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 Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Feb 16, 2012 at 3:00 PM ET
The Politics of Tech
Some members of Congress have been identified by IP addresses as having used torrents to illegally download content, all the while fighting for anti-piracy legislation. [DailyTech]
“The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde: It’s evolution, stupid” [Wired]
Canada’s government is pushing for warrantless Internet spying. Their opponents? Obviously supporters of child pornography. [ars technica]
A picture of a Google maps car taking a picture of someone taking a picture of a Google maps car. [picture]
This is a big, amazing instrument made by Intel. That’s really all I can say to describe it. [YouTube]
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Feb 16, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
After prodding from several friends I’ve finally started the Zija diet.
It’s a green powder you put in water and drink periodically throughout the day.
I think.
Don’t hold me to specifics.
I bought some powder that comes in green packets. I assume they go in water and are to be drunk with some regularity.
It seems that I haven’t read the instructions –yet–and am approaching this plan intuitively. provide rare and important nutrients and suppresses appetite.
My first day I weighed myself (benchmarking) and I drank a glass of water with the powder. It tasted all right.
I waited 30 minutes and then weighed myself again. Nothing. In fact I had gained a quarter of a pound.
The second day I didn’t eat much to avoid having to drink more green water, although I did drink a little later in the day. It was the batch I’d made the day before and tasted awful a day later.
It’s now been a week since I started the Zija diet. The past 5 days I haven’t drunk any of the powder bc it tasted so bad that second day. But I’ve still lost 4 pounds.
This stuff really works! Don’t know how exactly but I’m a believer.
By Zack Adams, RP Staff, on Thu Feb 16, 2012 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Pigskin
In probably the biggest news of the week that doesn’t involve something player-related, ESPN has pulled Ron Jaworski from the Monday Night Football booth. The plan seems to be to insert Jaws on other ESPN shows and leave the MNF broadcast with a team of two: Mike Tirico and Jon Gruden. [Awful Announcing]
The Tampa Bay Bucs have released DT Albert Haynesworth. Will this end the guys career? Probably, but we shall see. [ESPN]
In honor of Valentine’s Day yesterday Mark Sanchez asked teammate Santonio Holmes to be his valentine over Twitter. [Deadspin]
Peter King mulls over ending his run as a Hall of Fame voter. [Sports Illustrated]
Several TCU football players were arrested in a drug bust that resulted in 17 total student arrests. This does not bode well for TCU, especially as they are making the transition into the Big 12. [Sports Illustrated]
Hoekstra needs to spend three minutes watching the Clint Eastwood Super Bowl ad. It captures, much more powerfully and far more honestly, the real Chinese challenge.
The long-term China threat is not that they finance our debt – we should blame our lack of fiscal discipline and our aversion toward hard choices on spending for that–but the fact that we’re losing ground to a country that is poorer and much less equitable than we are. They are still out performing us and out strategizing us in the fields of advanced manufacturing and engineering, and their top-heavy, command and control economy is proving more supple than our own capital markets. That ought to be a gut-check that Democrats and Republicans should run ads about.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Is Pete Hoekstra’s Ad Racist?
By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Feb 15, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
It’s not enough for Mark Zuckerberg to take over our lives with FB. Now he wants to play God and tell us who we can and can’t be friends with.
Facebook just told me I’m about to max out on “friends” and they soon won’t allow me to make any new “friends” unless I delete a current friend to make room for the new one.
Wow!
Really, Mark?
Think of the confusing issues you will now force people to deal with.
Can I still make friends outside of Facebook?
If so, will they feel less of a “friend” since they can’t be a FB friend too?
Is there a name for these new FB-friendless friends?
Are there tips on how to navigate these relationships so these “friends” with asterisks, so to speak, don’t feel further marginalized?
Is it insulting to introduce non-FB friends to other non-FB friends bc their non-FB friend status gives them something in common?
Are non-FB friend friends less demanding on us?
Can we use the ” FB max out” excuse to avoid making a new non-FB friend we are uncertain about?
If I delete a current FB friend to make room for a new non-FB friend I’ll like better, what kind of fall out can be expected?
If I’m wrong and the new non-FB friend is a disappointment, can I switch back without the old deleted FB friend knowing?
How do I delete Tom, the guy in a white shirt who was my first and an automatic friend for all FB new users? I don’t even know who he is! Oh wait, that was MySpace.
Maybe my new excess friends can meet on MySpace. But how do I explain Tom to them?
C’mon, Mark! Making friends virtually shouldn’t be this hard. Maybe those guys in the movie Social Network who claimed you stole their idea know some ways to have more friends on FB. Unless you really are that much smarter and can figure it out first.
(That was mean for me to say….but not as mean as you forcing me to tell people they can’t be my friend “just because.”)
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
Send one of these valentines to your favorite journalist, and you’re guaranteed to get a smile. [Media Bistro]
New research from the Pew Research Center tells us what we already know; even the nation’s top news websites are having a hard time getting advertisers to move online. [Poynter Institute]
One of America’s best newspapers, The New York Times, looks at the future of another amazing paper, The Washington Post. [NY Times]
Why are magazines designing two different covers: one to appeal to newsstand purchasers, and one to appeal to subscribers? [Adweek]
Get ready to feel worried for the future of America. Buzzfeed gathers tweets from Grammys viewers… who don’t know who Paul McCartney is. [Buzzfeed]
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Feb 14, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
From the heart? Or from Hallmark?
I’ll be buying a nice Valentine’s Day card for my wife.
The big kind that requires a special envelope big enough to for the over-sized card, ribbon, and frilly stuff attached to it.
But I’m also going to do something else.
I’m going to write–in my own words—a personal message of how I feel about my wife, how much I love her and appreciate her.
Sure, I’ll find the card that most closely says what I mean.
But if I don’t write something myself, I’ve outsourced to Hallmark (or another card company) the job of telling my spouse what she means to me—and that just doesn’t seem right somehow.
Some people might say they aren’t eloquent and prefer let the card speak for them. But a simple and non-eloquent personal message from the heart beats the most eloquent message written by another for the one we love any day of the week.
Blog this!
