Yesterday, in response to the postponement of a football game, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said:

“I think we’ve become wussies. … We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt 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.”

Hmm. It’s pretty obvious he’s trying to score some political points here, although it’s hard to imagine why, seeing as how the elections were last month. Also: “you people suck, you should be more like ____” anything is bound to be a vote-loser.

Meanwhile, pundit Tucker Carlson says:

“I believe fervently in second chances… But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the President of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale.”

The first thought which sprang to my mind on hearing these stories was that I’d like to see Carlson and Rendell have a debate about the Chinese human and animal rights records. That could be interesting.

More seriously, though; it’s interesting to me that these two are actually trying to argue for semi-reasonable points: that they ought to have played the game on Sunday, and that people are too forgiving of Vick. And yet, they make these points in such an obnoxious and hyperbolic fashion that there’s really nothing to do but ridicule them for it.