Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let me file that under fuck it.

The lights are all blinking red.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Motown is Joe-Town!

When we show up, we win.

You are here: Home / Absent Friends / Float Like A Butterfly, Muhammed Ali

Float Like A Butterfly, Muhammed Ali

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Sportswriter Charles P. Pierce:

… He was an iconic human being in an era that produced icons with every turn of the television dial, every front page of every morning newspaper and, my god, most of them died young. John and Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. None of them ever made 50. None of them ever made old bones. Only Ali lived to see how he truly changed the world around him, how it had come to understand that some lives are lived beyond the mortal limits.

He was a transcendent athlete, first and foremost, every bit as skilled at what he did for a living as Michael Jordan or Pele. The greatest change in athletes over the span of his physical life is that big athletes got fast. LeBron James plays basketball and he is just about the same size as Antonio Gates, who is a tight end. When he first arrived at Wimbledon, Boris Becker looked like a college linebacker. Ali was tall for a heavyweight, bigger than anyone who was faster than he was and faster than anyone who was bigger.

You have to have seen him before he was stripped of his livelihood to appreciate fully his gifts as an athlete. Foot speed. Hand speed. Before it all hit the fan in 1968, Sports Illustrated put him in a lab with strobe lights and everything, to time the speed of his punches. The results looked something out of a special-effects lab. In one of his routines, the late Richard Pryor used to talk about sparring with Ali in a charity exhibition. A Golden Gloves fighter in his youth, as Pryor later put it, “you don’t see his punches until they comin’ back. And your mind be sayin’, ‘Wait a minute now. There was some shit in my face a minute ago. I know that.'” He was an accelerated man in an accelerated age. Saying he was “ahead of his time” was only the half of it. His time was all time.

That was what led to the rest of it—the opposition to the criminal stupidity that was being practiced by this country in Southeast Asia, stated in terms as fundamentally American as the First Amendment to the Constitution. “Congress shall make no law…” His stubborn insistence that his life was his own, that it did not belong to the sclerotic old gangsters who still ran boxing, nor to the sclerotic old men who still ran the government, with their wiretaps and their phony indictments and their lawbooks. He was too fast for them all to catch, ultimately, and too pretty for a country that was vandalizing its most beautiful elements. That stubbornness also likely led to his physical downfall. All gifts have their dark side. All debts come due…

The past is a foreign country… From that Playboy interview:

It wasn’t until 9:55 on a night last February that anyone began to take seriously the extravagant boasts of Cassius Marcellus Clay: That was the moment when the redoubtable Sonny Liston, sitting dazed and disbelieving on a stool in Miami Beach’s Convention Hall, resignedly spat out his mouthpiece—and relinquished the world’s heavyweight boxing championship to the brash young braggart whom he, along with the nation’s sportswriters and nearly everyone else, had dismissed as a loudmouthed pushover.

Leaping around the ring in a frenzy of glee, Clay screamed, “I am the greatest! I am the king!”—the strident rallying cry of a campaign of self-celebration, punctuated with rhyming couplets predicting victory, which had rocketed him from relative obscurity as a 1960 Olympic Gold Medal winner to dubious renown as the “villain” of a title match with the least lovable heavyweight champion in boxing history. Undefeated in 100 amateur fights and all 18 professional bouts, the cocky 22-year-old had become, if not another Joe Louis, at least the world’s wealthiest poet (with a purse of $600,000), and one of its most flamboyant public figures.

Within 24 hours of his victory, he also became sports’ most controversial cause cèlébre when he announced at a press conference that he was henceforth to be billed on fight programs only as Muhammad Ali, his new name as a full-fledged member of the Black Muslims, the militant nationwide Negro religious cult that preaches racial segregation, black supremacy and unconcealed hostility toward whites…

Haley: What or who made you decide to join the Muslims?

Clay: Nobody or nothing made me decide. I make up my mind for myself. In 1960, in Miami, I was training for a fight. It wasn’t long after I had won the 1960 Olympic Gold Medal over there in Rome. Herb Siler was the fellow I was going to fight, I remember. I put him on the floor in four. Anyway, one day this Muslim minister came to meet me and he asked me wouldn’t I like to come to his mosque and hear about the history of my forefathers. I never had heard no black man talking about no forefathers, except that they were slaves, so I went to a meeting. And this minister started teaching, and the things he said really shook me up. Things like that we twenty million black people in America didn’t know our true identities, or even our true family names. And we were the direct descendants of black men and women stolen from a rich black continent and brought here and stripped of all knowledge of themselves and taught to hate themselves and their kind. And that’s how us so-called “Negroes” had come to be the only race among mankind that loved its enemies. Now, I’m the kind that catches on quick. I said to myself, listen here, this man’s saying something! I hope don’t nobody never hit me in the ring hard as it did when that brother minister said the Chinese are named after China, Russians after Russia, Cubans after Cuba, Italians after Italy, the English after England, and clear on down the line everybody was named for somewhere he could call home, except us. He said, “What country are we so-called ‘Negroes’ named for? No country! We are just a lost race.” Well, boom! That really shook me up…

Haley: What do you have to say about the fact that many Negroes, including several Negro leaders, have said that they have no desire to be identified with a heavyweight champion who is a Black Muslim?

