Refrain for a moment from cherry picking the beautiful things Muhammad Ali said…
Consider instead the total of Ali’s words. By far, most of what he said was basically, “I am the best.” The second most common thing was, “I will publicly ridicule those who oppose me.” And there was also a large dose of, “I don’t like the people in power right now.”
Sounds a lot like Donald Trump.
So what was the public reaction to Muhammad Ali? At the time, he was polarizing. At the time, many people vehemently hated him. Sports writers likened him to “unwashed punks who picket and demonstrate” and said “boxing should throw Clay (Ali) out on his inflated head.”
Even Sports Illustrated labeled him, “The Louisville Lip.”
The New York Times official policy was to refuse to refer to Ali as the Heavyweight Champion while continuing until 1970 to call him “Cassius Clay.”
Many Americans are appalled that Trump calls people names.
And this past week Hillary said Trump couldn’t insult his way to the presidency.
Look at Ali’s greatest fights.
He called Joe Frazier names. Some wires vile and personal, Frazier never quite forgave Ali. Ali said Joe was ignorant and he likened him to a gorilla. He called him, “chump,” “impostor,” “amateur” and “tramp.” Ali also said Frazier and his black supporters were “Uncle Toms.” In the build-up to “The Thrilla in Manila,” Ali called Frazier, “the other type of negro,” “ugly,” “dumb,” and “gorilla,” while waving around a hand-held toy gorilla he used with the media when taunting Frazier.
The result was a lot of free press to promote the Muhammad Ali brand.
Sound familiar?
Most of what Ali said regarding his opponents served to increase interest in fights. There wasn’t much more to it than that. He gave you the impression he was just having fun and you were in on the joke. Granted, he went too far with Joe Frazier, but Frazier didn’t help himself either. George Foreman was also on the receiving end of some of Ali’s best lines, but he saw it for what it was. He was great for a sport that has proven since then that it needs personalities to sell it.
KCC could use a little of that Paul personality, speaking of…
He went way beyond any kind of civil discourse with Frazier. He single-handedly ruined that poor man’s life. I always keep that in the back of my mind when people go on about how great a person he was. When he was young he was a complete a-hole.
ANOTHER STUPID COMMENT BY THE FINGER PAINTER.
HEARNE…JUST BECAUSE THIS GUY PAINTS KIDS CARTOON CARICATURES
GIVES HIM NO AUTHORITY TO WRITE ANOTHER WORTHLESS PIECE.
Ali was a showman. His job was to use his bragging to sell tickets. There was almost
nothing personal about his talk. No racial references…no mean insults…
no out of bounds lies….no putting people down….no harassing of women as
a game…no calling his opponents guilty of criminal acts like rape and
murder.
Then you have trump who racist/offensive/vile/comments were meant
as meanness and hate. He calls people murderers and rapists.
INsults everyone he comes in contacrt with (except his daughter who he wants
to sleep with)…he’s nasty…filthy (reference to Kelly) he’s a cheat/scammer/
and is guilty of crimes. He changes his mind every day and was never
concerned about peace or living in harmony….only cheating people out of
their hard earned money.
I’ve seen a lot of articles…but valentine this is the most incorrect article
I’ve seen in a long time. Comparing ali who worked for unity and equality
to the negative piece of sh*t trump was as stupid an analogy as I have seen
in a long time.
Go back to finger painting your mickey mouse artwork. You don’t know
sh*t.
You’re a simple artist with little talent besides being the equivalent of
a carney roadside painter. Your article is pure crap.
Hearne…just when you get some excellent write ups you let clowns
like valentine write pure journalistic crap.
He has no idea what he’s talking about.
Get him a job at the North Platte county news. They can use a
intern there!
Stop these idiotic pieces of trash.
Compaing trump and ali is like comparing hitler and mother Teresa!
I am not pro-Trump or anti-Ali. I am just saying both men had a similar way of promoting their brand….and you are factually incorrect about “nothing personal about his talk. No racial references…no mean insults…no out of bounds lies….no putting people down.”
p.s….Hearne/glaze/korowackjob and stomper:
The trump campaign just two weeks after getting the nomination is in full
blown disarray.
Just a matter of time til in implodes and disintegrates as they have a
lack of organization and money.
Maybe trump said “screw it.” I’ve got a great life what do I need 200k
a year and all theseheadaches when I can be banging my foreign born alien
botox inflated wife”.
