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 John Y. Brown III, on Fri Jun 8, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Monkey Mind—according to Buddhists a term meaning “unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable”
For those of us who read this less as an interesting factoid and more as a diagnosis, fear not.
There are two apparently successful approaches for treating Monkey Mind.
1) Ratchet down with meditation, yoga, diet, lifestyle changes, and medication.
2) Ratchet up. Like The Stones. And become a Monkey Man.
Although the first option is preferred, there is merit to option two as well.
The MSM isn’t biased in favor of Romney. The MSM isn’t biased in favor of Obama.
It is biased – like everyone else trying to survive and thrive – in favor of page views.
And I can pretty much guarantee that Mitt’s shearing of the gay classmate gets a hell of a lot more of them than the rollout of his Middle East policy.
Now that technology has enabled the media to get this down to a science and shift the placement of pieces online from minute-to-minute, the media, more than ever – to paraphrase Republican ingenue Christine O’Donnell – “is you.”
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Fri Jun 8, 2012 at 9:15 AM ET
The NO Saints have made a revised contract offer to their disgruntled QB Drew Brees. In an effort to get Brees under contract in time for training camp the Saints made efforts to bridge the $2 million per year gap the two sides are reported to have. [ESPN]
It’s worth reading EJ Dionne’s latest piece about the essence of modern conservatism, not so much for the originality of its analysis—its argument that conservatism has morphed into a mean-spirited, anti-communal, exercise in selfishness is a standard liberal trope at this point—but because it revives a valuable debate I’ve written about before: is the Republican Party really in the midst of a hard-right revolution and has the right all but given up on community?
To be sure, there’s a lot to assail about Dionne’s history lessons. Trying to re-imagine Civil War pensions, or the creation of national hospitals to treat sailors under John Adams, as relevant entries in a debate over modern ideology is about as illuminating as linking pro-slavery antebellum Democrats to the modern Democratic Party’s stance on abortion, or dwelling on the Ku Klux Klan’s twenties era power base in the Democratic Party. In other words, minor rhetorical noise, but not much light. Similarly, describing McCarthyism, Vietnam, the civil rights fires, Watergate, and the generation gap as minor pauses in a robust past consensus is the slight-of -hand of a DC pundit framing another lament about the allegedly woeful times we live in now (times that don’t feature inner-city riots, assassinations, 56,000 deaths in a foreign war, or the wiretapping of political enemies).
I won’t challenge Dionne’s premise that modern conservatism is mainly a campaign for “low taxes, fewer regulations, [and] less government.” It is distinguishable from earlier phases when conservatives spent much energy on co-opting liberals, i.e, George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism”, Gerald Ford’s off and on economic stimulus proposals; Richard Nixon’s forays into affirmative action and environmental protection. And to be sure, the cable news organ of the contemporary right sometimes blends an unattractive fearfulness about the future with a bravado-laced denigration of the left (that is of course, matched by the left’s unadorned contempt in return).
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Republicans and Community, Redux
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
The Politics of Pigskin
“6-Year-Old Sends Brandon Jacobs $3.36 So He Can Stay With Giants.” Cute story. [CBS Chicago]
You may want to become more familiar with the so-called 3-3-5 defense or the 30 Stack. [Grantland]
More news that could make Saints fans more uneasy than they already are: fights breaking out during OTAs. Could more sanctions be looming for the Saints? [PFT]
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Today….was a day. Where nothing happened in my life.
I didn’t work.
I didn’t rest.
I didn’t play.
I worried a little and wasted a lot of time.
I’m not even sad the day is almost over.
I don’t feel guilty.
I just feel …..well, really I don’t feel anything about today.
It was a nondescript inconsequential day.
Today was to the days of my life what James Polk was to the presidency of the United States. A president no one really remembers or ever talks about. He was probably competent enough but mostly just inconsequential in the public memory. Much like today was for me.
By Kristen Soltis, on Thu Jun 7, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
This May, thousands of young Americans walked across the stage at their graduations, collected their hard-earned (and likely expensive) degrees, and promptly moved their belongings back to their parents’ houses.
They are not the first graduating class during Obama’s presidency, and they are not the first to suffer this depressing set of circumstances.
Yet last week’s jobs report offers a picture of a generation that isn’t exactly gearing up for yet another “summer of recovery.”
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rates remains high for this group, at 23.5 percent for 18–19 year olds and 12.9 percent for 20–24 year olds.
However, seasonal adjustment masks the devastating trend of increased unemployment over April’s figures for Obama’s coveted 18–29 demographic, ticking up from 11.6 percent to 12.1 percent unadjusted. (The BLS unfortunately does not release seasonally adjusted data for 25–29 year olds.)
It makes sense that an influx of young graduates hitting the job market would cause a spike in the unemployment among these groups. It isn’t surprising to see the unadjusted numbers tick up this time of year, but that doesn’t make it less troublesome for the young grad with a resume that is getting no bites.
Read the rest of… Kristen Soltis: Jobs Report Shows Continuing Pain for Young Americans
This morning, The Huffington Post features an exclusive excerpt from the RP’s latest book, The Liberal Case for Israel: Debunking Eight Crazy Lies about the Jewish State” In the excerpt, the RP discusses the toxic charge of “pinkwashing,” in which anti-Zionist activists claim that Israel brags about its extraordinary LGBT culture to brainwash Americans about its other activities:
Israel’s commendable gay rights record should be a cause for the American Left to celebrate. But in the Orwellian dystopia that is our political discourse today, the Israel-is-always-wrong crowd has used Israeli publicity of its proud LGBT culture as yet another reason to criticize the Jewish State.
Borrowing a term coined by the breast cancer prevention community to describe companies that claim to care about the disease but at the same time sell carcinogenic products, the anti-Israel crowd has redefined “pinkwashing” as Israeli propaganda designed to hypnotize American liberals into ignoring Israel’s transgressions in the disputed territories.
The most quotable advocate of this terminology is CUNY English Professor Sarah Schulman, who described her objective as trying to frame the Palestinian cause with simpler language, “like in the kinds of magazines you read in the laundromat.” (Perhaps “pinkwashing” is supposed to remind laundromat users of the infuriating consequences of leaving a red shirt in a white washload?)
Blog this!
