The question asked in my previous blog brought to mind a boxing story I read many years ago, when I was in my early teens, which came from a soft-cover book titled “Bill Stern\’s Favorite Boxing Stories”.
It being Bill Stern – who was known to fabricate anecdotes here and there – the story was probably not true. But it could have been true, it certainly described events which could have happened…and, in any event, it was enjoyable enough for me to remember all this time. So here goes.
A Black boxer (might have been a young Joe Louis) was matched against a White boxer…and a White referee, who made it pretty clear which fighter – or, more exactly, which skin color – he favored.
The Black boxer saw a weakness in the White boxer\’s defense, found his opening and unloaded a haymaker, knocking him to the canvas. But instead of counting him out, the referee proclaimed “That was my fault. It wasn\’t the punch, it was that I accidentally got in the way and tripped him”. Then, while the Black boxer stared in disbelief, the referee allowed the floored boxer to shake off the punch and continue fighting.
But when the fight resumed, the Black boxer quickly exploited the same defensive weakness, unloaded another one just like it, and left the White boxer on the canvas, apparently unconscious….
….at which point he turned to the referee and said, loud enough for the ringsiders to hear, “For the edification of my friends and myself, could you tell me who knocked him out that time?” With derisive laughter ringing in his ears, the White referee had no choice but to count to ten.
How I wish we had someone to make an equivalently derisive statement to our media and political referees; the ones who keep telling us Islam has nothing to do with Islamic terrorism.
