Cramming in a bunch of things today on a Wednesday in November, when the temp here in NYC is still in the 60s, amazingly…
Pretty slow and uneventful Election Night this year, as it usually is during off-year elections.
But two results made this liberal extremely happy. Most importantly, in Mississippi, Initiative 26 was soundly defeated, 58 percent to 42 percent, as of this writing (86 percent of precincts reporting). This was the “Personhood” initiative that I railed about last month, a law that anti-choice zealots in Mississippi tried to pass declaring abortion to be murder, punishable by prison time.
Even in Mississippi, as right-wing a state as you will find in the South, this was deplorable, and was rightly defeated.
Also in Ohio, unions kept their rights to collectively bargain, as Gov. John Kasich was dealt a resounding defeat.
One thing you can always say about my friends the Republicans in politics: You can always count on them to overreach.
**This was pretty damn hilarious. A Russian news anchor is watching a report on female strippers and, well, just watch happens at the 10-second mark. Where was that hand, comrade?
**Speaking of funny, this has nothing to do with anything but it cracked me up. We’ve all gotten those emails telling us to “forward this” or else suffer dire consequences.
**Finally, I meant to write about the great boxing champion Smokin’ Joe Frazier yesterday but simply ran out of time. Frazier, of course, is most remembered for two things: His three epic battles with Muhammad Ali, culminating in the “Thrilla in Manila,” and his knockdown at the hands of George Foreman, resulting in the classic Howard Cosell call “Down goes Frazier!” “Down goes Frazier!”
Frazier had every right to be bitter in his later years; Ali insulted him deeply during the run-up to their troika of battles, and even though Ali was just trying to sell tickets, he wounded Frazier with his “Uncle Tom” remarks and what-not. Frazier was a hell of a fighter in his own right, and I heard the great boxing writer Bert Sugar on the radio Tuesday call him “one of the 10 best heavyweights who ever lived.”
My favorite Frazier remark came during the Thrilla in Manila. Late in the fight Ali whispered to his great foe, “They told me you was washed up.” Frazier’s retort: “They lied, pretty boy.”
Two excellent pieces to point you two if you want to remember Frazier: One, this remembrance by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Dave Anderson, and then one of the finest pieces of sportswriting in history, Mark Kram’s story about the Thrilla in Manila, from Sports Illustrated.
Wide World of Stuff 