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 May 11, 2011 at 1:30 PM ET
My piece yesterday about Jew-ish Gentiles in pop culture (The most popular non-Jeff Smith post our site’s long, storied history!) sparked considerable discussion.
My challenge to identify a “should-be-Chosen-person that I failed to choose” was met ably by John Newton who suggested Anne Bancroft, who was raised Catholic, but who brilliantly and realistically played Jewish characters (such as in Keeping the Faith) on screen. But as Diane Hertz Warsoff noted, Bancroft ultimately converted to Judaism when she married Mel Brooks. (Who’d have thunk he was Jewish?!?)
Another reader, Mark Schneider, made a terrific discovery. Apparently, I am not the only person who has theorized that Batman/Bruce Wayne is a Jew-ish character.
Check out this 2005 piece, “Bat-Mentsch” by Alan Oirich in the Jewish World Review:
The Dark Knight, as he has come to be called, is not generally considered to have such transparently Jewish beginnings as, say, Superman whose escape from Krypton was based on the story of Moses in exodus, or Fantastic Four’s The Thing, who was officially outed as a member of the Jewish people in a comic book a couple of years ago.
But there have always been some Jewish underpinnings to Batman, and the newly released origin film “Batman Begins” addresses some of them in a way that previous films about the character never came near. If Superman is a Moses, a Samson, then the newly begun Batman is An Abraham, A Pinchas, a Maccabee…
Last week I wrote about congressional redistricting, and the messy inter- and intra-party hostility it engenders – and is currently sparking in my home state of Missouri.
Congressman Russ Carnahan
And as hypothesized, more hostility developed in Missouri following the Legislature’s override of Governor Nixon’s veto of the map. Because Missouri lost a seat during the apportionment process, the new map divides up Congressman Russ Carnahan’s district among four other districts, and Rep. Carnahan has been lashing out – first a few weeks ago at his fellow Missouri Democrat Rep. Lacy Clay, and then a few days ago at another Missouri Dem, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, for going along with the decimation of his district. Of course, he is more privately seething at the four Democratic members of the state House who defected and voted for the override.
Does anyone really think Rep. Carnahan would be working to kill the map if the Republican Legislature had proposed to divide Rep. Clay’s district four ways and force him to run in an overwhelmingly white district? If you do, you’ve probably never seen Jane Elliot’s famed Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes experiment – and you don’t know much about human nature. Instincts for self-preservation are strong, power intoxicating, and race often wielded as a tool to gain and maintain it.
***
Now, surely Rep. Carnahan is angry at the Republicans for drawing these maps, but that anger is mild: he had to have expected it from them. Carnahan’s more visceral fury has been directed at his co-partisans.
Read the rest of… Jeff Smith: Dirty Tricks: On Race, Redistricting, and Stalking Horses
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Wed May 11, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
New York Times writer David Colman discusses being a recovering alcoholic in the age of Facebook. Is anonymity in Alcoholics Anonymous even possible anymore? [NY Times]
On Monday, the United States’ first full face transplant patient went home from the hospital (note to the squeamish: this article contains pictures). [CNN]
For the first time this year, World Press Photo is awarding multimedia in its annual competition. One of the finalists is Blanco, an Italian project that explores blindness around the world. [Time]
After their capture of Bin Laden, the Navy SEALs are officially the United States’ coolest soldiers. [Newsweek]
Someone that’s probably recovering from a great week: the kid in this video. He’s got game! [Youtube]
Our newest contributing RP, Sherwood Boehlert, served in the U.S. Congress from 1983-2007. A proud Republican, Boehlert was a staunch environmentalist and a passionate advocate for measures to battle climate change. While that may seem incongruous today, Boehlert suggests that supporting science is very consistent with the legacy of President Reagan.
Read Boehlert’s recent op-ed on this issue from The Washington Post:
Watching the raft of newly elected GOP lawmakers converge on Washington, I couldn’t help thinking about an issue I hope our party will better address. I call on my fellow Republicans to open their minds to rethinking what has largely become our party’s line: denying that climate change and global warming are occurring and that they are largely due to human activities.
