Here’s another note on the life of Muhammad Ali, who has died at 74. He was a subject of the American habit of forgetting the past and going along with the present; in this case, the boxer was easily the nation’s most “hated” man in the 1960s, and most “beloved” in 2016. The writer once asked him why he was so noisy, and he said: “Showboat.” This meant he fathomed another American habit, that of paying overt attention to people who grab headlines. Ali (born Cassius Clay) was never so grand and noble as his overweening funeral insisted, but he was the greatest in at least one respect: he understood people more than they understood him.
TOM TIEDE