"Sucker Punch"
I have the book on reserve at the library. I was always a big fan of boxing back in the day.
I watched Jack Cashill on C-Spans2's book tv last night talking about this book. It's not just a biography on Ali, but gets into the political side of Ali's fame and also talks about the how Islam used Ali and others to promote their religion. This book also talks about the true heros who never received the recognition that they deserved, like George Forman, and Frazier, who was vilified to promote Ali. A little bit of everything.
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A link that provides a overview of the book by chapter.
Page one (10 pages)
http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/sp1_10.htm
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http://www.thbookservice.com/products/b ... d_cd=c6868
MUHAMMAD ALI: HERO WITH FEET OF CLAY
At last: a book showing how he could have pulled this nation together when it really mattered -- and instead, did just the opposite
Sucker Punch
by Cashill, Jack
"To me," said young Olympic fighter Cassius Clay to a Soviet reporter in 1960, "the USA is the best country in the world, including yours." Yet within four years, Clay had become Muhammad Ali, a high-profile member of an organization whose angry deconstruction of the American ideal played into Leftist and even Soviet hands. Now, of course, over forty years later, he is an international icon, lionized everywhere. But does he really deserve the heroic status he now enjoys? In Sucker Punch: Ali, Islam, and the Betrayal of the Dream, Jack Cashill says no -- and introduces you to the real Ali, a craven opportunist and manipulator who has betrayed the dream of Martin Luther King, served as a wedge that deepened the alienation and mistrust between whites and blacks in America, and set the stage for major Leftward shifts in American politics and culture.
Cashill notes that Ali has been one of the few public figures to grow in stature with each passing year. Yet he shows that Ali's life tells a different story. From his association with Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad's venomous racism to his public humiliation of his wife Belinda and boxer Joe Frazier (actually a much nobler and more heroic figure than Ali himself), to his glib and self-serving refusal to serve in Vietnam, Ali has been anything but heroic. And the telling and ugly record of his actual words and deeds sheds considerable light both on Ali and the generation that made him.
Cashill introduces you to Muhammad Ali the anti-hero, who:
Knowingly betrayed Malcolm X, a betrayal that led at least indirectly to Malcolm's assassination
Publicly turned his back on his press secretary, Leon 4X Ameer, leading to Ameer's death
Did not quit the Nation of Islam or make any public protest when Nation of Islam "activists" murdered five friends and family of a rival sect -- four of them children
Spent at least four years publicly degrading Joe Frazier, often along the crudest racial lines, and fostering an entirely unjust popular association of this black fighter with white racism and hatred of blacks
Verbally and physically abused Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell, two other boxers who had more integrity than Ali, and did not deserve his savage attacks
Unapologetically affirmed that "in the Islamic world the man's the boss, and the woman stays in the background" -- and yet still receives the adulation of feminists
Rejected his wife and the mother of his children and fathered children out of wedlock -- including at least one with a teenage girl
Remained an unabashed racist until near the end of his boxing career, calling for an American apartheid and the lynching of interracial couples
Routinely denigrated black heroes who did not share his point of view, including Joe Louis (who did more to advance the cause of civil rights than Ali ever thought of doing, and was a genuine patriot), Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall
Supervised the fictionalization of his own history, so that his comfortable middle-class upbringing has given way to a "poorer, tougher, and blacker" race-baiting, demagogic myth
Lied that his own white blood "came from the slave masters, from raping," while covering up the peaceful interracial marriages among his forbears
Expressed open hatred for his native land ("America don't have no future. America's going to be destroyed") as late as 1975
Covered up the support that his hero and mentor, Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, gave to the Axis Powers during World War II
Continuously belittled and undermined Christianity, a bedrock of cultural stability in black America
Shamelessly courted some of the most brutal dictators on the planet: Qaddafi, Idi Amin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Nkrumah, Mobutu, Marcos
Abetted the subversion and suppression of key facts about his own public life and about other people and events that do not fit today's Ali myth
Rejected his country in its hour of need and expressed no regret at the fate of those millions we all abandoned
Threw salt into the wounds of America's racial divide at a time when he could have been an immense force for healing them
Sucker Punch will surprise everyone who has grown up with the sanitized, fictionalized Ali myth -- and that's why it is crucial reading for every veteran of the culture wars. By exposing the hollow center of the Ali industry, this book offers a sobering and insightful glimpse into one of the foremost successes of the Left's efforts to rewrite history and subvert our culture.
I have the book on reserve at the library. I was always a big fan of boxing back in the day.
