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don’t think I’ll see the new movie on Muhammad Ali (and
called Ali, starring the worthy Will Smith). I’ve had
Ali pretty much all my life; my life has spanned the time of Ali.
I remember — though I was quite young — when he avoided
the draft and converted to an angry, fist-shaking Islam, angering
and disturbing many grown-ups. I remember his many talk-show appearances,
such as on Dinah Shore. I remember his mugging with Howard
Cosell — all of it.
I especially
remember — I’m not even going to check the date —
September 15, 1980. I’m almost sure of that date. It was the
day on which an older, fading Muhammad beat Leon Spinks, who had
taken away his crown, to regain the crown. It was a great moment
in sports, similar to Nicklaus’s final victory at the Masters
in 1986, and to Willie Shoemaker’s riding the horse that won
the Derby in that same year. (By the way, remember how merciless
we used to be toward Spinks for his looks? Could one get away with
that now? I sort of hope not.)
And yet the
canonizing of Ali has gone a little too far, I think. I believe
he was responsible for much ill: the advent of trash-talking, the
glorification of bragging, the embrace of bad manners, all that
“I Am the Greatest” BS. We now have a coarser, viler,
more vulgar America; the gentleman athlete seems so quaint, so far-away,
almost ridiculous. And Ali is partly responsible for that, is maybe
the starter of it.
I have some
other memories of Ali: I remember when he was in Beirut, when we
had hostages there. He was with an Arab mob, which was chanting
(in Arabic) “Death to America.” Ali was pumping his fist
along with them. He later said that he hadn’t understood what
the mob was saying: but the sight was chilling. Ali, at a minimum,
gave aid and comfort to that sort of thing.
When he ducked
Vietnam, he said, famously, “I ain’t got no quarrel with
the Vietcong.” This is a long way from Wilson; it’s a
long way from Kennedy (“bear any burden, pay any price”).
One thing I always felt when I was small, and that I was certain
of when I grew a little older, is that — the question of war
aside — I had a “quarrel” with anyone who would persecute
other human beings. Did we have a “quarrel” with Hitler?
He hadn’t attacked us; Japan had; but he — stupidly —
declared war on us. We had a quarrel with him because of who he
was and what he did.
I think of
later scenes of Muhammad: His American-saint act at the Atlanta
Olympics. His mute handshake with Nicklaus on the 18th green at
Valhalla, in Kentucky, before the PGA — two giants of the century,
meeting each other for the first time.
Jack Valenti,
rep of the movie industry, has called Ali “the spokesman for
Muslims in America.” Sad thing is, the Muslims could do worse.
A lot worse.
 Speaking
of boxing: We now have the news that the abominable Mike Tyson is
wearing, on his gut, a tattoo of the abominable Che Guevara. Really,
that’s perfect.
And
speaking of abominable Communists: The Showtime channel is set to
air, on January 27, a movie on Castro called, inevitably, Fidel.
(The use of that first name — as one used to use “Ike”
— is often a sign of love for the dictator. And it’s something
that gives freedom-loving Cubans heartache. It’s not unlike
the cozy “Uncle Joe” for Stalin.) One certainly can’t
have high hopes for this movie, given the entertainment industry’s
record on Castro, which is similar to Monica Lewinsky’s record
on Bill Clinton.
The more I
study the Cuban issue, the more I think — maybe just hope —
that someday, perhaps far into the future, American elites will
sit up in horror and say, “My God, what did I do?”
Speaking
of dunces (were we?): Right before Christmas, they — someone
— did a round-up of celebrities and what they wanted for Christmas.
The actor George Clooney — who’s been tiffing with Bill
O’Reilly — said, “I want one day when nobody is getting
shot at. Call a truce for a day.” This struck me as a child’s
response — and that’s a thought I have often had about
contemporary liberalism: that it is the thought-world, or feelings-world,
of children, of people who really never grew up.
Consider the
implied moral randomness of the actor’s response: People are
just shooting at each other, you know, and shooting at each other
is bad, man, and we should all be, like, friendly and whatnot.
