On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 10:56:05 -0500, Scott Loveless <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 15:44:13 +0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > < > Neither was Cassius Clay, but we don't bitch about him. This is > rather politcally charged, don't you think?
By the time he was drafted, his name was Mohamed Ali, not Cassius Clay. I think that he took the most admirable of stands. He had the money that he could have gotten a cushy military job somewhere stateside, or he could have joined the army and gave "boxing exhibitions" to entertain the troops, or he could have left the country to avoid the draft, or whatever. He didn't. He basically said, "I'm not going to Vietnam - here I am, come get me and put me in prison, because I'm breaking the law". His was an act of civil disobedience in the tradition of Gandi or Martin Luther King Jr. He did this during the height of his boxing career, when his physical skills and conditioning were at their greatest. He went to prison for three years, and lost millions of dollars and the prime years of his career as a result. His reason for not going: "No Viet Cong never called me a nigger" still resonates (with me anyway). cheers, frank -- "Sharpness is a bourgeois concept." -Henri Cartier-Bresson
