Behold, a Tip Jar!
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To date, this is how the very few interactions I've had with Never Trumpers have gone, because I want to talk about the Befor...
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It wasn't a fluke. It wasn't pilot error. It wasn't instrument failure. This is what Republicans wanted, and now they have a...
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Ah, yes: the fight that added the word "rope-a-dope" to the English language. Great viewing; the HBO annotation with David Frost (!) and Jim Brown (!!) is amazing. The actual fight begins at 21:14 of this video.
Too often, "use the rope-a-dope strategy" is taken to mean "stand there and take blow after blow until your opponent gets tired from throwing all those punches -- then strike." The trouble is that, in an actual boxing match, the fighter who's executing "rope-a-dope" isn't actually a) standing, b) taking full damage from those blows, or even c) executing a strategy. What (s)he is doing is leaning against the ropes, in such a way that the ropes -- not the boxer's body -- take most of the energy from all those punches. In effect, the ropes form a shield. Figuring how to lean against the ropes correctly takes practice; indeed, Ali trained in this long-developing tactic (not strategy) for months ahead of the match in Kinshasa.
I just explained the "rope" part of rope-a-dope. The "dope" part has two meanings. When Ali was learning the tactic, he called himself a dope. In the Kinshasa fight, it was Foreman who was the dope, because it didn't occur to him that Ali was intentionally staying on the ropes. Foreman, of course, vastly smartened up after this fight, but there was no way a Joe Frazier or Ken Norton would've fallen for Ali's trick.
The tl;dr version? To use "rope-a-dope," (1) you have to learn how, (2)you need a dope who's too dumb to see what you're doing when you execute it, and most importantly, (3) there need to be ropes present. The GOP in general has certainly let us fulfill condition (1), and Dolt .45 has probably provided us with (2) the dope. So where are the ropes?
Ali to David Frost: "If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned, wait 'til I whup Foreman's behind!"
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... risk a Nixonian media disparagement, he said.
TV shows should show talk that sells the contents more than the container. Who can forget David Frost's blathering self-conceits of the rumble in the jungle. Who can remember Ali told the Establishment, "gather Muslim sensibility," the month after Nixon quit.
The memory button: A direct hit. I worked this fight at the Boston Garden. Counting all the Don King closed-circuit fights I engineered along the satellite relay, probably I'd say it was a thousand bucks.
That night at the Garden my equipment was rocking 2-scaffolds high. I timidly push people climbed up to see off the scaffold. Up pushes this mick in, like, a letterman's jacket Southie chapter. "You want people off this scaffold?"
"Yeah, or I black the screen."
"Okay. I'm a Cambridge cop. I got two grand on this fight. I'll take it from here. You go sit down."
I still kept the cash.
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