Clay: It’s ridiculous for Negroes to be attacking somebody trying to stand up for their own race. People are always telling me “what a good example I could set for my people” if I just wasn’t a Muslim. I’ve heard over and over how come I couldn’t have been like Joe Louis and Sugar Ray. Well, they’re gone now, and the black man’s condition is just the same, ain’t it? We’re still catching hell. The fact is that my being a Muslim moved me from the sports pages to the front pages. I’m a whole lot bigger man than I would be if I was just a champion prizefighter. Twenty-four hours a day I get offers—to tour somewhere overseas, to visit colleges, to make speeches. Places like Harvard and Tuskegee, television shows, interviews, recordings. I get letters from all over. They are addressed to me in ways like “The Greatest Boxer in the World, U.S.A.” and they come straight to me wherever they’re mailed from. People want to write books about me. And I ought to have stock in Western Union and cable companies, I get so many of them. I’m trying to show you how I been elevated from the normal stature of fighters to being a world figure, a leader, a statesman.

Haley: Statesman?

Clay: That’s what I said. Listen, after I beat Liston, some African diplomats invited me to the United Nations. And because I’m a Muslim, I was welcomed like a king on my tour of Africa and the Middle East. I’m the first world champion that ever toured the world that he is champion of…

Wesley Morris, in the NYTimes, “Muhammad Ali Evolved From a Blockbuster Fighter to a Country’s Conscience”:

… It wasn’t just the matches that were blockbusters. It was Ali himself. He was the most important political-cultural figure to survive the deadly tumult of the 1960s and flourish in the 1970s. Ali licked Liston, Frazier, Foreman and dozens of other men. But he was at the center of American culture in part because he had turned boxing into a condition of the American self: Punch or be punched. With him, boxing wasn’t just a sport but a referendum on the state of the country.

He had become larger than life, but without forgetting how much black lives matter. The legacy of his bodacious charisma was built to last well beyond his death on Friday. Ali was telegenic, funny, clever, blunt, fearless and, above all, politically principled. His beliefs transfixed and polarized the country: What would he say next; where would he take us? The short answer to that second question is “on a public journey.”

Ali was a politically black Zelig, but instead of merely lurking within the times, he shaped them. He was complicated and contradictory as both a man and an African-American, embracing and shedding radical black Islam, wielding racist imagery to rile opponents, refusing to playing the black clown for the press….

The news media took its sweet time coming around to “Muhammad Ali.” Many reporters kept calling him Cassius, in a childish, bear-poking style. So he had to fight for that, too. By 1977, when LeVar Burton’s Kunta Kinte chose in “Roots” to be whipped for refusing to repeat his new name, you can imagine a portion of the 30 million people who watched exhaling something like, “Oh. I get it!”

Nonetheless, Ali’s embrace of the pro-black, anti-integration Nation of Islam alarmed the country. Almost overnight, a cocky young fighter became a scary black man. In 1967, he claimed conscientious-objector status and refused the Army induction to fight in Vietnam, saying to the press: “I ain’t got no trouble with them Vietcong. It ain’t right. They never called me ‘nigger.’ ” His defiance brought out competing paradoxes: Until America reconciled its war with itself, how could it ask a citizen to fight somewhere else?

He was fined $10,000, sentenced to five years in prison, stripped of his boxing title and forced to wait three and a half years for the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction. He lost prime fighting years and gained honor. The roaring monster in Leifer’s photo now appeared on the cover of Esquire, in his boxing trunks, his bare chest shot with arrows just like poor, martyred St. Sebastian. Another astonishing transformation: The scary black man had become a national folk hero…

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  2. 2.

    Mary G

    John Scalzi has a good column on his blog:

    Let me talk a moment about Ali being both a black man and a Muslim. In the wake of his death, you’re going to see people saying that Ali transcended his race or his religion, or both of them, to become someone who belonged to all people. I think two things about this. First, it’s undeniable that people of all races and creeds admired him, his life and his accomplishments. I loved him as a child, when my understanding of him was simple, and I honored him as an adult, when my understanding of him was more complex.

    But — and this is the second thing — you cannot love or honor Ali properly without acknowledging that blackness and Islam are at the core of his greatness. It seems to me, and I think the events of his life bear this out, that the greatness of Ali — who he was — was did not come out to you, was not there for you, and in a fundamental way did not care what you thought of it. It was there, and you could come to it or not, and if you did, you had to take it on its on terms. On Ali’s terms. And Ali’s terms were: He was a black man, in America and in the world. He was a Muslim man, in America and in the world. He was who he was. He did not have to transcend those things about himself. You, however, might have to overcome your understanding of what you thought of both blackness and Islam to appreciate him. People did or did not; Ali went on regardless.

  5. 5.

    lamh36

    Someone on twitter “organized” a live-tweet of this Ali documentary on Netflix called I Am Ali.

