Please sign the petition below to remove the statue of Jefferson Davis currently in Kentucky’s Capitol Rotunda, and replace it with a tribute to Muhammad Ali, “the Louisville Lip” and “the Greatest of All Time.”
I just heard from the Ali family: It is the Champ’s belief that Islam prohibits three-dimensional representations of living Muslims. Accordingly, I have adjusted the petition to call for a two-dimensional representation of Ali (a portrait, picture or mural) in lieu of a statue.
UPDATE (Tuesday, December 2, 2014)
In this interview with WHAS-TV’s Joe Arnold, Governor Steve Beshear endorses the idea of honoring Muhammad Ali in the State Capitol (although he disagrees with removing Davis). Arnold explores the idea further on his weekly show, “The Powers that Be.”
Click here to check out WDRB-TV’s Lawrence Smith’s coverage of the story.
And here’s my op-ed in Ali’s hometown paper, the Louisville Courier-Journal.
UPDATE (Saturday, June 4, 2016)
In the wake of the 2015 Charlestown tragedy, in which a Confederate flag-waving murderer united the nation against racism, all of the most powerful Kentucky policymakers — U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell, Governor Matt Bevin, Senate President Robert Stivers and House Speaker Greg Stumbo — called for the removal of the Davis statue from the Rotunda. Today, as we commemorate last night’s passing of Muhammad Ali, there is no better moment to replace the symbol of Kentucky’s worst era with a tribute to The Greatest of All Time.
UPDATE (Wednesday, June 8, 2016):
Great piece by Lawrence Smith of WDRB-TV in Louisville on the petition drive to replace Jefferson Davis’ statue in the Capitol Rotunda with a tribute to Muhammad Ali.
UPDATE (Thursday, June 9, 2016):
Excellent piece on the petition drive by Jack Brammer that was featured on the front page of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Highlight of the article:
Miller said he has received a few “angry comments” on his call to honor Ali.
“One of them encouraged me to kill myself,” he said. “You can quote me that I have decided not to take their advice.”
UPDATE (Friday, June 10, 2016)
The petition drives continues to show the Big Mo(hammed): check out these stories from WKYU-FM public radio in Bowling Green and WKYT-TV, Channel 27 in Lexington:
UPDATE (Saturday, June 11, 2016):
Still not convinced? Check out this excerpt from today’s New York Times:
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Jul 24, 2013 at 8:00 AM ET
One of the true treats of the Facebook revolution — in addition to reconnecting with old friends — is the birthday tradition of being flooded by well-wishes from my motley collection of virtual friends.
There isn’t really anything that special about turning 46 — just part of my long, slow march from 40 to 50; but as the old saying goes, aging another year is by far better than the alternative.
So in the spirit of the new age of narcissism facilitated by social media, I want to use this opportunity of the virtual birthday attention for a bit of shameless self-promotion. And I can excuse myself for the indulgence because I want to remind my friends of a very important cause — and urge them to join me.
Yep, in lieu of birthday presents, my wish is for you to click here and join the growing, vital No Labels citizen army.
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A little over three years ago, I first joined a few handfuls of leading Democrats, Republicans and Independents to launch No Labels, a grassroots organization dedicated to promoting bi-partisan problem-solving instead of the hyper-partisan paralysis that is American politics.
I have to admit, while I was hopeful and passionate, I was still skeptical that we would be able to accomplish anything significant in the short term.
I have never been more proud to say: I was wrong.
Last week, I joined with my fellow co-founders, and 81 Congressmen who have signed up to be No Labels’ problem solvers — YES THAT’S 81 DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLICAN, AND INDEPENDENT SENATORS AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS — at a lively rally involving 1000 supporters (on a cruelly hot Washington summer day) and announcing our new substantive policy plan to “Make Government Work.”
If you like what you read, follow this link to contact your Congressman and Senators to urge them to support our agenda and join our problem solvers group (or thank them if they already are part of the team.)
The country’s political system is broken. But No Labels now offers you a real opportunity to change that. Please join us.
And if I can get just a few of my friends to join us, or convince a few No Labels members to contact their Congressmen with our new agenda, it will be a very productive 46th birthday.