Hopefully he makes it to the convention.
I can now see even clearer Hillary landslide of getting over 380 electoral
votes and burying the republican party forever!
Where’s southy and whiny and wislon and chuckles and glaza to defend this guy? Their hiding
thinking of what went wrong and who they can nominate in 2024 (if they’re still
around
You’re not suggesting he wouldn’t have been presidential material, are you?
He was an anti-American, draft-dodging, wanna be Black Panther-cum-Muslim. Now, we are going to suffer through endless hagiographies of the “Great” man on every news feed south of Santa Clause until, finally, in a Jerry Lewis, end of the telethon moment, some flat liner puke, disguised as a news anchor on MSNBC screams into the camera, “GO KILL YOURSELF WHITEY!!!!!
Just brutal.
Flags at half mast?
Obama probably wants him to lie in state in front of the Vietnam Memorial he was too busy to visit on Memorial Day. The “Movement” he symbolizes has grown exponentially and morphed into the slug-thug pieces of shit we saw yesterday, at the Trump Rally, sucker punching, assaulting, tossing rocks and eggs at a terrified woman and burning the American Flag.
As Clay’s apotheosis drones on, with millions of anecdotal accounts of touching the “great” man’s robe and seeing the light, we can take solace, surrounded and ruled by Statist thugs, that the man that “Shook the world” shook himself until he died.
From 1964 to 1980, Clay/Ali gifted the world with a string of spectacularly insensitive comments that would get any modern white man socially exiled to Pluto for daring to utter their equivalent:
Here are some quotes from the “Great Man”.
“Integration is wrong. The white people don’t want integration. I don’t believe in forcing it….”
—1964 interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal
“The white man want me hugging on a white women, or endorsing some whiskey, or some skin bleach, lightening the skin when I’m promoting black as best.”
—1966 interview with Sports Illustrated
“My enemies are white people, not Viet Congs or Chinese or Japanese.”
—1967 interview regarding the draft
“All Jews and gentiles are devils….Blacks are no devils….Everything black people doing wrong comes from (the white people—drinking, smoking, prostitution, homosexuality, stealing, gambling—it all comes from (the white people).”
—1969 interview with David Frost
“Every intelligent person wants his child to look like him. I’m sad because I [don’t] want to blot out my race and lose my beautiful identity? Chinese love Chinese—they love their little slanted-eyed, pretty brown-skinned babies. Pakistanis love their culture. Jewish people love their culture. Lotta Catholics don’t wanna marry nothing but Catholics, they want their religion to stay the same. Who wanna spot up yourself and kill your race? You a hater of your people if you don’t want to stay who you are.”
—1971 BBC interview with the portentously named Michael Parkinson
“A black man should be killed if he’s messing with a white woman. And white men have always done that….And not just white men—black men, too. We will kill you, and the brothers who don’t kill you will get their behinds whipped and probably get killed themselves if they let it happen and don’t do nothin’ about it.”
—1975 interview with Playboy
“You know the entire power structure is Zionist. They control America; they control the world.”
—1980 interview with India Today
Jeezus chuck…your head has to have exploded.
Ali passed away and you tried to beat the GREATEST DOWN!
Your fellow racist Trump has his worst week ever. Said Mexican/muslim
and even female judges can’t be fair in their rulings. His campaign
is like a dumpster fire. Every major republican officeholder called
him a racist and even Ronald Reagans kid said he would not vote
for trump. Morning Joe (a big trump fan) said trump is not fit to be
president….ryan said the same….and even the glaza has got to be
having second thoughts.
Let’s all pitch in a buck and have valentine do a pic of chuck’s head
exploding because all his comments and his hero’s are going down the
drain.
wow…at this rate Hillary will have all the republicans voting for her!
this has got to be hard on southy/winey/glaza/kerowackjob/chuck and
probably even hearne.
And glaza has already started looking for roadkill on alternate 69!
But wait…its another day and another chance for dumpster to screw up
again.
Hillary gets nomination today and then the onslaught really starts.
When Obama endorses her you could say ITS ALL OVER BUT THE
CELEBRATING!
I have painted Harley, many times.
FREEDOM OF SPEECH, CHUCK TELLS THE TRUTH, HE TELLS THE TRUTH, HE TELLS THE TRUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WITH NO BS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
funny how there are replies to a comment that hasn’t even
posted by hearne.
something fishy! hahahahahaha!