    It was really good. I def recommend it if you have Netflix and want to hear Ali’s voice. Thhey used personal recordings Ali apparently made in his early years as backdrop to talking various figures in his life during his prime years before Parkinson’s.

    Hearing him talk to his daughters was very heartwarming…

  6. 6.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @raven:
    I was 12 when he beat Liston and did not understand the run up to that fight. But I do remember the uproar when he changed his name and I do think that highlighted a gap. As a kid I could not understand why people who care what he wanted to be called but I soon learned the significance & also the significant meaning to those who continued to call him Cassius Clay. As it became less and less acceptable to call him the word they really meant, ‘Cassias Clay’ was good enough for them. It was an early dog whistle

  8. 8.

    redshirt

    It’s still hard to believe that famous picture of a victorious Ali was taken in Lewiston, ME of all places. Hometown of Governor Paul LePage!

  9. 9.

    raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: It was getting there by then but it had already started. “The Times are a Changin” album got the ball rolling. “Hollis Brown, With God on Our Side and The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carrol” were intense.

  11. 11.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: I do get what you mean. My parents are too old to be technically Boomers (one born a couple of months before Pearl Harbor and the other during the war) but they were part of a big cultural change. Most of it kicking in around 1964.

  12. 12.

    Wag

    My grandfather, a Sicilian American born in Colorado around the turn of the last century, and grew up in a state whose politics were dominated throughout the 1920s by the Ku Klux Klan. Because there wasn’t a significant black presence in Colorado, the Klan instead focused it’s efforts on the Hispanic and Italian (conveniently Catholic) populations. Although I didn’t recognize this growing up, this prompted my grandfather to develop significant allegiance to the black civil rights movement. I can remember growing up watching him cheer for Mohamed Ali in every fight, as well as cheer for every black athlete the came along. Obviously, he was also a big fan of Joe DiMaggio.

    With the passing of Muhammad Ali, I’ve been reflecting back on my grandfather’s lesson of tolerance. It is given me a much deeper appreciation of him as a person.

  13. 13.

    lamh36

    Michael J. Fox Reflects on Friendship With Muhammad Ali

    The iconic boxer reached out to Fox in 2000 after the actor revealed that he too was battling the incurable neurological condition. In an interview with ABC News today, Fox said he locked himself in the bathroom to avoid any distraction from his kids and finally mustered up the courage to call Ali back.

    “I’m in the bathroom talking to Muhammad Ali. He didn’t say much. He just said, “With you in this fight, we can win,'” Fox told ABC News. “I cried.”

  15. 15.

    redshirt

    @raven: OT for this thread but since it was mentioned in a previous I wanted to ask you if you’ve seen the movie “Tropic Thunder” and if so what did you think?

  16. 16.

    Miss Bianca

    I remember really liking Muhammad Ali, but as a kid I just couldn’t bear to watch boxing – not that it was ever really on at our house, my father not being a fan – so unless there were clips on TV I never saw him fight. And I still have a hard time thinking about it – to watch Muhammad Ali go from his bright, vibrant, vibrating, cocky youth to his increasingly silenced and affected old age was really painful, and it just made me so angry at the waste. I know he was brilliant at his sport – none better – but his sport was so brutal, and took such a toll, that I couldn’t help but think it a shame he was so brilliantly gifted at something that destroyed him.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    I never really followed Ali (and was never into boxing), but I’ve learned a lot about him with all the information that’s been published in the last 24 hours. A fascinating person.

  20. 20.

    lamh36

    ok, the page keeps freezing and I have to keep reloading the site?

    What’s going on?

  23. 23.

    Miss Bianca

    @Wag: there’s a very disconcerting photo of a bunch of Klansmen in full regalia on a ferris wheel somewhere in CO in the 20s – like, they all just decided to don their robes and go out to…the amusement park. We had a copy of that photo at one of the libraries I used to work at. We kept it in the back office rather than have it out on the walls in the public part.

  25. 25.

    Trooptrap Tripetrope

    “Elvis was my close personal friend. He came to my Deer Lake training camp about two years before he died. He told us he didn’t want nobody to bother us. He wanted peace and quiet and I gave him a cabin in my camp and nobody even knew it. When the cameras started watching me train, he was up on the hill sleeping in the cabin. Elvis had a robe made for me. I don’t admire nobody, but Elvis Presley was the sweetest, most humble and nicest man you’d want to know.” – Muhammad Ali

  27. 27.

    lamh36

    Trump tweeted the following upon Ali’s death:

    @realDonaldTrump

    Muhammad Ali is dead at 74! A truly great champion and a wonderful guy. He will be missed by all!

    I don’t care if it makes me a petty Betty, but I am living for the amount of trolling going on, on twitter in response:
    ‏

    @strobist 12h12 hours ago

    @realDonaldTrump Would Ali have gotten a special exemption from your Muslim ban?

    Troy Osinoff ‏@yo 11h11 hours ago

    @realDonaldTrump you should probably Google what religion he was..

