Chilled machismo

It's supposed to be 17 degrees or so with windchills in the single digits tomorrow night for the Bills-Ravens divisional playoff game, which of course means only one thing to the Bills Mafia: Let the ash get white in the Weber and throw another hunk of meat on there. 

They're hardy folk, these people in the mouth of the lake-effect shotgun. Seventeen degrees? Pffft. Seventeen degrees is Josh-Allen-jersey-over-a-hoodie weather. It's a pair of mittens, a Bills stocking cap, and let's gooooo.

In this way they symbolize the America we're supposedly getting Monday, an America of flex and swagger and look-at-us-cross-eyed-and-we'll-kick-your-ass. It's the America of the Ice Bowl coming back in full throat, an America of Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi and the Cowboys and Packers toughing it out on a frozen field in minus-13 tempera-

I'm sorry, what?

Oh. I see.

Turns out the flex-ers and swaggerers of the incoming second Trump regime are more talk than substance, same as their fearless leader. No winter soldiers, they, it seems. With the forecast in Washington calling for a high of 23, the festivities are being moved inside to the Capitol rotunda, giving their chilled machismo a chance to thaw out.

Twenty-three degrees, for pity's sake. Somewhere Tom and Vince must be holding their sides and howling, and somewhere else Jersey Guy surely is calling them sissies, paper tigers and big ol' weather wimps.

"Alpha males, my ass," he's sneering. "More like Alpha-Bit Males."

And, sure, I get it, none of the oligarchs and tech bros who are about to cash in want to see doddery old Fearless Leader catch his death and check out like William Henry Harrison. William Henry, after all, lasted only a few weeks because he decided to shed his overcoat on a freezing Inauguration Day and caught pneumonia. Some would say that was a stupid thing to do; those of us from Indiana would simply regard it as typical Hoosier behavior.

Anyway, Donald John Trump will take the oath in cozy comfort, and henceforth will be known as Big Hat, No Cattle Don.  Or Bluster-No-Muster Don. Or Not As Tough As JFK Or Barack Obama Don, considering we're reminded JFK took the oath on the Capitol steps in windchills of 7 degrees, and Obama in roughly the same in 2009.

Meanwhile, in Buffalo, the forecast is not only for 17 degrees at gametime, but also the possibility of some snow from a weak band off Lake Erie.

To which Jersey Guy and the rest of the Bills Mafia would undoubtedly sneer again: "'Some snow'? Hell, if ain't a foot, it ain't snow."

No phony toughness in that.