Why do so many Republican senators and representatives think they are right and the world’s top scientific academies and scientists are wrong? I would like to be able to chalk it up to lack of information or misinformation.
Hope you had some fun today with Nell Minow, the WWGs, and the Jew-ish Gentiles. As you can tell, the RP is having WAY too much fun with this site.
Tomorrow we lead off with our 17th contributing RP, a nationally-respected former GOP Congressman, a proud Republican who is taking on the extremes in his party on a critical issue.
And after a few fits and starts, we’ll finally read Jeff Smith’s update on the redistricting brouhaha in Missouri that has long term implications for the rest of the nation.
As you may have seen, golf great Seve Ballesteros passed away way too young in life on May 7. Here’s a look back at the Spanish legend. [Golf.com]
In yet another indication that South Africans are steadily taking over the professional golf world, Ernie Els (at a young forty-one years of age) has been inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Els becomes only the second active player to be inducted into the elite club. [ESPN]
Yesterday marked a historic first in American tennis—and not a joyous one: for the first time in 40 years, not a single American man or woman was ranked in the top 10 in singles. A few weeks ago, the RP noted the same trend in professional golf. Here’s the question: does it really matter for the sport or its fans? Let us know! [New York Times]
Summer is coming and it’s time to start thinking about vacation! What could be better than a golf trip to the land where it all started? If nothing else, you can dream, Tiger. Definitely on the RP wish list. [Championship Golf Courses of Great Britain and Ireland]
By Stephanie Doctrow, RP Staff, on Tue May 10, 2011 at 12:45 PM ET
How did the royal family keep Kate Middleton’s wedding dress a secret from those pesky reporters? [Time]
In 2005, reporter Chris Hondros‘ haunting photos of Iraqi children who lost their parents in the war changed the way the world felt about civilian casualties. This week he returned to Iraq to show the children the photos that changed the war. [Poynter Institute]
The New Yorker chronicles the life and death of reality TV (to those who argue that reality TV is still great, have you watched Jersey Shore?). [New Yorker]
Blogging changes the way we communicate, from life to death. Read the story of one blogger’s postmortem farewell. [CNN]
But today, I venture off on a mission implausible that risks alienation, if not excommunication, by my co-religionists at the Anti-Defamation League and the Global Zionist Conspiracy.
So, please allow me a brief expository digression…
Five years ago, when I launched my national tour for The Compassionate Community— the book in which I discuss my political career as a devout Jew living in an inner notch of the Bible Belt — I ventured often into the rural hills and hollers of my home state, speaking to audiences in which I was the only one present who lights the Sabbath candles. I’d speak passionately about my Jewish faith, quote the Talmud and the Rabbis; but, inevitably, there would be someone who’d come up to me afterwards to proclaim: “You are such a good Christian!”
I’m confident that each time this occured, the well-intentioned speaker was using a secular definition of “Christian” (along the lines of “someone who tries to emulate Christ”) as opposed to making a religious statement. (And I’m certain that they were NOT comparing me to the unholy hoopster “Christian“.) So I took it as a hopeful complement.
Flashback to my college dorm room two decades earlier. My then-roommate (and current Friend of RP) Ron Granieri, came to campus with an encyclopedic knowledge of my faith, customs and moral code, quite impressive for a Roman Catholic from upstate New York. And because he was a compassionate soul with a wicked sense of humor, our other roommate — a future rabbi, natch — annointed him as Jew-ish, since he was still technically not a Jew. (Ron was unwilling to go through the formal conversion process, which not only would have required him to renounce his own devout beliefs; but much worse, to endure a ritual circumcision.)