    @MariamVeiszadeh 14h14 hours ago

    @realDonaldTrump

    F

    Y

    I

    Donald

    #MuhammadAli was a MUSLIM.

    You know, the folks, you won’t let in your country.

    #TheGreatest

    @Arianna8927 11h11 hours ago

    @realDonaldTrump but he was Muslim and you implied last year there are no Muslim sports heroes.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    Ali’s embrace of the pro-black, anti-integration Nation of Islam alarmed the country

    This is not quite true. Or rather, it understates the matter. Detroit News journalist Greg Krupa writes about how mere blackness frightens many white people.

    The adults did not like Clay. When he recited his poetry and sounded angry and sometimes looked mean, they said they thought it was wrong.

    They did not like that he was loud.

    The adults had sometimes warned me about black people, who they called “colored.” They could be dangerous, some adults said.

    Ali’s conversion dialed the fear level up to 11 for some of these folks. They wanted a docile Negro, one who wore the false mask of humility donned by Joe Louis or Jackie Robinson.

    But Ali refused to play that game. And made people accept it.

  31. 31.

    Mnemosyne

    Kind of off the topic, except in a “this is the kind of world that Ali helped make possible” way — we’re sitting in a hotel bar watching the guests arrive for an Indian-Jewish wedding (Denesh and Feldman). The Indian half is a woman and a doctor, at least according to the directional signs.

  33. 33.

    MomSense

    My grandmother loved Ali because of his opposition to Vietnam and because she thought he was extraordinary. She let us stay up really late watching one of his fights and we were all crushed when he lost. And then I think they fought again and Ali won. I can still see her sitting really close to her little black and white tv completely engrossed.

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: He’s not the sharpest knife in the plastic chopstick drawer, so it may take a few retweets to penetrate.

  38. 38.

    Amir Khalid

    Muhammad Ali was a hero the world over. In the Muslim world because he was one of us, in Africa because he was one of us, among those stood up against war and for justice because he was one of us, among the physically afflicted because … He was one of us and he showed how to be the best.

  41. 41.

    Brachiator

    @Wag:

    I can remember growing up watching him cheer for Mohamed Ali in every fight, as well as cheer for every black athlete the came along.

    This reminds me of one of the people in the Ken Burns documentary on Jackie Robinson. This man’s father, maybe both his parents were deaf. The father was excited by Robinson’s example, and his refusal to give in to bigotry. He became a huge fan of the game and transmitted his love of and respect for Robinson to his son.

    ETA. Some of the best remembrances of Ali are the BBC News hour and other programs.

  45. 45.

    Anya

    For an Afghan boy, Muhammad Ali was the ‘man of steel’

    Throughout his 74 years of life, Ali managed to be many things to many people — a championship boxer, a showman, a black man and a Muslim.

    I discovered Ali as an Afghan immigrant to a strange country and now, because of his accomplishments and his bravery, I write about him as a journalist for the United States’ fourth-largest newspaper after having returned to my country of birth.

    For this, Ali, the man who has a name like mine, will always be my Muslim superhero — my man of steel.

  46. 46.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Miss Bianca:
    Despite what modern movies try to portray the KKK was popular and socially acceptable in the late teens & 20s. Not only did people not hide their membership many people trumpeted it and politicians even ran on their membership.

    As for their beliefs, the joke is what the Ks stand for, it is a misspelling of a slur on African-Americans, a K word slur for Jews and ‘Catholics’ spelled with a K. They hated every non-Anglo-Saxon non-mainstream Protestant. This is one of many reasons that blacks and Jews were often working together and that there were so many priests in those early civil rights marches. Being accepted by the new KKK and similar is one of the reasons Catholics felt comfortable moving to the GOP

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    @Anya: George Foreman has offered some of the most gracious and generous reflection on Ali. From NPR, BBC and other sources.

    . And I realize a part of me slipped away, and I called it the greatest part – Muhammad Ali because it was he who made me glimpse into boxing, same with Frazier. We looked into boxing by way of Muhammad Ali and then there we were talking about each other, boasting about each other, trying to knock one another out. We were one fellow. We really were.

    My life is never going to be the same without having to look to the left seeing did Muhammad hear my interview? Did – what did he have to say about that photograph? It’s gone now. A piece of me is gone forever.

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    @efgoldman

    Also, though not a comedy but including comedic elements and interludes, For the Boys, for which Bette Midler received an Oscar nomination.

  50. 50.

    lamh36

    @NotMax: I saw you post that previously, sorry, but I didn’t really seem any point in repeating it…

    Seems to me it’s only relative in response to say Ali saying Clay is the name taken from the slave owner who was the father of the namesake. As if saying that he was an “avid abolitionist and skilled politician/diplomat” changes the fact that he was the son of the man who own the slaves for which Muhammad Ali’s ancestoral family name “Clay” came from…

    I just saying…we don’t get to choose the name we are given at birth…but if we do decide to change that name…no amount of how noble and rigteous the name may be should matter right?

  52. 52.

