Thanks, Kareem, For Your Great All-American Idea — Next Day Revisit

Yesterday on September 22, 2016 I posted an article about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s great idea that was published in Parade Magazine. In the September 11th issue, different citizens and celebrities were asked what the number one job for the next president should be. Kareem’s response was to make Constitution Day “a nationally celebrated holiday with public readings from the Constitution, a Supreme Court versus Congress basketball game and other events that promoted learning about the greatest political document ever written.”

In my article I praised his foresight and imagination, noting that a lot of celebrated athletes weren’t as articulate and inventive as he was. I also noted the irony of it all. Here was a former basketball star and practicing Muslim who demonstrated more understanding and reverence for the Constitution than a lot of flag-waving, so-called patriotic Americans who wanted to unconstitutionally deport all Muslims. That meant that they wanted to kick another American who knew and respected our framework of government out of the country because they didn’t respect his religion. Oh, the irony!

What I didn’t realize at the time was that Kareem had written a passionately eloquent op-ed about the Constitution and posted it online on the very same day I had posted mine. His editorial “Trump is so scared that he wants us to dismantle the Constitution” appeared in PostEverything — the web page of The Washington Post. I wrote my article and posted it on The Richfield Patch before I even had a chance to read what he’d written. So I was neither influenced nor inspired by his posting. But it’s amazing that what I wrote about his deep reverence and patriotic fervor about the Constitution was so vividly realized in his op-ed.

Too often celebrities phone in their written stuff to ghostwriters and let them handle the mechanics and dirty work of the actual writing. Bill O’ Reilly immediately comes to mind with his series of “killing” historical figures. But Kareem is different.

Here’s a guy who’s a real honest-to-God thinker and scholar of American history and law. In just one op-ed he’s managed to connect to the zeitgeist that so many Americans have been feeling for the past year yet could not articulate. He understands that President Donald Trump would be an enemy to our democracy because Trump wouldn’t understand how our democracy actually operates. He didn’t personally attack Trump in an unfair, racist way; he didn’t denounce or ridicule him for being a filthy rich, white Republican businessman in the way others have done. It’s just that Kareem recognizes that this candidate for the presidency is completely ignorant about the Constitution.

But Kareem can state it so much better than I can describe it. So try to read his op-ed. Go to PostEverything right now and rejoice that there are still some Americans out there who get it. At least with Kareem, he knows you shouldn’t mess with the Constitution.