In Brooklyn, the land of liberal redundancy and mock thought, I am in the other corner.
PREFACE
I started boxing in Gleason’s Gym in 1984. I was a ranked tennis player. I was also a ranked ski racer but that has nothing to do with this. Someone in my tennis club locker room said he was going to try boxing. In those days no white collar people boxed. It sounded freakish but a few weeks later I myself started. I didn’t think I’d last. I figured it would be a nice dilettantish diversion. It would feed me with stories for social events. Maybe I’d amuse myself for a few months.
I’ve been there twenty-eight years. First as a stumbling beginner, then as an amateur, then as Gleason’s first white collar fighter, then as a pro and then as a trainer.
It’s a long way from arriving at Gleason’s as a CEO in a chauffeured Rolls Royce to showing up there as a trainer on the subway. It’s a societal demotion to go from an insurance baron to a trainer. I kind of get a kick out of it. While OWS malcontents complain about the accomplishments of the rich, I actually went downhill from a high plateau to the basement of gym professions and I am still happy. What do the protestors have to complain about? They are professional whiners.
When I arrived at Gleason’s, I was a liberal who was intimidated by the thought of boxing. I was basically a pacifist—someone who shows no commitment to defending himself or his country and mocks his betters for their violence. I was a self-inflated Gandhi with the courage of a mouse.
It’s ironic that I was rich. I should have been Republican. But I was a Democrat, a Rolls Royce liberal. I wanted the self-congratulation of being leftist, fair, and socially conscious. I not only wanted to be rich, I wanted to be a saint. I wanted to enjoy both the self-adulation of being fair while keeping my share of the wealth. I had been brought up in the sixties and was soft spoken, somewhat effeminate and another member of the degraded male species who had traded in masculinity for feminine, sensitive, empathetic values.
The world has particularly treated white men as some sort of villains and women as innocent, sensitive creatures who have been harassed by men. Although almost every invention, philosophy, science or great work of art can be traced to white men, we are now considered Neanderthal beasts. It’s considered intelligent, sensitive and sweet to discount white males.
It’s obvious that white men have started most of the major wars. Well, they had the intelligence to invent the weapons. Like they don’t chop off each other’s limbs in Africa. If we defend white man’s creation of civilization we are considered bigoted and dumb even though it was our very ingenuity that created everything from the skyscraper to the plane to the rocket ship. Hey, I am no Arian racist. I look forward to other races and women contributing their fair share. But I don’t like their exaggerating their apocryphal accomplishments.
What I learned from boxing over the last twenty-eight years is that there are no excuses. You get hit and if you don’t suck it up when you get hit back then you are a wimp, a weakling, a coward. No matter how many women engage in it, it is a man’s sport. Women are tourists. Men are the location.
Boxing is not like business where the man with the most clout or the highest position can boss around his lower class clerks, make them bring coffee or files to his office. I remember sitting in my millionaire friend Bill’s office. He called a huge black fellow in and started ordering him around. I wanted the guy to punch Bill out. Why should societal correctness allow the gentleman to beat up whom he perceives as a savage while the savage is afraid to even make a refuting remark? In life, position dominates over power. Not that that’s not necessary. We need order and structure and structural dominance. Something the Occupy crowd will never understand. As rude as Bill is, think of how disruptive and dangerous protestors can be and how easily they can spill over into violence.
Only in boxing are we separated by our skills and courage. It’s the same thing conservatives demand of people. If you are on welfare you should work to get off it. If you are in jail you should suffer your punishment politely and not cry like a weakling. When I was in jail the prison psychiatrist used to ask, “What makes you so happy? You’re giddy.” Because I adjusted to my world and didn’t complain. I was not a crybaby. I was not a liberal demanding breaks for myself and criminals. I didn’t want a welfare check because I couldn’t find a job. The OWS crowd doesn’t even want jobs. As one of them bragged on television, “Obama gives out free stuff.”
In boxing there is talent and there is heart. If you have both you can be a champion. I had more heart than talent. I remember a sparring partner breaking my nose almost clean off my face. It was hanging under my right eye. Instead of taking a step back I went straight after him and put a gash in his lower lip. Then my chauffeur drove me off to the hospital. My trainer said, “That’s heart.”
Liberals use boxing as a social lesson to say that people fight because they have to, because they are poor. I was rich. I didn’t have to do anything. I boxed because I loved it.
I use Gleason’s Gym as the background for my politics. I’ve clearly had political discussions in other places. But I feel that the background is perfect for philosophizing about the courage of living up to values and the aesthetic beauty of not knuckling under to cultural relativism.
Perhaps I sound a little like John Wayne. But I’m a cowboy with intellect. I have a bit of William Buckley’s intelligence. That makes me a lot smarter than most arrogant liberals who buoy themselves up with stupidity masquerading as smarts. Or the Hollywood undereducated, snobby liberals like Shawn Penn and George Clooney. Their messages are undercut by their ignorance. They are virulently insistent on their simplistic views because they don’t have the range to negotiate competing views.
I once hated the rigidity of the fifties. I now hate the liquidity of the sixties and the recidivistic twenty first century. There are no containers, no barriers. Everything is fair game. Old values are thrown to the curbside and ideas replace emotions. The ideology of the left indoctrinates us. If you don’t like gays you are a homophobe instead of someone who is listening to his bodily instincts. If your opinion is not politically correct, you are a troglodyte. If you are not a fake humanist, you are a redneck. America is racing down white water rapids in a canoe. Obama is yanking on the paddle.