By Lauren Mayer, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 3:00 PM ET
This is a particularly hard time to be a political humorist – so many news stories are volatile and disturbing. Topics like the Zimmerman verdict, abortion restrictions, cruel anti-gay legislation in Russia, and horrible heat waves don’t suggest anything funny, and besides, it feels inappropriate to joke about such sensitive topics. What’s an independent writer to do? (lacking the writing staff of The Daily Show)
Fortunately, cheating by prominent figures never goes out of style, and we’re getting a refresher course thanks to the New York City elections, in which Elliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner are actually ahead in their respective races for Comptroller and Mayor. Apparently, the old adage is true, that any press isi good press, because name recognition seems to be more important to voters than the misbehavior which led to each of them resigning not that long ago. Mark Sanford has also returned to public office, after turning The Appalachian Trail into a permanent teenage boy joke. And just to make sure the whole subject stays current, now we have the Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner, who is accused of harassing women employees with unwanted attention and suggestions that their work would improve if they weren’t wearing undergarments. (Filner vigorously refutes the accusations,insisting he didn’t do anything wrong, he just likes to hug people, but he knows he has a problem and will seek help. One of the odder denial/confession combos I’ve ever heard – but stay tuned, the city has opened a hotline for employees and constituents to make complaints. This could get really fun!)
So while these sex scandals won’t solve global warming or Congressional deadlock, they can help take our minds off of the more upsetting news stories for a few moments; we can chuckle with glee over the more salacious details (like Spitzer’s opponent turning out to be the madame whose employees he patronized; you’d think she’d prove to be a better financial planner, since she got him to pay $4,000 a pop . . . but I digress . . . )
By Michael Steele, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
From Tal Kopan of Politico:
Michael Steele on Wednesday said Liz Cheney’s decision to challenge fellow Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for his Wyoming Senate seat will be disastrous and split the party.
The former Republican National Committee chairman told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner that he thinks former Sen. Alan Simpson was right to call the situation a “disaster.”
“I think he’s right, I think it’s going to open a lot of fissures in the party. I think this is an insurgent move by Cheney,” Steele said Wednesday on “Now with Alex Wagner.”
Steele criticized Cheney’s comments that Enzi has compromised too much and “gone along to get along.”
“When have people gone along to get along in Washington in the last four or five years?” Steele said. “This is clearly more of a personal opportunity to, thinking there’s an opening here, and, you know, it’s going to be tough.”
Agreeing with fellow panelist E.J. Dionne, Steele said he hopes race is a chance for rank and file Republicans to fight back against a Washington tea party.
“I hope they do. I hope the Enzi team really come prepared with a strong A game, because this could be a seminal moment for a longer conversation,” Steele said.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
I wonder if anyone will ever do a retrospective—a “Where are they now” — special on the Teletubbies.
Normally I don’t care much for these sorts of programs unless I really find the person fascinating.
I don’t find the Teletubbies fascinating, but couldn’t help think they were a fluke, a children’s TV sort of “one hit wonder.”
Television characters like that –after they drop off the public radar–often fall hard and aren’t heard from again. Until death or some public crises or tragedy.
I especially worried about Po.
Who seemed to “appear” happy and functional throughout the series but was masking some deep pain and seemed on a collision course with reality, despite the happy-go-lucky persona.
Po seems to have a lot of parallels with the Partridge Family’s child star Danny Bonaduce ….but as a terrycloth children’s TV character.
By Artur Davis, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 10:00 AM ET
Barack Obama’s initial banalities on the George Zimmerman trial—sympathy for the loss Trayvon Martin’s parents suffered, respect for the jury process—felt tepid and his observation today that Trayvon Martin could have been Obama 15 years ago felt cliched. Revealingly, to some of Obama’s fans, the pedestrian response was strategic given that Obama’s ventures into race during his presidency, from the flap over a black Harvard professor being arrested outside his home to his observation last year that an Obama son might have resembled Trayvon, have backfired. In the suggestion of the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson, given that track record, better the power of his family’s example when they walk across the White House lawn than any risky but more textured contribution to this week’s exposed wounds on race.
Of course, cheerleading about the role model value of a black man in high places has never been a thing that black commentators have embraced for its own sake, at least not when it involves the face of a Republican or even a black Democrat who was insufficiently progressive. And to lower expectations for Obama to the point that saying little is deemed more beneficial than saying much concedes one of the central premises for why a lightly experienced politician five years from a state senate seat was elevated so quickly to the presidency. It is also another instance of a second term where Obama ranges from spectator to occasional sideline critic on the domestic priorities of his own government: on immigration reform and expanded gun background checks, on the renewal of No Child Left Behind, on second tier fights over food stamps and student loans, the formula has been standard partisan ripostes after the fact and an avoidance of any mobilizing strategy that lasts beyond a morning news cycle.