There is no hint of recognition of what the shooting is for, why
this nation found it necessary to shoot (as a matter of self-defense,
and the preservation of lives). And if it’s right to pursue
those who murdered us in our thousands and have vowed to murder
thousands or millions more, it’s certainly right to pursue
them on December 25.
But back to
the thought-world of children: No one should make more money than
anyone else. No one should have a Mercedes while someone else has
a beat-up Geo, or no car at all. There shouldn’t be any war.
The government should take care of everybody. No one should be allowed
to use any of nature. The minimum wage ought to be a zillion dollars.
And so on.
When I was
small, there was a poster — extremely popular — on our
kitchen wall: “War is harmful to children and other living
things.” Even as a child, I thought, “No, it isn’t
— not necessarily. It wasn’t harmful to Anne Frank. It
was the only chance Anne had of surviving — if somebody was
willing to fight the evil oppressing her. What was truly harmful
was nobody caring, nobody taking up arms, everyone just sitting
on the sidelines, leaving the oppressors unopposed.”
It could be
— and this is a thought for a long, non-Impromptus-like essay
— that the adoption of “conservative” thought is
a matter of growing up, of becoming adult, of putting away childish
things. The worst thing about childish liberals? They call their
views “idealistic,” when they’re, in fact, either
foolish or malicious. Funny how the likes of Arthur Laffer and Larry
Kudlow (and me) are never credited with being “idealistic,”
when they (we) are intensely so.
Another essay.
I
wonder if you caught the interesting piece on Alaska in the 12/23
Times. It had to do with a nursing home for “pioneers,”
those Alaskans in their 70s and above. One line in particular caught
my attention: “Alaska shows a special respect for the elderly,
a custom grounded in part in the deference accorded elders in native
cultures . . .”
Oh? Didn’t
I learn something about leaving the poor old wretches on the ice,
when they were too sick or feeble to keep up?
You remember,
I’m sure, the commercial with that Indian with the tear streaming
down his cheek — the white man was despoiling the land. That
launched — or was part of — the myth of Native American
as Environmentalist. I confess I’m too far away from my anthropological
studies to comment with authority, but I’m not 100 percent
sure that “native cultures,” in toto, were especially
gentle with the elderly.
Good
news: Giuliani’s been out of office for three days, and I haven’t
been mugged yet. I will keep you posted. (And, of course, such jesting
masks — though it doesn’t really — genuine fears,
which we’ve been talking and writing about for a good three
years or so.)
Yesterday,
I mentioned how the Times has taken to referring to bin Ladenite
extremists in Saudi Arabia as “the religious right.” Now
I see — from a story in the Times — that the AP
is calling anti-reform hard-liners in Iran “conservatives.”
That’s par for the course, natch: and in a certain, narrow
sense (anti-change), that terminology may be correct. But you have
to wonder — not for the first time — why the bad guys
in any situation always have to be labeled conservatives.
In the ’80s,
we used to say that, according to our liberal establishment, the
demons in the Soviet Union (hardline Communists) were “conservatives,”
and the demons at home (firm anti-Communists) were conservatives
too! Either way, they (not the conservatives) won.
I
was thinking about something strange the other day: We haven’t
had the usual rash of post-campaign books — books that explain
the ins and outs of the presidential campaign just past; those Theodore
White jobbies that can be so much fun to read. And the reason is:
Florida. The post-campaign books from 2000 are all Florida-drama
books, which is perfectly natural. Still, I hope we do have a couple
of real, traditional campaign books, because, for one thing, I’d
like to know a little bit more about that last-minute disclosure
of Gov. Bush’s arrest record — just for kicks. And did
it cost him dearly at the polls? And how ’bout the guy who
was suspended from the Gore campaign — with pay —
for lying in a Gore-campaign-arranged affidavit about whether he
had asserted that his campaign had a mole in the Bush camp?
