Historial Figures Who Flip-Flopped, or: How white folks learned to like Muhammad Ali.

In My Humble Opinion
1

When Muhammad Ali was a trash-talking Black Muslim who avoided the draft, spoke out about Vietnam and had his title taken away, I’m pretty sure that his popularity in mainstream (white) culture was pretty damn low.

Now, in recent years, he has come to be pretty much universally loved and treated as an American hero and his past “trangressions” seem largely forgotten and rarely discussed. Seemed like everyone applauded when he was chosen to light the Olympic torch in Atlanta.

What happened to all the folks who voted for Joe Frazier or George Foreman solely in the hope that a “Good Negro” would put this “Bad Nigger” in his place? Is is because of his Parkinson’s? Or because trash-talking is now more mainstream?

The questions are: when and how did this historical amnesia set in? Can you name any other recent historical figures who have lived through such a wide range of public perception?

2

Not all of us flipped when Casius Clay became Ali; so some of us didn’t have to flop back.

3

Maybe some the “white folk” stopped their panic attack about Ali when the Supreme Court voted 8-0 in his favor, regarding his draft status and stand against the war in Viet Nam. And remember, back in the 60’s many people thought we should be fighting that war. Regarless of race, a lot of people did a flip flop on that one over the years.

I’m not sure what his “transgressions” were, but he won more heavyweight championship fights than any other figher in the 60’s, then went on to win more heavyweight championship fights in the 70’s than any other fighter. Maybe people who didn’t like him 30 years ago now realize how great a boxer he was. And maybe after 30 years a lot of people think that standing up to racism and fighting for equality and religious freedom was was the right thing to do.

One more thing. He didn’t just become popular with the mainsteam at the 1996 Olympics. During the 70’s he had wide spread appeal and popularity, particularly after the Foreman fight.

4

I never flip-flopped. I thought Muhammad Ali was a phony and a creep twenty years ago, and I still do.

Of all Ali’s offenses, NONE was more unforgivable than posing as the black man’s champion, and painting Joe Frazier as an Uncle Tom. Ali was a middle-class, light-skinned, RELATIVELY privileged black man. Joe Frazier was a dark-skinned man who’d grown up in genuine poverty.

I realize that some, perhaps MOST of the things ALi said were mere bravado, showmanship, trash talk to boost public interest. But for Ali to mock Frazier, for the entertainment of white reporters who were eating this stuff up, was disgusting.

If people now treat ALi as a cuddly teddy bear, it’s mostly because he’s sick, he’s harmless, and enough time has gone by that people have forgotten what rotten things he did and said. My favorite example? During a visit to Harlem, around 1975, he mocked a little black girl who had the nerve to say she was a CHristian. Ali laughed, “If your girlfriend got knocked up, and she said the Holy Spirit did it, you gonna believe her?”

Look, if you’re a Jew or atheist or Buddhist, you may think that was a hilarious line. Problem is, Ali is (supposedly) a Moslem. And the virgin birth of Jesus IS a part of Islamic doctrine! Folks, I’m Catholic, and even I know that! You’d THINK a guy passing himself off as a devout Moslem (indeed, he told the Supreme Court he was an Islamic clergyman!) might know it.

Still, Ali isn’t the only unsavory character who managed to endear himself to people who once hated him. In 1964, liberals treated Barry Goldwater as evil incarnate, as an insane bigot who couldn’t wait to blow up the world. By the time he died, those same liberals were treating him like a noble hero. Rather nauseating, really.

5

Charles Lindburgh was a hero, but then a “fellow traveler” with the Reds.

H.G.Wells was a heroic visionary, but his predictions for eugenics and the end of the Peerage seemed to align him more with Hitler than wartime England.

6

Funny how Ali’s been forgiven for his sins during the '60s, but not Jane Fonda for hers?

Richard Pryor might also be in the same class, least as far as the acclaim he’s getting now that he’s been rendered harmless by illness. While he wasn’t considered as “dangerous” as Ali, he was definitely threatening in his time.

But that’s the nature of reputations. In general, it goes down when the historical figure dies, and then there’s a counter-balancing as time goes by. Biographies get written, those who knew the HP dies and those who come across the works left behind are seeing the Work and not the mythos that builds up around the HP (Hemingway, anyone?)

In literature, the three bad boys were Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe (these were the three, for example, featured in Esquires “Those Who Made A Difference” special issue back in, I believe, the 80s). Wolfe has faded bad since then, Fitzgerald’s still hanging on, as is Hemingway, while Faulkner’s star seems to have risen.