So, in the vacuum Obama leaves, either an Attorney General with a hapless profile who is obscure to most white Americans, or a set of voices who have been punch lines for about a decade, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, have been ill-cast as the spokesmen for one view of the Florida verdict—that Martin is not atypical but a specter of myriad ways young black men are devalued—and the very staleness of their advocacy has been easy fodder for critics on the right who are too sanguine about the reality that astonishingly few blacks have confidence in the race neutrality of the legal system.
It is not hard to imagine what Obama might have done this week. He certainly could have lamented the most overlooked aspect of the trial, that Zimmerman and Martin very likely profiled each other, that each saw a threat and affront magnified by the other’s color, and that the ugliness of that kind of mutual recrimination too regularly spills over into every facet of black and white interaction. At the same time, there has been a need this week for the African American community to self-examine the sizable inconsistency between the elevation of a child killed by a white man into a cause célèbre and the national anonymity of, say, Hadiya Pendleton, the black majorette killed by a stray gang bullet a week after performing in Obama’s inaugural parade: couldn’t Obama have made that point more powerfully than, say, a conservative commentator like Rich Lowry, or Zimmerman’s brother on CNN, if the president’s vision of his leadership had only led him to try?
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Obama’s Inadequacies on Race
By Nancy Slotnick, on Tue Jul 23, 2013 at 8:30 AM ET
“You never don’t know” is what my mother-in-law says when she means “You never know.” It must be said in a Polish accent with the conviction that only a Holocaust survivor could pull off while using a double negative. So by the theory of transitivity, “You never don’t know” equals “You always know.” I’m going with that theory. You always know.
If you can tap into your instincts, and distinguish them from anxiety, you always know. “Is he the One?” You know. “Should I have that opening line?” You know. “Should I write that email to reach out?”
You know, but you don’t always listen to your gut. You talk yourself out of it.
Do you expect greatness to come your way or mediocrity? Or disaster? Murphy’s Law is more about Murphy than about a law of nature. I think Murphy attracted bad luck because he’s always expecting bad luck and it feeds on itself. Of course if you want to attract good luck you have to do the work. There’s plenty of good luck out there and it will come your way sooner or later. You just have to be prepared to seize your luck.
Here’s how: Let’s say you’re on a train traveling for the holidays, like I am right now. Let’s say you’re single and you secretly wish that the man of your dreams would sit next to you. You do hold out the hope for good luck. But you also dread the fat lady who talks your ear off or the crying baby that blocks the audio of Gossip Girl Season 2. Even though you’ve already seen it. You are tempted to just put your backpack up on the seat next to you, put on your headphones and go into “Do Not Disturb” mode. If you’re lucky, then the train is not sold out and you will get two seats to yourself. But is that what you really want? If you know that you want more, you may have to put your “Cablight” on, as I call it, and try to show that the seat is available for the right guy. There is a strategy you can employ. Put the backpack up as you scope the crowd passing by. Choose your target. He may not be your Brad Pitt, but pick the best one of the lot of train travelers with your mind’s eye and start your training to attract what you want in life.
As he gets about 2 seats away from you, move the backpack and look up. Make eye contact. This will be hard. Be vulnerable for a second and make it visible to him in your eyes. Then look away and go back to Gossip Girl so he doesn’t think you’re a stalker and he knows that you aren’t going to be annoyingly forward. Let him come to you. This should work if you do it right, with confidence and humility at the same time. It probably won’t though. Law of averages.
But if it doesn’t, get up and move seats. Why? Because you still have hope that there’s a better guy in another car. Because you’re willing to give up the comfort of a window seat near the Café car for the chance of finding something better. Someone better. Like Deal or No Deal with the universe. You believe that the banker has something good in store for you in that briefcase and you’re willing to take risks.
Read the rest of… Nancy Slotnick: You Never Don’t Know
This latest one is taking shape in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, announced Tuesday that she’s challenging incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi in the 2014 Republican primary.
Her announcement is a fitting prelude to the next four years, when voters will witness America’s political royalty in its full glory.
