The Champ Meets the Chump: Bush and Ali
Dave Zirin
The presidency of George W. Bush is collapsing under the
weight of its own incompetence.
The polls speak for themselves--only 35 percent of us
approve of his job performance. Fifty-six percent--including
one in four Republicans--say the war in Iraq was not worth
fighting, and more than half believe Bush intentionally
misled the country to bring the United States into war. The
response from the White House has been grimly predictable:
Admit no mistakes and spin, slash or burn your critics. On
Monday Bush seethed, "Only one person manipulated evidence
and misled the world! --and that person was Saddam Hussein."
(Funny, I didn't know we were being "led" by Saddam
Hussein.) Bush went on to accuse opponents of rewriting the
past. But this Administration, which has redefined the word
"Orwellian" for a new generation, respects history about as
much as it respects the Geneva Conventions. In fact, they
seem to relish assaulting and rewriting history for sheer
sport.
This was seen quite clearly on November 9, when Bush hung a
medal around the slack, immobile neck of former heavyweight
boxing champion--and the most famous war resister in US
history--Muhammad Ali. Ali was one of a bevy of recipients
of the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House
ceremony. Bush, while Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld chuckled
behind him, said, "Only a few athletes are ever known as the
greatest in their sport, or in their time. But when you say,
'The Greatest of All ! Time' is in the room, everyone knows
who you mean. It's quite a claim to make, but as Muhammad
Ali once said, 'It's not bragging if you can back it up.'
And this man backed it up.... The real mystery, I guess, is
how he stayed so pretty. [Laughter.] It probably had to do
with his beautiful soul. He was a fierce fighter and he's a
man of peace."
As I watched a video of the ceremony posted on the
White House website, it was heartbreaking to see Bush, a
chicken-hearted man of empire, bathe himself in Ali's glow
and rhapsodize about "peace." To see the once-indomitable
Ali, besieged by Parkinsons and dementia, eyes filmed over,
hands shaking, led around by a self-described "war
President" felt horrifying.
About the only thing Bush and Ali have in common is that
they both moved mountains to stay out of Vietnam. The
difference, of course, was while Ali sacrificed his title
and risked years in federal prison, Bush joined the country
club otherwise known as the Texas National Guard, showing up
for duty every time he had a dentist appointment. But the
Champ still had one last rope-a-dope up his sleeve. As a
playful Bush moved in front of Ali, he apparently thought it
would be cute to put up his fists in a boxing stance. Ali
leaned back and made a circular motion around his temple, as
if the President must be crazy to want to tangle with him
even now.
This moment recalled the Ali who was never so beloved, so
cuddly, so harmless. This was a fleeting glimpse of the Ali
who once was able to say things that would have made John
Ashcroft demand a federally funded exorcism. This was the
Ali who said, "I ain't no Christian. I can't be when I see
all the colored people fighting fo! r forced integration get
blown up. They get hit by the stones and chewed by dogs and
then these crackers blow up a Negro church.... People are
always telling me what a good example I would be if I just
wasn't Muslim. I've heard over and over why couldn't I just
be more like Joe Louis and Sugar Ray [Robinson]. Well, they
are gone and the black man's condition is just the same,
ain't it? We're still catching hell."
Back then, Ali could level criticism about an ill-advised,
unfair war: "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and
go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on
brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in
Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human
rights? No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help
murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the
domination of white slave ! masters of the darker people the
world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an
end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost
me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will
say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will
not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a
tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own
justice, freedom and equality.... If I thought the war was
going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my
people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I
have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll
go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years."
If Ali had said things like that today about our current
war, it would have earned him not not a medal but a one-way
trip to Gitmo.
As the great poet Sonia Sanchez remembered Ali's golden era,
"It's hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was st! ill a time when hardly any well-known people were
resisting the draft. It was a war that was
disproportionately killing young black brothers, and here
was this beautiful, funny poetical young man standing up and
saying no! Imagine it for a moment! The heavyweight
champion, a magical man, taking his fight out of the ring
and into the arena of politics and standing firm. The
message was sent!"
Perhaps a far more fitting and true tribute to Ali was on
display at an antiwar demonstration last month, where an
older woman of African descent held up a sign that read
simply, "No Iraqi ever left me to die on a roof." This was a
direct reference to a quote attributed to Ali that "no
Vietnamese ever called me 'nigger.'"
Both statements in a few short words encompass both the
anger and internationalism so needed today. These are
statements not of pacifism but of the struggle to end war.
This is the Ali that they can never bury--not even under t!
he pall of devastating illness and a mountain of cheap
medals.
Dave Zirin's new book "What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States is now in stores.
This article can be found on the web at
https://www.thenation.com/doc/20051205/zirin
