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Monday, Nov 23, 2009
Despite what liberal critics say, Michael Jordan is the true heir to the radical legacy of Muhammad Ali.
Sep 14, 1999 | Muhammad Ali has been hot ever since, with shaky hand and placid expression, he lit the torch to open the 1996 Olympics. There has been an Academy Award-winning documentary, a bestselling book, countless magazine covers -- even the front of a Wheaties box, an honor never before bestowed upon the fighter once known as "The Louisville Lip." But when Ali had the power of speech, his public image was decidedly different. Draft resister and black nationalist, Ali was a threat to white America in the late '60s, long before the rap group Public Enemy coined the phrase "Fear of a Black Planet."
Now, some 30 years later, a softer, cuddlier Ali is celebrated. Silenced by Parkinson's syndrome (a degenerative nerve condition), he is consistently praised for his commitment to principle, and he is served up as an antidote for today's greedy, self-centered professional athlete. Time and again the myopic press tells us that this generation's icons would do well to follow Ali's socially conscious lead.
When Michael Jordan announced his retirement from basketball earlier this year, the comparisons to Ali began flying fast and furious. In terms of social impact, the conventional wisdom went, Jordan comes up short. It started at his farewell press conference, when Jordan was asked if he might now try to help "solve some of the world's problems."
"I can't solve the world's problems," Jordan responded, noting that he still had TV commercials to star in, golf to play and kids to raise. The New York Times' Ira Berkow wouldn't take no for an answer. "If he isn't playing basketball, he should have enough time to read up on issues," he wrote.
"Jordan uses his clout to peddle sneakers and star in unwatchable movies with Bugs Bunny, leaving the very distinct impression that he has the social consciousness of a baked potato," agreed John Schulian in the pages of GQ, in a piece that named Ali the athlete of the century.
And now comes "Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties," a compelling reminder of just how revolutionary Ali was. But even writer Michael Marqusee can't refrain from dissing Jordan in light of Ali, arguing that Jordan's "blackness has been deliberately submerged within his Americanness, which is reduced, in the end, to his individual wealth and success."
More than 30 years ago, Ali scoffed at the patronizing press that had dubbed Joe Louis "a credit to his race" and found Ali threatening. "I don't have to be what you want me to be," he said then. Ironically, Jordan, famous for the marketing tag line "Be Like Mike," has been criticized by the likes of Jesse Jackson, Arthur Ashe, Jim Brown and a white liberal press for not being like Ali.
Just as the conventional wisdom about Ali was off-base three decades ago, so, too, is this reevaluation of Jordan, this notion that he stands for nothing more lofty than enriching his own bank account. Maybe history will repeat itself and, in 30 years, the American media will do another about-face and begin to credit Jordan as a truly groundbreaking figure.