Cheney is just one of a gaggle of legacy candidates running for the Senate next year. In the South, Sens. Mary Landrieu, daughter of the former New Orleans mayor and sister to the current mayor; and Mark Pryor, the son of former Arkansas Sen. David Pryor, are both seeking re-election. Out west, Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall, both sons of congressmen, are also vying for another term. So is Udall’s cousin, Tom, who is New Mexico’s senator and himself the son of a congressman.
In fact, pick any place on the map and you’re likely to find dynasty politics in full bloom. In Texas, George P. Bush, son of the ex-Florida governor and grandson of a president, is running for the statewide office of land commissioner. In Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, a senator’s son, is running for his second term as governor.
And that’s just a sampling.
The scope will become even broader as the 2016 presidential race kicks off. Consider the current top prospects: the son and brother of a former president (Jeb Bush); the wife of a former president (Hillary Clinton); the son of a governor who was once a presidential contender (Andrew Cuomo); and the son of a congressman who ran for president three times (Rand Paul).
Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Until Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, every winning ticket since 1980 featured a son of a United States senator or president.
“Americans were born in rebellion, but they crave connection and familiarity. The temptation of dynastic politics may be a contradictory note in our national character, but it’s perfectly explicable in human nature,” says Rick Wilson, a Florida-based GOP political consultant. “People look for signifiers that give them a quick shorthand to a candidate’s views and character, and because candidates are known generally more by who they are than what they advocate, a famous family name becomes a cornerstone of political branding.”
The practice of political inheritance is as old as the nation. In his book America’s Political Dynasties, scholar Stephen Hess counted at least 700 families in which two or more members had served in Congress since 1774 — and that was back in 1966, when the book was first published.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with dynasty politics. If anything, it underscores the deep commitment of some of the nation’s most prominent families to public service.
But it comes at a cost. There’s no denying that political scions often have an advantage over candidates of lesser lineage.
“They begin with near universal name identification. They begin with a huge rolodex. They begin with a huge understanding of how politics works,” says former Missouri state Sen. Jeff Smith, whose long-shot 2004 campaign for Congress against a scion of a prominent political family was the subject of an award-winning documentary film. “Are any of these skills necessary to become a great public servant? No, but if you understand the game, you may end up spending less time banging your head against the wall learning how things work.”
Sometimes, congressional seats end up in the same family’s hands for decades — even when the talent and charisma skips a generation.
“My experience coming from a state with lots of prominent political families is that in many of these cases, the political talent and policy depth so evident in the first generation isn’t always present in the second generation, in part because it’s not as necessary to fuel the rise,” says Smith, who’s now a professor of politics and advocacy at The New School in New York.
By Erica and Matt Chua, on Mon Jul 22, 2013 at 1:30 PM ET
Contemporary artists are professional instigators. Their art challenges the status quo and cultural assumptions. Since culture is localized to each country and region, contemporary art gives a glimpse into their daily life and struggles, things which a traveler may struggle to discover through any other means. For this reason we’ve sought out contemporary art exhibitions while traveling the world.
In seeking out exhibits I’ve been especially drawn to installations that combine art and space to create experiences. One such place that stood out from description alone was Brazil’s Inhotim which the Telegraph called a “Versailles for the 21st century”. My hopes were high as my lastvisit to a meglomanic funded triumph over all things normal, Tasmania’s MONA, blew me away. Since the MONA was the best museum I’ve ever visited, Inhotim had a lot to live up to. Let me show you how it did and why Inhotim is one of the world’s best contemporary art destinations.
Out-of-the-way is the only way to explain Inhotim’s location. The benefit of the rural location outside Brazil’s third largest city is a space. Instead of building a museum, the billionaire creator, Bernardo Paz, chose to build a collection of art installations surrounded by one of the world’s best botanical gardens. City locations may have made it more accessible, but being able to do away with space constraint in this location makes it special. From entrance to exit, the meticulous gardens are a joy to explore between seeing works from today’s hottest contemporary artists such as Matthew Barney and Yayoi Kusama. Without the gardens it would be just another museum, instead of an amazing, all-day, experience.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jul 22, 2013 at 12:00 PM ET
Today’s affirmation.
“Today I will remind myself that we all can’t look like Fabio on the outside.
But we can still feel like Fabio on the inside.
And when I imagine myself today, from the inside that is, I will imagine myself with long flowing hair, a strong Roman nose, and an undisturbed inner confidence..
People may think they are talking to John Brown but they will “feel” like they have been talking to Fabio Lanzoni, but not understand why.
Blog this!
