I don't get it, my friends.
Muhammed Ali hasn't been dead 48 hours and social media has already turned what started out as touching, respectful tributes from far and wide into venomous, hateful attacks on his character and his beliefs.
It boggles the mind, my friends.
In the 24+ hours since Ali's death was announced he has been decried as a Muslim, a traitor and a draft dodger. All three of which are fire brands in popular culture these days thanks to varied degrees of ignorance from all sources. It is also yet another division along racial lines on both sides of racism which I won't get into here.
Maybe I'm too old fashioned about respect for the dead.
In my lifetime we've lost many celebrities from the entertainment and sports world and it amazes me how with every passing the level of respect they get from the time the public is informed of that persons death forward.
The first truly famous person's death I remember being informed of via mass media was Elvis Presley in 1977. I was a little more than a month away from turning 9 years old and I learned of his death via a cut-in on our afternoon TV programs. Years later I came to find out that he was a drug addict and morbidly obese, among other things.
Compare that to Michael Jackson's death in 2009 where he already had a monkey on his back (no pun intended) having beat a child molestation case in 2005 and then coming to find out that he died of and overdose of sleep meds because he was a raging insomniac. All of that touched of unfair criticisms of him, some continuing to this day.
Sure, Muhammed Ali is one of my favorite sports figures and this may be coloring my opinion a lot but I am perplexed today about the venom. Is the ability to trash the memory of someone so overwhelming that people HAVE to rip him before his bones go cold.
My feeling is that since he is deaf and can't defend himself it's much easier for cowards and village idiots to do so.
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