[washingtonismoney]

Here, in fact, I find the efforts to defend The Rant by comparing RS to Ali to be valid.  Both set very strong examples of effective expression and emotional evocation.  There the comparison ends.  I never sensed hatred coming from Ali. 

Hate to single out one statement like this, but Ali's history with Joe Frazier is not a proud one. Whether it was born from hate or something else, it was deliberate maliciousness:

Frazier seems more emotionally damaged, still angry not just at the outcome -- and a manager who did not let him come out for the last round -- but at Ali, who in the process of promoting the fights, mocked and insulted him, called him an Uncle Tom and a gorilla, and said how ugly he was: "Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He's so ugly blind men go the other way? He not only looks bad, you can smell him in another country!"

Those wounds remain long after the cuts from the fights have disappeared. Only recently, Ali apologized to him, admitting that some of the things he had said were unacceptable, but the apology apparently has come much too late, and Frazier's bitterness runs far too deep. It is as if the fight has never ended for him, and he refuses to accept the decision of Eddie Futch, his manager, not to let him answer the bell for the last round.

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/halberstam/010815.html

[washingtonismoney]

Here, in fact, I find the efforts to defend The Rant by comparing RS to Ali to be valid.  Both set very strong examples of effective expression and emotional evocation.  There the comparison ends.  I never sensed hatred coming from Ali. 

Hate to single out one statement like this, but Ali's history with Joe Frazier is not a proud one. Whether it was born from hate or something else, it was deliberate maliciousness:

Frazier seems more emotionally damaged, still angry not just at the outcome -- and a manager who did not let him come out for the last round -- but at Ali, who in the process of promoting the fights, mocked and insulted him, called him an Uncle Tom and a gorilla, and said how ugly he was: "Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund! He's so ugly blind men go the other way? He not only looks bad, you can smell him in another country!"

Those wounds remain long after the cuts from the fights have disappeared. Only recently, Ali apologized to him, admitting that some of the things he had said were unacceptable, but the apology apparently has come much too late, and Frazier's bitterness runs far too deep. It is as if the fight has never ended for him, and he refuses to accept the decision of Eddie Futch, his manager, not to let him answer the bell for the last round.

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/halberstam/010815.html