    BBA

    @Amir Khalid: Ali wasn’t an orthodox Muslim until 1975. As I understand it, the Nation of Islam was based on Islam in the same way Mormonism was based on Christianity – some of the words are the same but there are vast differences. Nowadays the NoI has apparently become a Scientology front.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    @lamh36

    Posted for two reasons.

    1) As an historical tidbit related to the topic

    2) Acknowledging that the man renounced the sins of his father, similar to the way Ali renounced his original name.

  57. 57.

    Anya

    @Adam L Silverman: Thanks, Adam. That was a great read. When I saw that comic image this morning I wondered about the story behind it. I am so glad that racist John Wayne didn’t authorize DC to use his image. Glad he’s not part of this issue.

    @Mike J: I like

  59. 59.

    lamh36

    @Brachiator: on the doc I watched on Netflix, I Am Ali, they talked about when Ali fist went to London and how much he liked the way the people seem to treat him better than they did here in US.

    It even talked to a guy who was a big fan of Ali in Britain. Who wrote a poem or something for Ali and actually met him and recite it. Ali remembered the guy and even invited the guy to his home (in US I believe) and let the guy sleep over and tour his home.

  60. 60.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @Anya:
    Foreman was on the Tonight show shortly after the Rumble in the Jungle. He related the story of Archie Moore praying with Foreman in the dressing room before the fight, “Lord, please do not let Ali get hurt out there tonight”. The crowd laughed. I thought for a moment Foreman was going to wade into the audience. If looks could kill they would have all been dead anyway. It got very quiet. Somehow I do not think he was pleased with the results of that fight or the way people talk about it.

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    You could look at it another way, too — his parents were obviously familiar with American history and made that choice deliberately, so it’s no surprise that he would end up being such a strong supporter of civil rights.

    That makes his choice of a new religion and a new name not a rejection of what his parents taught him, but an extension and expansion of it.

  65. 65.

    Amir Khalid

    @BBA:
    True enough, but what of it? He held himself out as a Muslim and by all accounts was a good one. Muslim enough for me.

  67. 67.

    Anya

    @Schlemazel Khan: It’s human. It was an embarrassing defeat. I am sure he got over it but it must hurt at times. Anyway, I didn’t want to use “#AliBomaye out of respect for his feelings.

  68. 68.

    lamh36

    @Anya: The hashtag was explained in the doc. There was a combo hashtag #IAmAli (the name of the doc) and #AliBomaYe.

    In the doc, Ali manager at the time talked about how Ali was looking for a name to call Foreman as a bit of trash talking. Ali called out his usual trash talking names, but figured they would fit, and asked what name can he call Foreman and get the crowd going… and someone said, well the Zaire folks had a problem with the Belgians. So Ali said something like, the Belgians like Foreman or something, and the Zaireans (sp?) responded “Ali Boma Ye”, which apparently means “kill him” or something like that.

    Foreman was one of the folks who spoke in a separate segment on the fight and on Ali and Foreman called Ali a good friend and said of Ali… “boxing was just something he did…that was no way to define Ali…he was one of greatest men to appear on earth”

  69. 69.

    NotMax

    @Mnemosyne

    Yes. That Ali’s parents chose to grant honor to the man by naming their son after him also justifies the “avid abolitionist and skilled politician/diplomat” phrasing which lamh36 found so objectionable.

  70. 70.

    Anya

    Adam, are you still planning to write a post about The Killing Joke? I don’t understand why they didn’t use the team from Son of Batman movies. Their animation was superb. I know you’re not going to watch it and you might not care but from the little I’ve seen it’s visually unappealing.

  72. 72.

    Schlemazel Khan

    @lamh36: @Anya:
    I’m sure time heals and the current George Foreman seems to be a guy at peace with himself.

    I have not watched any of the coverage but wonder if they talk about the fight itself. They really ignored what Ali did in the media & even the Will Smith movie. The talk at the time was how he let Foreman punch himself out. But if you watch the fight that is not really true. Every time Foreman comes in to punch Ali is dodging but he always tags Foreman in the end. Given that Joe Fraser said Ali was the hardest puncher he had fought it become clear that Ali knew exactly what he was doing and that more than just tiring Foreman was woozy from repeated solid hits to the head. Reading Halley’s interview Ali always knew what he was doing in the ring. It is why he was the greatest boxer.

    His actively supporting civil rights and opposing the war despite the cost to himself is what made him The Greatest.

  73. 73.

    Anya

    @lamh36: I understand the history and what it means. All I am saying is it doesn’t give you good feelings when the whole crowd was yelling: Kill him, Ali! This doesn’t mean Foreman doesn’t love Ali it’s just a painful part of his history. I am sure he overcame and reinvented himself but still…

  74. 74.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anya: I am. I want to reread the comic first. The reason they didn’t use the team from the Son of Batman, which is also the team for the adaptations of the Nu52 Justice League movies, is to differentiate them. They’re basically running five lines: 1) adaptations of Batman stories in/close to current continuity; 2) adaptations of Justice League stories in the Nu52 continuity, which the last two have been. I expect the next one of these will be the Crime Syndicate story arc collected in the omnibus Nu52 Justice League #3; 3) adaptations of Superman stories regardless of continuity; 4) the new Teen Titans line that debuted with Justice League Vs Teen Titans; and 5) other stories outside of the Nu52 continuity, though I expect most of these to be Batman or Justice League stories. The Killing Joke is in this last one. They wanted the classic DC Animated Universe Batman voice actors to reprise their roles and they wanted to go with an animation style similar to, but not identical to the art in the actual comic. It also helps that Mark Hamill has long pushed to do this and indicated it was the one story he would definitely reprise his take on the Joker for.

