In which the pond steps into an American gutter, and gets up with assorted irreconcilable fleas ...

Buried somewhere in the pond's groaning stacks of books is this one by Jack Newfield ... 

The pond has always been interested in the way that a gangster can rise to the highest positions in the land in the United States, provided he has enough money and chutzpah, and Don King is the exemplar of a gangster who almost single-handedly turned professional boxing into a comic showbiz joke down there with wrestling (though he had a lot of help from his entourage).

Of course some who try to get near the top end up appearing as lost, tragic figures in American Hustle, but that's another movie.

Newfield's book had another title, not just offering life and crimes, but also shame...

By the time it had reached paperback, King was being called an explosive hustler ...

The book was well received ... there were plenty of encomiums on the slick ...

By the time HBO turned King's life story into a 1997 telemovie (which picked up a Golden Globe for the lead), the criminal gangster and explosive hustler and boxing's shame had been turned into some kind of hero ...

He was always left standing, bloodied but unbowed. In the American way, an heroic crook ...

It was almost possible to forget what King had done, what he represented ...

This is how Amazon, recycling Publishers Weekly, here, summarised the original book ...

In 1966, when King was the biggest numbers banker in Cleveland, he beat to death a man who owed him money. After serving fewer than four years of a second-degree murder conviction, he was paroled and immediately got into the boxing promoting business, helped by, among others, rock and roll songwriter/ performer Lloyd Price and Muhammad Ali. Soon, King was arranging the "Rumble in the Jungle," the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire in 1974, which was followed by the "Thriller in Manilla," the Ali-Frazier fight in 1975. Newfield, in meticulous detail, shows how King promoted white racism and black racism with equal enthusiasm; his ties to the Cleveland mob; how he "stole" Larry Holmes; his betrayal of both Price and Ali; his relationship with Mike Tyson; and his very creative bookkeeping, which led to a 1994 indictment for wire fraud. Newfield, a syndicated columnist with the New York Post, has written a scathing portrait of America's #1 boxing promoter.

In short, King lied, stole, betrayed, double and triple crossed, cultivated all the worst elements in boxing - hard to imagine in an already ignoble sport - and killed, and made a fortune ...

And this review in Book Week:

Newfield, a syndicated columnist for the New York Post and a veteran of 30 years on the sports scene, documents boxing promoter Don King's successful and reprehensible career from his early days as a street hustler. In 1966, King was convicted of manslaughter when he kicked Sam Garrett to death in a gambling beef. Later he parlayed his friendship with singer Lloyd Price into an introduction to Muhammad Ali. The man who had listened to the first Frazier-Ali fight in prison promoted the second one. It was only the beginning. Soon a fighter couldn't get a chance at a title held by a King fighter unless he abandoned his current management and signed with King. Newfield documents it all, with especially damaging evidence provided regarding King's financial relationship with Mike Tyson. Somehow, though, King always slips the noose by knowing who will accept bribes, who will buckle under a threat, and who wants a big-money opportunity. The sheer volume of evidence here is overwhelming; we always thought King was a creep, now we know it for certain. Sports fans in general and boxing fans specifically should tip their hats to Newfield.

A reprehensible creep ...

Well the pond's interest in Norman Mailer and boxing and all the rest of it is long gone - yes, there are Irish Catholic nuns who like a good stoush, the pond knows it for a fact - but King lingers on, and all that Newfield background is probably the most elaborate introduction the pond could manage to this really funny New York Times' story ...

Yes, the main thrust of the story isn't that it's Don King presenting a smirking, grinning Donald Trump, it's that King started talking some street jive talk and dropped the "n" word ...

And that's the point of the story. He dropped the 'nigger' word.

King himself is simply introduced as "the boxing promoter".

It was only in the second half of the story that the Times got around to noting King's past:

A crook promoting a crook... the racial epithet is the least of it ...

The pond is now resigned to the prospect that Trump might get up. After all, he's only a multiple bankrupt and divorcee and scam artist celebrated by fellow crooks and scam artists.

It will be the end of the United States as the world once knew it, but there's every sign that the country wants it all to end, and will welcome in a soft dictatorship of the crooks and the hustlers so that a few can make out and live like luxurious bandits ...

Well it means the pond will have plenty of easy copy, and there's a smidgeon of local relevance ...

Trust an asbestos lover to put faith in a crook, and that story here, and it gets even funnier when you see the reptile front page this day ...

'Corruption'?

No wonder the reptiles felt the need to put inverted commas around it. They've got no idea about corruption, not if Julie Bishop's idea of getting on in the world is to stay thick with spivs and thieves and crooks ...

Never mind, at least it all leads to a Rowe cartoon, and more Rowe here ...

Hopefully this will be the only time that the pond hopes to reference Hollywood stars living in their chosen fish bowl of life ...