Don't remember Muhammad Ali as a sanctified sports hero- was a powerful, dangerous political force

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Muhammad Ali's saga is without parallel: the champion boxer who was the most famous draft resister in history; a man whose phone was bugged by the Johnson and Nixon administrations yet who later was invited to the White House of Gerald Ford; a prodigal son whom his hometown city council in Louisville, Ky., condemned, but who a few years later had a main street renamed in his honor and today has a museum that bears his name.

His life was one of polarization and reconciliation, anger and love, and a ferocious, uncompromising commitment to nonviolence, all delivered through the scandalously dirty vessel of corruption known as boxing. Few have ever walked so confidently and casually from man to myth, and that journey was well earned.

As football great Jim Brown said to me last year: “It was unbelievable, the courage he had. He wasn’t just a championship athlete. He was a champion who fought for his people…. The man used his athletic ability as a platform to project himself right up there with world leaders … going after things that very few people have the courage to go after. From the standpoint of his ability to perform and his ability to be involved with the world, Ali was the most important sports figure in history.”

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-zirin-muhammad-ali-legacy-20160603-snap-story.htm

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[Scuba]

1. Dangerous? Not to the common man.

[betsuni]

2. K&R

[BootinUp]

3. Its been something watching all the people giving tribute to the champ.

Not just the celebrities and politicians, but the everyday people he inspired.

[Nitram]

4. "Draft resister" or conscientious objector?