Zora Neale Hurston was a forgotten author until an article was written about her in Ms. magazine (by Toni Morrison?) about not being able to find her gravesite in Florida. That’s been credited with sparking a revival of interest in her works, which were published a few years back by the Library of America, alongside Twain, Richard Wright and Faulkner.

Then there’s music. Garth Brooks has sold nearly as many albums as the Beatles. Will we be buying a CD (or whatever we’ll have down the road) of his #1 hits, say, in 2035?

Popularity is not a guarantee of longevity. Read the list of best-sellers in any year, and see if we’re still reading, listening, watching them today.

7

A Communist? Right before World War II, Lindbergh was very close to being a Nazi sympathizer, calling for the US to stay out of the war and praising the might of the Luftwaffe.

8

There are a lot of historical figures who go through periods of being idolized, then periods of being roundly detested:

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette
Mary, Queen of Scots
Columbus (and Queen Isabella)
Thomas Edison

As for Muhammad Ali, I have trouble admiring ANYONE who makes his living by beating the holy crap out of people. This is a “sport?”

9

You sure about that? I’m not a Muslim, but I’ve always heard that Islamic belief is that Jesus was a mortal man with no supernatural origins or powers.

I also think the opinions on Lindbergh and Wells were flipped. Lindbergh was pretty conservative (and accused by some of being a Nazi sympathizer) and Wells was regarded as a liberal for most of his life (in fact, the Nazis had him on their list of people who they planned to take into custody after they invaded Britain).

10

Lots of folks forget nowdays that Joseph Kennedy, Sr. was a grifter and borderline Nazi panderer who used his position as Ambassador to Great Britain to spike early American support up to and through the early phases of WWII.

Phillip K. Dick has been posthumously elevated from nominally successful sci-fi hack to visionary genius. Sometimes I think he deserved it.

Orson Welles is now more highly regarded as a director than as an actor.

If anyone in America knew who Alan Turing was in the early 1950s, it was as a communist homosexual spy.

George Washington left Philadelphia (or was it New York?) to boos, catcalls, and “good riddances” after his second term as President.

Ralph Nader is now a real politician.

Jesse Ventura is now a governor.

Arnold Schwartzenegger is now a candidate.

Patty Hearst is now an actress.

Ronald Fucking Reagan.

11

O.J. Simpson…superstar running back, charismatic and charming movie star, television commentator, smiling and amiable, popular ad spokesman, everyone loves the Juice…then, his public image took a 180 degree turn really quickly.

12

Got it backwards. Lindburgh was the Nazi, Wells was the Red.

13

I’ve always admired Stokeley Carmichael myself.

14

Fatty Arbuckle was railroaded.

(Sometimes I realize that I don’t give a good-golly-damn about how other people feel about any celebrity or randomly selected “famous” person. Why am I bothering to type this?)

15

Ralph Nader
is now a real politician?
Define real and politician…

He’s always been a hero.

16

I’m also a Catholic, but studied a bit of Islam at university. IIRC the virgin birth is accepted in mainstream Muslim theology - there just isn’t a great amount of importance placed on it, because there isn’t a great amount of importance placed on Jesus, who is seen as a great prophet, but no greater than Moses or Abraham (etc) were.

Back on topic, I was absolutely disgusted when Nixon died and everybody seemed to suddenly forget what a nasty, hateful criminal he had been.

17

I do know that Islam reguards Jesus as a prophet. Just not as great a prophet as Muhammed.

Let’s see, I agree totally about Nixon. I was in tenth grade, and I was thinking-does it really make a difference whether you kiss up to the guy just because he died?

18

Oh also, astorian, there are Muslim sects that reject the virgin birth, so it wouldn’t necessarily make Ali a bad Muslim to not believe in it.

19

That was actually Alice Walker.

As for flip-flops, take a look at the shift in opinion on Abraham Lincoln. You read some of the contemporary articles written about him and you’re just appalled at the level of vitriol. Now he’s justfully remembered as the engineer of the saving of the United States.

20

Johann Sebastian Bach was considered one of the best keyboard players of his time, and only that. That was until Mendelsohn discovered and played his St. Matthew’s Passion, and more of Bach’s works have been found. Now he is regarded as belonging in the Classical music trinity along with Mozart and Beethoven.