A Newsweek
team led by Peter Goldman used to do an excellent job; wonder if
they’re still around (but too lazy to click a couple of times
to check just now).
President
Bush jumped all over American Airlines for refusing to let an armed
Secret Service agent — Arab-American, as it turned out, critically
— board a flight. One has to feel a little sorry for the airlines
at the moment, which are in such a difficult position: They’re
damned if they do, damned if they don’t. American felt it could
not confirm, to strict satisfaction, the identity of this armed
man seeking to board the plane — so they erred on the side
of caution, and of giving personal insult to the man in question.
Well, so what?
We’ve
been saying — for these months — that “after 9/11,
everything changed.” No it didn’t. Would that it had.
PC is still in its saddle, bossing us around, screwing with our
emotions and logic, and falsely accusing.
An
odd something for you to consider: We are now disarming all passengers
— can’t have knives, nail clippers, razors. We are leaving
them — us — without any instruments. So how can we help
when we, say, have to subdue a Richard Reid, who was a great big
man and extremely strong, said everybody, including the 6’8“
professional basketball player who, mercifully, was on board and
helped subdue him?
Again, just
something to consider: Whether in the air or on the ground, an unarmed
public is what a wrongdoer wants.
Dan
Issel was suspended from his job as coach of the Denver Nuggets
for responding colorfully and rudely to an abusive fan. As the coach
was walking off the court, the fan said (something like), “F***
you, Issel!” And Issel said, “Go on and drink another
beer, you drunken Mexican piece of sh**!” This has caused a
real ethnic brouhaha — boycotts, op-ed columns, re-education
camps, self-criticism, the whole bitsy.
I’m not
sure it’s a better age in which this kind of thing must be
punished in sports. And it’s interesting how PC insists on
particular categories: race and ethnicity, above all. Would a coach
find himself equally punished and equally contemned for saying,
for example, “you fat piece of sh**”? You can call
someone fat, racist, stupid, styleless, ugly, immoral, whatever:
but you can’t call him Mexican.
I’m not
suggesting that Dan Issel should replace Emily Post — but .
. . you know. It’s a bunch of men, some of whom are liquored
up, in a sports arena, for Pete’s sake!
One
of my pet themes here is that there has never been an accounting
in the formerly Communist world, as there was in Germany, making
for a fresh start and cultural, societal, and political progress.
Actually, this is our senior editor David Pryce-Jones’s excellent
point, parroted by me.
Several months
ago, I wrote — wonderingly and admiringly — of one old
Hungarian Communist put in the dock for some outrage (several dozen
bodies, I believe) in the 1956 revolution. Now the report comes
that two old Communists in the Czech Republic — Milos Jakes
and Jozef Lenart — have been indicted for their collaboration
with the Soviet invaders in ’68. They’re both seventy-eight
years old and are at last being called to account. Of course, these
two were only at the top of the entire, rotten, killing Communist
heap: but at least it’s something, and worth praising for its
very rarity. The equivalent of denazification will apparently never
come, to the detriment of the ex-Soviet bloc; but at least . . .
The
other day, I wrote a little rant about “Why can’t it be
like it was?” A friend, the columnist Larry Henry, wrote to
say, “My favorite speech line of all time is the one Mark Helprin
wrote for Bob Dole: ‘I remember it, and it was better.’
I have fantasies of hosting a Saturday-night radio show based on
big-band music, and using a recording of that line in an acoustic
montage as the show’s lead-in.”
Very nice.
Finally,
another friend — Richard Starr, a mordant and astute managing
editor at The Weekly Standard — offered a comment on
“Person of the Year.” I was complaining about that phrase,
“person of the year,” in place of “man of the year”
(or, when the choice is a woman, “woman of the year”).
He said — and this is priceless, and typical Starr — “I
agree with you, generally. But I always thought it was appropriate
that when the Times quoted Mrs. Stephanopoulos about her
son George, she said, ‘He’s always been his own person.’”
!!! (as teenage
girls — and me — write).
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