Ali, Tyson, Clooney, &c.

January 4, 2002 8:45 a.m.

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).