🙂
Tommy Sotomayor about Ali.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lonpCpbwglo
Harley’s comments are so odd.
I picture him as The Grim Reaper wearing a ‘Life Is Good’ T-shirt
your head probably just exploded valentine. Where did hearne find
you to write articles.
Seen better stuff in Weekly reader marky
And the artwork. Your paint by number renditions make the felt
Elvis painting I saw at the gas station in Eldon, Missouri look
like a masterpiece.
Comments aren’t odd. You and your comments are.
Valentine: Some pretty good stuff. Trump is a lot like Cassius Clay (I say Cassius Clay because that’s how I see him, and it is no different that Trump demanding the prefix Mister.) Trump is very much like Ali, in that they are not afraid to call people what they are, but, there in lies the danger, when it expands to calling people what they are not. They were both showmen, the barkers at a carnival, the ones whose jobs are to get you into the tent. So we exaggerate a little (Mexican Judge, born in Ohio). Trump reminds me of the workman who shows up to build something, with his only tool, a hammer, where every problem is a nail. Including all of the candidates, I think we have the worst crop ever not selected by a majority of voters, from Republican independent delegates to Democrat super delegates.
Yes, Harley, there is hope for you yet, as I do not have a habit of voting a straight ticket. I think I kind of surprised a few friends with that tidbit. However, my vote remaining secret, that’s as far as I go. I vote for the best candidate, and I am not a mind-numbed robot. Candidates have to earn my vote. Yes, I know about vote harvesting. I know about the attempts to discount voting blocks, from the military on the left to the homeless on the right. I know why the bars are supposed to be closed on election day. I was a lobbyist. If I were to return to that profession, I would tell people that their choices are so bad that they really ought not to vote. That way my promise of 200 votes in a district would carry more of the candidate/elected official’s attention. There is no profit in either side approaching a partisan whose vote is known. One side can count on his vote, and the other side need not waste the time. Hence, the uninformed voter. I do not care how you vote, just please, please, please vote and keep me away from the temptation of controlling what you see as a free and wonderful exercise of Democracy.
You were a lobbyist? That must have been interesting.
As always, Cowboy, great comments, even if I disagree with your politics. Your experiences give you insights that most of us do not have.
About the only thing you said that I want to challenge just a bit is your statement “of the candidates, I think we have the worst crop ever not selected by a majority of the voters.” One can never say never but it is parties that select the candidates, not voters for the most part. Especially in presidential politics. In reality, even voters as a whole do not select the winners. It is the voters in about a dozen or so counties in about a dozen or so states. My vote doesn’t count in Kansas and a Republicans’ vote doesn’t count in California.
Mark, I would have liked a little more meat on the bone but I think you are accurate in saying that both men were trying to promote their brand with their comments. When Trump stepped into the political arena however, and decided to run for the presidency, the comparisons become baseless.
I feel sorry for those that only judge Ali on his position as a conscientous objector and the insults he threw at his opponents to promote his fights. They missd a heck of a life.
STOMP/GLAZA
Hear about trumps campaign money problems.
some staffers may have to hold their checks.
I guess dumpster didn’t sell enough hats this month.
Maybe he’ll declare bankruptcy AGAIN!!!!!!!!!
Sound familiar?
There is no little incongruity to Clay’s claims of “conscientiously objecting” to the military while cashing checks for administering beatings to his opponents in the ring. Clay was a “conscientious objector” in the same way, that those who spit, threw sucker punches, rocks, eggs, bottles and terrorized women in San Jose are “protestors”. Clay was far left, Muslim-anti-American racist who condoned violence against other Americans and those “protestors” were far left, Fascist thugs who visited violence on Americans with the temerity to exercise their Right of Assembly and Right of Free Speech.
No one “missed a heck of a life”. If you could fog a mirror and were not in a coma, you were inundated with a constant flow of information, accolades and kudos from the press on “The Most Famous Person In The World”. His real accomplishments were in sports, in the ring, in an atavistic, animalistic blood sport where he is known as a guy who “could take a punch”. Outside of the ring, he was a tool, used by the Nation of Islam and the usual Fascists who bring us “Hope And Change”.
He might have set a record for the boxer who ate the most right hand leads. That is his real epitaph.
Ali’s greatest triumph was escaping the clutches of Elijah Muhammed of the Nation Of Islam, the Black Muslims. Unlike Malcolm X he exited alive.