Category: Muhammad Ali

Homage to Howard Bingham, Ali's Peaceful Friend

12/17/2016

Howard Bingham and Muhammad Ali

The commotion of Muhammad Ali was often accompanied by the tranquility of Howard Bingham.

He was the friend who did not get in the way of the bright sunlight and sudden squalls around Ali. He was just there, a benign presence, with camera, with talent.

Howard Bingham captured Ali when the spotlights and microphones were not on, when something approximating normal life was transpiring. He brought peace.

Now, peace back to Howard Bingham, who passed Friday at 77. The obits are flying onto the web – things I never knew about him. Son of a southern preacher. Flunked photography in college. Was accepted as trustworthy by the Black Panthers in the ‘60s but could not get his photos published for decades.

So much to know about Howard Bingham, who never talked about himself. He just observed -- what artists do. At any Ali happening, Bingham might be taking photos, or he might be in a corner, watching.

The boxing guys were puffing out their manly chests and urging Ali to perform more of that rope-a-dope. Take a few more shots in the head, Champ. The religion guys were all dressed up and looking important and slightly menacing, too. Business people getting their percent. Cheerleaders like Bundini shouting “Float like a butterfly! Sting like a bee!” The crowds chanting, “Muhammad Ali is our champ!” Family members. Hangers-on. I remember a cook from the Middle East who somehow came to America with the Champ. A tiny African pilot who flew Ali from Zaire to Louisville. PR people galore. Reporters, all insiders. What a crew.

And on the periphery was the most solid of them all, Howard Bingham, who remembered names and faces and always said hello to me on my irregular visits. We watched. I thought of him as a friend I didn’t know very well.

Bingham had a much more important admirer. I just read a very sweet obit that the Los Angeles Times had on line by Saturday morning. Esmeralda Bermudez describes Nelson Mandela telling Ali about his friendship with Bingham.

But you should read the story in context:

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-howard-bingham-20161216-story.html

I just want to say that today I am thinking about Howard Bingham, whose pocket of serenity and decency endures.

Photo by Howard Bingham

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Homage to Howard Bingham, Ali's Peaceful Friend

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