Float Like a Blow Fly, Stink Like a Manatee

Or

Prostrate in the Copper State

Former Cherry Hill, NJ resident Muhammad Ali, who liked to punch people in the face, but was too good to shoot them, has failed to awaken from the Coma in Arizona and died of severe sepsis at the age of 74, leaving Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only acceptable Muslim remaining in the United States. Cassius Clay won the 1960 Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight, then knocked off Sonny Liston in 1964 to become the world heavyweight champion (back in the days when there was only one) at the age of 22. Then things got interesting. Renouncing his “slave name,” he rechristened himself Muhammad Ali and stopped being one of the good ones. He asserted his conscientious observer status and refused to accept being inducted into the US Army during the Vietnam War, asserting that he had no particular beef with the Viet Cong. He was stripped of his boxing license and heavyweight title and convicted after 21 minutes of deliberation. Although the conviction was overturned, he lost more than 3 years at the peak of his career, and was expected to fade into obscurity. The Poet Laureate of the Squared Circle had other plans, quickly re-emerging as a heavyweight title contender, belittling the surly, unapproachable champion Joe Frazier at every opportunity with his trained pit bull Howard Cosell at his side. Frazier responded by handing Ali his first career loss in the Fight of the Century. Ali won the rematch, setting up the Rumble in the Jungle against new champ George Foreman, where he employed his Rope-a-Dope strategy to tire Foreman out and score the knockout to reclaim the heavyweight title. Ali fought a few tomato cans and inspired Rocky by letting The Bayonne Bleeder, Chuck Wepner, knock him down/trip him. Frazier and Ali met for a final time in the Thrilla in Manila, one of the greatest fights ever, where the two men bludgeoned each other for hours in sweltering heat with Ali scoring a TKO, but calling it “the closest thing to dying that I know.” Ali lost the title, regained the title and generally hung on far too long in a series of increasingly embarrassing fights before retiring in 1981. Parkinson’s disease, diagnosed in 1984, gradually debilitated him, replacing grace with shakes and his wit with mumbles, setting up his poignantly silent, trembling torch lighting at the 1996 Olympics.

Recused

Or

Dissenting In Pine Bin

(Deserved decoration for Don)

Or

Argle Bargled

(Meritorious mention for Mike B)

Antonin Scalia’s lifelong quest to keep the United States bound to the whims of slave-owning men in powdered wigs and breeches who sought to cure disease with bleeding and conflicts with guns that could fire 3 shots a minute (including ample reloading time in between), has ended with his death from “natural causes” while “alone” at a West Texas resort at the age of 79. Scalia was lauded for his entertainingly written opinions, if you consider unfettered access to guns and extremely fettered access to your own body entertaining. After DOMA was overturned, he suggested that the Supreme Court had no more right to determine gays were a minority deserving protection than it would for pederasts. He called the Voting Rights Act the "perpetuation of racial entitlement.” He was a darling among conservatives, who claim to abhor activist judges, yet celebrated his attempts to overturn Miranda v. Arizona and Roe v. Wade. Scalia’s originalist leanings also led him to argue against Gideon v. Wainwright, which established the government’s responsibility to provide indigent defendants with lawyers, and Brown v. Board of Education, as there was no intent in the 14th Amendment to desegregate schools. Ironically for this man of Constitutional purity, the battle over who will name his successor has already started in purely political terms, as Republicans have apparently found a hidden clause in Article 2 "[the president] shall nominate ... Judges of the supreme Court…” unless in an election year with an opposition Congress, ignoring the 17 judges previously nominated in election years, most recently President Reagan’s appointment of Anthony Kennedy. 

Monte Morte

Monte Irvin, one of the best baseball players ever raised in New Jersey, has died at the age of 96. With speed, a cannon for an arm and the ability to hit for power and average as a star for the Newark Eagles of the Negro leagues, most of his contemporaries assumed Irvin was going to be the first player to make the leap to the major leagues. Unfortunately, in 1945 when Dodgers GM Branch Rickey decided to right one of the century’s great wrongs, Irvin was just out of the Army and not ready for high-level competition. Rickey tried to sign him in 1948, but he was under contract and Rickey wasn’t willing to pay for the privilege, so the Eagles ended up selling his contract to the New York Giants. The move would prove to be a rare misstep by Rickey. Irvin made his debut in 1949 and was in the majors for good in 1950, but at age 30, had lost his prime years in buses, small towns and barnstorming tours in the Negro Leagues. The 1951 season turned out to be momentous, as Irvin hit .312 with 24 HRs and a league-leading 121 RBI, helping to lead the Giants in their historic comeback to overtake the Dodgers and win the pennant. He then hit .458 in the World Series, stealing home in Game 1, as he watched the New York Yankees win another title. More importantly, he took a 20-year old rookie from Alabama under his wing, and Willie Mays regarded him as a mentor and second father, instrumental to his own Hall of Fame career. That season would be Irvin’s high-water mark, as age and injuries limited Irvin’s efficacy, although he did help the Giants to their upset win in the 1954 World Series. He became the first black executive when he joined the commissioner’s office in 1968 – a role that put him in Atlanta on April 8, 1974 as the only representative from MLB because prick bastard Bowie Kuhn had something better to do than witness Hank Aaron break the all-time HR record. Irvin was named to a Hall of Fame commission intended to open the Hall to Negro league stars in 1971. Coincidentally, that same commission elected him to the Hall in 1973. 

Mournin’ Norman

(Props to Monty)

Or

Deserted Shield

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the very model of a modern four-star general, has died at the age of 78 from complications of pneumonia. His gruff but genial and second helping of mashed potatoes physique were straight out of central casting for a military commander - or a football coach – and he was the star of CNN’s programming for months in 1991. A veteran of Vietnam, where he earned two Purple Hearts and three Silver Stars, Schwarzkopf reminded America what it meant to win a war and showed what the greatest military in the history of the planet looked like by whipping Iraq, the world’s 4th largest army, all over the desert in Operation Desert Storm. Forced to stop short of actually resolving our problems with Saddam Hussein by the gutless chairman of the Joint Chiefs (Colin Powell) and his spineless president (George I), Schwarzkopf had to sit quietly when Junior attempted to resolve his Daddy issues in 2003 by finishing things. A member of Mensa, Schwarkopf was a New Jersey native and Hall of Famer and followed in the family business, as his grandfather was also a West Point graduate, served in World War I, helped found the New Jersey State Police and served as a lead investigator of the Charles Lindbergh, Jr. kidnapping, then re-upped for World War II, and his father restored the Shah of Iran to power after the CIA coup overthrew the democratically elected government and prime minister.