in the snow belt, especially the Vikings to whom snow is a way of life...! Jeez!!)

What would it have been like in the past if people had postponed the chores of their lives because it was "uncomfortable?"

What would the settlers have done? Too hard to plant crops? No food. Too hard to chop wood? No heat in winter. Too hard to hew trees? No house. Too hard to travel over dangerous, uncharted territory to get to the West? No California as we know it.

Too hard to play football in the snow (John Madden, where art thou...?) Are you kidding?

Football is meant to be played in the snow and rain and mud. It's better that way!

Ever see the Mark Wahlberg portrayal of the Eagle's Vince Papale in the wonderful movie, "Invincible?"

There's a scene in which he is playing a pick up touch football game in a parking lot at night lit only by car headlights.

They're playing...OMG...in the rain! And, man, were they having fun. Anybody who has ever done that knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Given the mood of the NFL and the population in general...that pick up game would have been cancelled due to inclement weather. I wonder what Vince thinks about the postponement of the Eagles game. I wonder...

But that's who we have become. We sit on our aft section with a beer and chips and let the world catch up and pass us by because it's "too hard."

Too hard to tell the truth about war(s) and the deficit and health care and Wall Street and obesity and education.

We want everything right now with no personal effort. Push a button or, better yet, give a voice command, and voila...there it is...whatever you want. Without doing anything tangible or effortful to get it.

I walked 5 miles uphill... both ways, mind you... barefoot, in the snow to get to a one room school house so I would have enough learnin' to get out of this one-horse town and make something of myself in the big city. And when I arrived I only had ten cents in my pocket. And look at me now...!

In my dreams...!