    They’ve been very, very conservative with what they’ll adapt. The Green Lantern animated movies didn’t sell well and neither did the stand alone Wonder Woman movie. So this made them, in my opinion, overly cautious. The big risks seem to be taken when Bruce Timm pushes for them. His Justice League: Gods and Monsters and now The Killing Joke. I’d really love to see them do Mark Waid’s and Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come. I’ve just finished rereading that and plan to do a post on it in the next week or so. If you want a Batman Vs Superman story, its a good one in contrast to the recent Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.

    Give these a read for more info:
    http://io9.gizmodo.com/how-watchmen-killed-the-killing-joke-adaptation-1780102712
    http://www.empireonline.com/movies/features/batman-killing-joke-exclusive-inside-look/
    http://www.blastr.com/2016-6-2/mark-hamill-killing-joke-i-cant-imagine-how-people-are-going-react-this%E2%80%99

  75. 75.

    lamh36

    @NotMax:
    Meh. if you think I find it objectionable…fine

    Here’s what I imagine:

    Muhammad Ali: Clay was my slave name, I am no longer a slave, so I am no longer going by that name.

    Reporter: Cassius Marcellus Clay was a great man, an “vid abolitionist and skilled politician/diplomat”.

    ..

    Point in fact, Muhammad Ali’s father was named after Casisus Marcellus Clay, by his father (Herman H. Clay (March 1876 – February 1, 1954) who, as the time lined up, likely was a slave himself, or the child of a slave owned by the father of Cassius Marcellus Clay.

    Muhammad Ali was named after his father…as he was the first born son, I’d guess, so just as likely not because of the greatness of the original Cassisus Marcellus Clay. So saying he was named for Cassisus Marcells Clay is not quite linear is it.

    So again, why else done is need to be repeated?

  76. 76.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @lamh36: IOW, the merits of the original Cassius Clay don’t matter in Ali’s name choice. He decided to decide who he was.

  77. 77.

    rikyrah

    Mr. Ali was pure, unashamed Blackness. I felt about him while listening to him the same as when I first read Baldwin. Straighten that spine.

  78. 78.

    Anya

    @Adam L Silverman: that makes sense. I have Justice League: Gods and Monsters but haven’t watched it yet. Damian Wayne is my favorite part of the Nu52. IMO, he’s the best new character the last 20-years. I am happy to know the team at DC is committed to him. As for the Killing Joke, it’s a great story. I just wish they didn’t go for crazy. There was no need to inflict all the voilence on Barbara Gordon and Commissioner Gordon. And for folks who brought characters from the dead, I don’t understand why they can’t heal Barbara Gordon.

    Have you read any of the DC Rebirth? By the time I went to my local comic store it was sold out. Not sure if that’s an indication of popularity or it was only that store that ran out. Anyway, I really liked GA, Batman and Green Lantern.

  80. 80.

    seaboogie

    @Baud:

    I never really followed Ali (and was never into boxing), but I’ve learned a lot about him with all the information that’s been published in the last 24 hours. A fascinating person.

    Why I (mostly) read the comments before posting. You perfectly articulated my experience WRT Ali. I had a general awareness of him, but no understanding of why he was so revered. Very interesting and revelatory to gain a deeper appreciation of why Ali was such an icon on multiple levels.

    Also, how apt is Mohammed Ali’s life for a hip-hop/rap musical? Move over, Hamil-maniacs, this would be very current and topical, but much more uncomfortable for all the right reasons.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    I guess that’s where I’m getting confused — were Ali and his father named after the abolitionist, or is it a coincidence? It was not uncommon for former slaves to name their children after abolitionists to honor those people after emancipation.

  82. 82.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anya: Well Barbara Gordon is back, as of the current comics continuity, as Batgirl and is supposed to stay that way with the Rebirth adjustments – as far as I know. And we do see her teased at the end of Batman: Bad Blood. JL: Gods and Monsters is a very interesting take on the characters. Timm did a good job coming up with the concept. And, of course, its got the classic Timm style animation, which is nice to see.

  83. 83.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mnemosyne: And Ali chose to choose his own name. He rejected the name that was given to him because it came from the system. It is quite simple.

  85. 85.

    seaboogie

    @lamh36: I trolled that mofo too – on these same points. It helps me to cope with the heinousness of “his awfulness”. I try to hew to the Buddhist precept of “right speech”, but then I figure if Elizabeth Warren can go there, I can probably vent a little bit too….