I watched Jack Cashill on C-Spans2's book tv last night talking about this book. It's not just a biography on Ali, but gets into the political side of Ali's fame and also talks about the how Islam used Ali and others to promote their religion. This book also talks about the true heros who never received the recognition that they deserved, like George Forman, and Frazier, who was vilified to promote Ali. A little bit of everything.
---------------------
A link that provides a overview of the book by chapter.
Page one (10 pages)
http://www.cashill.com/natl_general/sp1_10.htm
---------------------
http://www.thbookservice.com/products/b ... d_cd=c6868
MUHAMMAD ALI: HERO WITH FEET OF CLAY
At last: a book showing how he could have pulled this nation together when it really mattered -- and instead, did just the opposite
Sucker Punch
by Cashill, Jack
"To me," said young Olympic fighter Cassius Clay to a Soviet reporter in 1960, "the USA is the best country in the world, including yours." Yet within four years, Clay had become Muhammad Ali, a high-profile member of an organization whose angry deconstruction of the American ideal played into Leftist and even Soviet hands. Now, of course, over forty years later, he is an international icon, lionized everywhere. But does he really deserve the heroic status he now enjoys? In Sucker Punch: Ali, Islam, and the Betrayal of the Dream, Jack Cashill says no -- and introduces you to the real Ali, a craven opportunist and manipulator who has betrayed the dream of Martin Luther King, served as a wedge that deepened the alienation and mistrust between whites and blacks in America, and set the stage for major Leftward shifts in American politics and culture.
Cashill notes that Ali has been one of the few public figures to grow in stature with each passing year. Yet he shows that Ali's life tells a different story. From his association with Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad's venomous racism to his public humiliation of his wife Belinda and boxer Joe Frazier (actually a much nobler and more heroic figure than Ali himself), to his glib and self-serving refusal to serve in Vietnam, Ali has been anything but heroic. And the telling and ugly record of his actual words and deeds sheds considerable light both on Ali and the generation that made him.
Cashill introduces you to Muhammad Ali the anti-hero, who:
Knowingly betrayed Malcolm X, a betrayal that led at least indirectly to Malcolm's assassination
Publicly turned his back on his press secretary, Leon 4X Ameer, leading to Ameer's death
Did not quit the Nation of Islam or make any public protest when Nation of Islam "activists" murdered five friends and family of a rival sect -- four of them children
Spent at least four years publicly degrading Joe Frazier, often along the crudest racial lines, and fostering an entirely unjust popular association of this black fighter with white racism and hatred of blacks
Verbally and physically abused Floyd Patterson and Ernie Terrell, two other boxers who had more integrity than Ali, and did not deserve his savage attacks
Unapologetically affirmed that "in the Islamic world the man's the boss, and the woman stays in the background" -- and yet still receives the adulation of feminists
Rejected his wife and the mother of his children and fathered children out of wedlock -- including at least one with a teenage girl
Remained an unabashed racist until near the end of his boxing career, calling for an American apartheid and the lynching of interracial couples
Routinely denigrated black heroes who did not share his point of view, including Joe Louis (who did more to advance the cause of civil rights than Ali ever thought of doing, and was a genuine patriot), Jackie Robinson, and Thurgood Marshall
Supervised the fictionalization of his own history, so that his comfortable middle-class upbringing has given way to a "poorer, tougher, and blacker" race-baiting, demagogic myth
Lied that his own white blood "came from the slave masters, from raping," while covering up the peaceful interracial marriages among his forbears
Expressed open hatred for his native land ("America don't have no future. America's going to be destroyed") as late as 1975
Covered up the support that his hero and mentor, Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, gave to the Axis Powers during World War II
Continuously belittled and undermined Christianity, a bedrock of cultural stability in black America
Shamelessly courted some of the most brutal dictators on the planet: Qaddafi, Idi Amin, Papa Doc Duvalier, Nkrumah, Mobutu, Marcos
Abetted the subversion and suppression of key facts about his own public life and about other people and events that do not fit today's Ali myth
Rejected his country in its hour of need and expressed no regret at the fate of those millions we all abandoned
Threw salt into the wounds of America's racial divide at a time when he could have been an immense force for healing them
Sucker Punch will surprise everyone who has grown up with the sanitized, fictionalized Ali myth -- and that's why it is crucial reading for every veteran of the culture wars. By exposing the hollow center of the Ali industry, this book offers a sobering and insightful glimpse into one of the foremost successes of the Left's efforts to rewrite history and subvert our culture.