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:
RP Krystal Ball talks about the calls for Mitt Romney to release more tax returns saying the 2012 GOP presidential candidate “might be a genius at legal tax avoidance, leveraged buy-outs and financial engineering, but he isn’t the person to fix this rigged system – he’s part of the problem.”:
By Bradford Queen, Managing Editor, on Wed Aug 1, 2012 at 12:30 PM ET
The Politics of Faith
“Chick-fil-A appreciation day”: Today, gay marriage opponents line-up to support the Christian restaurant chain’s CEO’s stance on the issue. [CNN]
The Obama administration’s policy requiring employers to provide birth control in health insurance coverage takes effect today, a policy decried by many religious organizations. [The Washington Post]
A group of black pastors are starting a campaign to make African-Americans rethink their support of President Obama for his positive stance on gay marriage. [CNN]
Snoop Dogg has changed his name and has found religion in the Rastafari movement. [Newsday]
A GOP group will spend more than $6 million to target Jewish voters in the fall election. [The Washington Post]
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Aug 1, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
The Onion dominates print humor on the web leaving an opening for video humor, which seemed more difficult by comparison.
Until Will Ferrell and some friends tried their hand at it by creating an oddly named website, Funny or Die.
And now they excel and dominate in this niche.
If you like dry humor and modern comedy, you gotta spend some time tooling around the Funny or Die website.
It’s been around for a while but recently seems to have made a significant leap in content. The quality has always been good. Now there’s plenty of it to check the site regularly
Latin America has come a long way from its days when militant dictators were the norm. However, experts are concerned that a new form of authoritarianism is emerging in the region. [Washington Post]
The judicial battle over same-sex marriage may be about to resume as lawyers are requesting that the highest court in the land take another look at a 2008 ruling. [US News]
“I could smell my flesh burning,” recalls Kim Young-hwan, a South Korean activist who claims he was tortured in a Chinese prison. [NY Times]
Showtime’s new mini-series “Political Animals” insists that it is not really a knock-off on the saga that is Bill and Hillary Clinton: the resemblance between Sigourney Weaver’s Elaine Barrish and Hillary is merely the surface match between two former First Ladies who endured a presidential sex scandal involving a junior staffer, subsequently launched their own political careers, and lost the Democratic presidential nomination to a smooth, if distant, senator who brings Elaine/Hillary into the Secretary of State’s position. Elaine’s ex, former president Donald “Bud” Hammond, (Ciaran Hinds) just happens to sound, charm, and manipulate like William Jefferson Clinton.
The parallels do break: Elaine Barrish, we learn by episode two, executed the forgiving spouse role only up to a point, divorcing her husband in the aftermath of her defeat in the primaries. And unlike Hillary, Elaine’s loyalties to her new boss are skin deep at best: she is already plotting to take him on in the next campaign. But the severance in the time line does not begin, or even attempt, to mask the obvious: the show is a guilty pleasure window into what the Clintons’ personal and public chaos might look like from the inside, and if the characterizations so far can seem more like an impersonation of the Clintons than an real exploration, it is richly entertaining in the same way the originals are. “Political Animals”, like the real thing it is based on, is a brew of tawdriness, deceit, inspiration, and fortitude, that works in spite of all the reasons it shouldn’t.
Among the reasons it shouldn’t work: the storylines to date–a mini hostage crisis in the Middle East, the Hammonds’ juggling of one son’s engagement party with the other son’s emotional spiral–are pedestrian stuff. The personal sketches reach for their share of clichéd foibles: the young reporter who exposed Bud Hammond’s escapades and has trained her sights on Elaine Barrish has her own penchant for personal turbulence and seems to have boundary issues of her own; the two Hammond children are sons (thankfully, Chelsea remains outside creative license, at least for now) and in predictable modern cinematic fashion, one is tormented, artistically gifted, and gay; the other ferociously protective and resentful of his father’s capriciousness, but if the teasers at the end of the last episode are right, possibly possessed of some of his father’s weaknesses. If cultural stereotypes are your peeve, some of the clichés touch on troubling ground: the Asian woman who is the fiancee of Douglas Hammond is a bulimic perfectionist whose first generation parents are inordinately status conscious; the foreign diplomats are all lecherous or spineless, and there is a weird dearth of African American or Latino characters. This is not the “Good Wife”, whose regular and recurring cast seamlessly integrates every strand of the social rainbow without really trying, and gives each the gift of individuality.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: “Political Animals” is Telling Us Something
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jul 31, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Imagine for a moment what it would be like to have lived our lives up to this point truly believing in our hearts every day the words below spoken by a great Kentuckian:
“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men/women who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”
Now imagine what it would be like to live the rest of our lives truly believing in our hearts every day these same words….
Tired of imagining yet?
The owner of these words, of course, is Louisville native Muhammad Ali. Whose life is proof that these words can be true.
The Olympics have a way of bringing people together. That includes the unlikely bond that has been forming for years on USA Basketball between The Chosen One and the college coach he never had. [NY Times]
For many, Neil Reed’s legacy was defined in that singular moment when Knight’s fingers clasped around his throat. But in the wake of Reed’s untimely demise one author remembers him as not just a moment but a friend, an idol, and one hell of a basketball player. [Grantland]
Fresh off its 35th consecutive Olympic victory and a 90-38 rout of Angola, USA Women’s Basketball is flying high. [SF Chronicle]
His teammates called him ‘Young Buck’ and for good reason. A rising high school sophomore, Karl Towns Jr. is an amazing example of talented youth in the international arena. [ESPN]
Uh-oh, Lebron left his laptop up. This peek at James’s faux email inbox is sports comedy at its best. [Grantland]
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