  86. 86.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I was going off in a totally different direction of Ali’s choice to change his name making perfect sense given the history of his birth name, but I’ll veer off in a third direction and say why do people get so bent out of shape when men change their names but expect women to do it as a matter of course?

    Obviously, I understand why white people flipped the fuck out about Ali in the bad old days (racism), but there also seems to be this weird feeling that it’s shameful for a man to change his name, but not for a woman. It’s his name, he can change it if he wants to.

  87. 87.

    pseudonymous in nc

    I can only speak of my own experience growing up outside the US. My parents belonged to a white culture in the 60s that would use the n-word towards black people on the street but would buy Motown and Stax records and pack clubs to see black musicians over from America perform, because segregation was not the law of the land; that culture was the one that mobbed Ali as a superstar when he was in the country. That was the culture that embraced Marvin Gaye when he went to the northern coast of Belgium(!) to rescue himself from his demons.

    Ali projected proud black America to Europe. (And so did Frasier and Foreman, in slightly different ways.)

  88. 88.

    lamh36

    @Mnemosyne: Ali’s father was named for the abolitionist by his own father Herman Clay. The abolitionist’s father was named E. Clay and was one of the biggest slaveholders in the state of KY at the time of his birth. So one can infer from the facts that we know of the era, that the Clay line that Ali’s grandfather Herman came from was likely to be from slaves owned by the abolitionist father, which in fact would make Clay the “slave name” that Ali was referring to when he denounced it and became Muhammad Ali.

    Ali was named for his father. His father was named for the abolitionist. Knowing what we know about names being passed down, Ali was just as likely to have been named Cassius M. Clay Jr because is was the first born son, not necessarily cause of the greatness of his father’s name sake.

    All that to say, the greatness of the man has no bearing as to Muhammad Ali’s reason for no longer wanting to claim it, IMHO

  90. 90.

    Boidica

    While I admire the 1960s Ali, I’m trying to reconcile it with the 1980s Ali who supported Ronald Reagan’s reelection because he (Reagan) was trying to keep God in schools. A very complex man.

  91. 91.

    lamh36

    @Boidica: Right and Jackie Robinson was a Republican and Nixon supporter right, if I recall?

    There all complex men, not perfect by any means.

  92. 92.

    NotMax

    @lamh36

    Perhaps your eyes glimpsed over the “Strictly FYI” bit in the comment.

    1) Why repeat? Because it is on topic, does not detract from Ali (indeed, expands upon his history) and because not everyone reads every thread. Original mention was on a below the fold Trump/Open thread – there are certainly folks who don’t care to read about Trump.

    2) Don’t give a fig about your imaginary conversations, you’re still a nice person regardless.

  93. 93.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: I’ve always thought that it is the complexity that makes them interesting. And their ability to overcome their own internal contradictions that contribute to making them great.

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    I guess that’s where I’m getting confused — were Ali and his father named after the abolitionist, or is it a coincidence?

    Clay, Senior and his son were named in honor of the abolitionist. He was not named, as some might have believed, for anyone who ever owned his enslaved ancestors.

    But the rejection of his slave name is based on the simple fact that very, very few black people in America (or any of the Americas) ever knew or were able to keep their ancestral African names.

  95. 95.

    seaboogie

    @Boidica:

    I’m trying to reconcile it with the 1980s Ali who supported Ronald Reagan’s reelection because he (Reagan) was trying to keep God in schools. A very complex man.

    See blogmaster, John Cole. People are complex and change their viewpoint, and have their reasons for doing so.

  97. 97.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: It would be interesting. I’m never quite sure why they chose the stories they do. Some is certainly based on sales projections derived from how the comics did. But some title you’d have thought they’d have done by now. It may just be that they’re in the pipeline somewhere. Or that they’re not sure they can recreate the art style in the animation. For instance, the aforementioned Kingdom Come. I always thought that the Loeb Batman story arcs: The Long Halloween and the spin off Catwoman stories would make excellent animated movies. As would the Hush story arc. I also think you could about five arcs out of Johns’ run on Justice Society, maybe more given that there were three crossovers with Justice League that would also work as animated films. And the Justice League arcs from the same time period would translate well to animated movies too. As would the Sinestro Corps War and Blackest Night story arcs from Johns’ run on Green Lantern.

  98. 98.

    justawriter

    Interesting how many of the recollections recall how slow the media was to call Ali by his chosen name but neglect to mention that the major exception was Howard Cosell, who was of Jewish descent. I am one of the few of my generation who is an unabashed Cosell fan who believe, as he wrote in his autobiography, that he saw himself as a journalist who covered sports rather than a sportscaster, those ex-jocks who get TV jobs because they are ex-jocks. I think Cosell was among the first in the media to understand that Ali was an important social milestone in the history of America, something that rest of the media didn’t get for decades.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @lamh36:

    . Right and Jackie Robinson was a Republican and Nixon supporter right, if I recall?

    Of course many black folk still voted Republican in the 1950s and early 1960s. Also, Robinson felt that Kennedy was weak and disingenuous with respect to civil rights and thought that Kennedy had signalled his hostility towards blacks by selecting Lyndon Johnson to be his VP in the 1960 election.

