President Donald Trump’s widely-mocked proposal to pardon Muhammad Ali gave “the greatest of all-times’s” former wife an idea. Khalilah Ali, who was married to the champ from 1967 to 1976, spoke with TMZ about the pardon offer.
Noting that Ali is gone, and that pardons should go to people who are alive, Khalilah Ali came up with the most “current” symbol of her ex-husband’s fight: Via Raw story:
“I think the pardon should go to those who kneel, that’s who should get the pardons, that would be putting it in the right perspective, in the right place,” she explained. “If he accepts Muhammad Ali being right for what he did, and want to give him a pardon, then that pardon should be going out to all those people who kneel.”
:She is right on more levels than we appreciate. We sanitize civil rights heroes once they’re dead, forgetting the racist hatred those heroic acts inspired at the time. We see this every day when we hear the Right adopt Martin Luther King in one ear (sanitized as dead) while despising Rev. Al Sharpton, or Jesse Jackson, two men who took up King’s fight and in the same way through the other ear. The Right hates Sharpton and Jackson, and they would hate MLK were he alive today to hate.
Same with Ali, and were he in his prime today, talking about the killing of unarmed black men. The Champ is sanitized, dead, forever right about the Vietnam War. But, were he alive today, he’d be kneeling along the sidelines of NFL games, or “worse.” The Champ would be getting nothing but white hot anger from the President, and wouldn’t flinch in his pride. Only Kaepernick has the right to claim Ali’s legacy, because Kap gave up his career – albeit unknowingly – to take a stand, Ali knowingly went to jail, during the height of his career.
Lebron, Curry, there are many athletes doing necessary work standing up to Trump. But, it makes one wonder how fast Trump would fizzle under Ali’s prideful stare. Too bad, we’ll never see it. Trump’s lucky, though, he won’t have to worry about going toe to toe with “The Greatest of All Time” on the issue of race in this country.
EDIT TO ADD: Trump being Trump, forgot to do his homework, again, and didn’t realize that Ali’s conviction was already overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, and President Jimmy Carter granted absolute pardons to all “draft dodgers” during the late 70s. ….Only Trump could fk this up to this level. Isn’t it ironic?
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