So in honor of our un-cut and non-kosher, but still quite Jew-ish Ron, I hereby consecrate the following list of the Five Most Jew-ish Gentiles in Pop Culture:
– – – – – – – –
5. (tie) Tina Fey and Liz Lemon
Her dark eyes, Semitic features, the bookish specs, her ascerbic wit, the close association with the media elite in New York City…How could it be possible that Tina Fey isn’t actually Jewish? And her alter ego, Liz Lemon, takes it a step further –Liz’s inexhaustible self-deprecating neuroses identify her as the modern-day Woody Allen. But alas, Fey is Greek Orthodox; and Lemon, when asked about her faith, replied: “I pretty much just do whatever Oprah tells me to.” Jewish boys and girls are just going to have to wait even longer to finally find a Jewish role model in the world of comedy.
4. Bruce Springsteen
If his New Jersey roots, passion for social justice and 70’s-era matching Jew-fro and Hassidic beard weren’t enough, his surname is Springsteen, for Chri…uh… Moses’ sake! But sorry… the Boss was raised in a very devout Catholic household. (The fact that “Mary” is the name of the woman in every otherSpringsteensong should have given it away.) It is no coincidence that I learned that the Boss was not one of us precisely at the same time as when my Christian friends were apprised that Santa Claus wasn’t really coming to town.
3. Batman
Batman (Secret identity: Bruce Wayne) was the ultimate Jew-ish superhero. He lived in Gotham, an unsubtle proxy for the city with the world’s largest Jewish population. He was a wealthy industrialist, yet felt apart from the rest of society, much like many successful Jews in the mid-20th century. Most significantly, unlike his fellow comrades in the Superfriends Justice League of America, Batman did not slay his foes using any extra-human, Christ-like powers — Instead, he used his bookish cunning and wile. Yet, there is never any mention of Wayne’s Semitic affiliation in any DC comic book. Unfortunately as well, the experts deem him either a lapsed Catholic or a lapsed Episcopalian. There is good news, however, Hebraic Bat Fans: The new Batwoman is Jewish. And a lesbian. Holy Sephardic Sapphism, Batman!
Read the rest of… The RP: The Five Most Jew-ish Gentiles in Pop Culture
By Kristen Hamilton, RP Staff, on Tue May 10, 2011 at 10:00 AM ET
The Politics of Fashion
Animal Kingdom may have won the Kentucky Derby, but let’s be real – the fashion is what was most important! Check out a recap of the 2011 Derby fashion statements and fashion misses: [The Courier-Journal]
Remember how I said that you might have to start paying to try on clothes? Well, virtual shopping with Forever 21 might solve you or your daughter’s fitting room woes: [stargazette.com]
In honor of the late Alexander Queen, I present to you some of his wackiest fashion that made him a legend. Check it out: [NY Post]
Will you be wearing Kanye West’s newest scarf collection? [Retail Digital]
Did you know that Skechers was so popular? Yeah, me neither, but thanks to the Kardashians, they are second only behind Nike. Wow! [Brand Channel]
By Jonathan Miller, on Tue May 10, 2011 at 8:30 AM ET
Today’s guest on RPTV is a true Renaissance woman.
Nell Minow is both a leading expert on corporate governance — some even have called her the Queen of Good Corporate Governance — as well as a nationally-followed family movie critic, using her nom de plume, “Movie Mom.”
She’s got some famous relatives as well: Her sister, Martha, is the Dean of the Harvard Law School (and one of the RP’s favorite former professors); and her father, Newton, was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and the man who presciently and famously called television a “vast wasteland” exactly fifty years ago.
In her Fifteen Minutes of Fame, Minow discusses the impact of the recent financial reform laws on corporate governance, recommends some excellent movies for your family, and gives a surprising (and funny) answer when questioned on her greatest point of pride about her famous family.
After watching this enlightening interview, check out Nell’s corporate governance site, Governance Metrics International; read her business watchdog column, Risky Business; and don’t take your kids to another movie without first vetting it on her blog, Movie Mom.
But first enjoy Fifteen Minutes of Fame with Nell Minow:
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