Ali was definitely one of those iconic figures who embodied and lived the best and worst of the American experience.
He’s punching out angels, now.
Said my goodbye in the Dead Celebrity thread. I want to add that Neil Leifer’s photo is both powerful and gorgeous. Great composition.
Thanks for using it, @pesco!
Oooh la-la
Ah, oui, oui
I said Muhammad Ali
You say Cassius Clay
I say butter
You say Parkay
–Greg Nice, “DWYCK”
R.I.P. Mr. Ali.
I had never seen that picture before. It’s amazing!
Worst in what way?
Bless him. What a champion. What a gentleman. What an athlete, comedian, magician, attraction.
What an icon.
Right about now, I’ll lay bets he’s putting his faster than lightning thing to some heavenly tests.
The world could really use more like him.
Who else trained in a swimming pool? (with a photographer!?)
And who else generated this kind of cultural cross-pollination?
He was fun. So long as he wasn’t aiming at you.
I’d love to know the story behind that photo!
Hearing of his passing makes me remember how every kid on the playground in the city where I grew up in the 70s wanted to be him.
Self-destructiveness. He’s spent the last few decades with various physical and mental problems originating from his boxing. We are beginning to realize how damaging American football is to players, but obviously the most self-destructive sport is boxing. Yes, it got him his fame, but he probably could have excelled at something else which wouldn’t have had such terrible consequences on his health.
Is Parkinson’s disease caused by injury?
Meaning the racism and anti-pacifist anger directed at him, not anything he did to other people.
Yes. Or at least head trauma is one of the risk factors. Like cancer, it doesn’t really have one cause, and isn’t probably one disease either.
I believe the New Yorker wrote up Ali’s first meeting with Marianne Moore, but could not find it back.
Instead, did find this new encomium:
Almost 8 years of “Obama did it”, for douchebags of all varieties it seems they are in need of some new material.
Wow. Now I need to find that. I say without any sarcasm that it must have been a fascinating meeting between two great American artists.
“Obama said in his speech that Muslims are our sports heroes.”
Say what now? That’s hilarious.
I can just imagine (well, I can’t, actually) Obama saying, “And let us not forget, Muslims are our sports heroes.”
The elderly poet was profiled in Sports Illustrated and featured on the cover of Esquire, with Jimmy Durante, Joe Louis, and others. George Plimpton picked her up in a limousine at her home in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, and escorted her to a game at Yankee Stadium. Plimpton also introduced her to Norman Mailer, whom she adored, and to Muhammad Ali, at that time Cassius Clay. It is hard to imagine any other high modernist—Ezra Pound, say, or Wallace Stevens—writing the liner notes for Ali’s spoken-word record, “I Am the Greatest,” as Moore did.