  100. 100.

    Ruckus

    @Boidica:
    Human complexity, as already explained. And. Reagan was an actor. Not necessarily a good one but he did have stage presence. The times were turbulent politically, Vietnam angered a hell of a lot of people, on both sides and many were angered that it was a democrat that was responsible for the massive buildup. Nixon ended the war. Of course it took a while to found out that he (and Reagan) played us for fools (and some have never figured that out.) All of this is to say, it’s a complex bit of history as well as just being complex people. Look on this blog. Most of us agree on the general direction politics should take us, but have many differing ideas on how to get there. Add in all the other 300+ million humans in the US and notice how complex anything is.

  102. 102.

    Aleta

    Here’s something Ali said about his mother. Her maiden name was Odessa Grady. (Her grandfather on her mother’s side, whose last name was Morehead, was the child of a woman named Dinah, who was enslaved, and a white man named Morehead. Enslaved women who had children of white men were most likely raped, another thing to keep in mind about names assigned in slavery. Anyway, that child, Tom Morehead, grew up to fight in the Civil War in the 122nd US Colored Troops.)

    Ali said:

    “My mother is a Baptist, and when I was growing up, she taught me all she knew about God. Every Sunday, she dressed me up, took me and my brother to church, and taught us the way she thought was right. She taught us to love people and treat everybody with kindness. She taught us it was wrong to be prejudiced or hate. I’ve changed my religion and some of my beliefs since then, but her God is still God; I just call him by a different name. And my mother, I’ll tell you what I’ve told people for a long time. She’s a sweet, fat, wonderful woman, who loves to cook, eat, make clothes, and be with family. She doesn’t drink, smoke, meddle in other people’s business, or bother anyone, and there’s no one who’s been better to me my whole life.”

    Ali also said that his mother feared his father, who went to court many times for beating her.

  103. 103.

    Mnemosyne

    @lamh36:

    All that to say, the greatness of the man has no bearing as to Muhammad Ali’s reason for no longer wanting to claim it, IMHO

    I agree with you. I was going down a path where Ali’s choosing a new name wasn’t a rejection of that previous history, but an extension of it, but I was on my second drink, so it may not have come out coherently. Basically, abolitionism was only the seed of later civil rights, not really the thing itself, so of course the civil rights generation felt a need to grow past it.

  104. 104.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: I should just give up all astonishment at your Google-Fu.

    ETA: Canon City…why does that not surprise me..but I may want to do some research on this story. My friend Mike was asking me for something historical for Colorado Central. Let’s see what he makes of that one. > : >

  106. 106.

    Mnemosyne

    @Amir Khalid:

    If you’ve never read it, you should find a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Partly because it’s one of the masterworks of American biography (Alex Haley wrote it with Malcolm) but also because it explains some of the differences between Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam and actual Islam. NoI is one of our quintessential American religions, like Mormonism or Christian Science. A lot of people switched from NoI to Sunni or Sufi when some of the bad stuff about Elijah Muhammad started to come out.

  107. 107.

    Brachiator

    @Mnemosyne:

    . I was going down a path where Ali’s choosing a new name wasn’t a rejection of that previous history, but an extension of it,

    Actually, Ali’s selection of a new name was definitely a repudiation of white history. This is also consistent with NOI’s view of itself as a liberation movement, not a civil rights organization.

  110. 110.

    NotMax

    @Aimai

    So sorry you cannot distinguish between historical perspective and explanation.

    But that’s your lookout.

  111. 111.

    hueyplong

    If you were 6 when he beat Liston in Miami, 22 when he had that sad parking lot fight in Vegas when all he had left was the ability to keep standing when repeatedly be hit, and you understood fully well what it meant for people to keep calling him Cassius Clay, you had a wild ride as a devoted fan, regardless of whether you understood much of the other stuff that constantly swirled around him or was generated by him.

    I’d recommend When We Were Kings to anyone who wasn’t alive in 1974 and doesn’t fully understand what a shocker that fight was or the context of Ali as a guy important to people outside the United States.

    Looking back on his life from 2016 is so very different from watching it play out in real time.

  113. 113.

    evodevo

    @Brachiator: Yes. This. I admired him for it. Instead of being a “house Negro” he was a man who was proud of who he was and said so. You either accepted that or not – he didn’t back down.

  114. 114.

    Ivan X

    @Omnes Omnibus: You know, for a movie I had fond memories of, I watched MASH again recently and found its sexism unconscionable, and actually had to turn it off halfway through. I’m pretty accepting of context such as when things are made and don’t typically get worked up about this sort of thing (I’m a fan of 70’s exploitation movies, so what does that tell you), but I really found MASH in a class of its own, in which women are pets for men at best and humiliated for laughs at worst (repeatedly). And it wasn’t in a “making a comment by being extreme” kind of way, it didn’t have that kind of self awareness. The central characters may be charming in their anti-authoritarian irreverence but unfortunately they’re also chauvanistic bullies. I’m surprised its reputation has held up and it isn’t called out for how it portrays women.

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