On February 12, 2020 John Leonard posted this article The Deification of Kobe Bryant on the American Thinker website saying:
These men were human beings with a great talent for throwing a large, round ball through a metal hoop fixed ten feet overhead, but they were not exactly paragons of virtue. Larry Bird was rumored (probably false) to have fathered an illegitimate child. Magic Johnson contracted HIV due to having unprotected sex with too many people. Michael Jordan allegedly has had issues with gambling. Professional athletes appear to have a bad (and expensive) habit of impregnating women who are not their wives..........Yet society puts these athletes on a pedestal.He goes on to note that both Kobe and his teenage daughter who died with him were just too young for such a tragedy, and I agree. But what about the other eight people in that helicopter who were also too young to die?
Has society become so frivolous and shallow that people are deifying a basketball player who made amazing amouts of money to play a kids game? Yes!
When his rape case was brought up by a prominent television personality, she received death threats, and was attacked by prominent people like "Intellectual heavyweight Calvin Broadus, Jr. (a.k.a. Snoop Dogg) warned King to “Respect the family and back off, b----, before we come get you.” And then there was O.J. Simpson, telling her to "take care" for having the audacity of bringing up something negative about "a basketball player".
And O.J. Simpson? Really? Ya gotta be kidden me.
This was the guy the media labeled an American hero because he could play football better than most. He wasn’t an American Hero, he was a sports hero. The men who stormed the beaches at Normandy were American Heroes. Some of them may have even been good athletes, but athletics isn't what made them American Heroes. Courage, self sacrifice and dedication to duty is what made them American heroes.
But what about people like Norman Borlaug? Never heard of him have you? I call him Borlaug the Great because of his lifelong efforts to feed the starving people of the world. He conservatively saved over one hundred million people from starvation. But he wasn't a basketball player!
In the past he had been honored with three humanitarian awards that only Martin Luther King and Elie Weisel were so honored. The Noble Peace Price, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When his wife told him he won the Nobel Peace Prize he was out working in a field and thought someone was pulling his leg.
Congress honored this Iowan by adding his statue to the Capitol’s Statuary Hall, and India honored this man the Padma Vibhushan, their second highest civilian award.
Wikipedia lists his honors and awards:
In 1968, Borlaug received what he considered an especially satisfying tribute when the people of Ciudad Obregón, where some of his earliest experiments were undertaken, named a street after him. Also in that year, he became a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
In 1970, he was given an honorary doctorate by the Agricultural University of Norway.[57]
In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee "for his contributions to the 'green revolution' that was having such an impact on food production particularly in Asia and in Latin America."[57]
In 1971, he received the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award. [58]
In 1974, he was awarded a Peace Medal (in the form of a dove, carrying a wheat ear in its beak) by Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India.
In 1975, he was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Iowa Academy of Science.[59]
In 1980, he received the S. Roger Horchow Award for Greatest Public Service by a Private Citizen, an award given out annually by Jefferson Awards.[60]
In 1980, he was elected honorary member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
In 1984, his name was placed in the National Agricultural Hall of Fame at the national center in Bonner Springs, Kansas. Also that year, he was recognized for sustained service to humanity through outstanding contributions in plant breeding from the Governors Conference on Agriculture Innovations in Little Rock, Arkansas. Also in 1984, he received the Henry G. Bennet Distinguished Service Award at commencement ceremonies at Oklahoma State University. He recently received the Charles A. Black Award for his contributions to public policy and the public understanding of science.
In 1985, the University of Minnesota named a wing of the new science building in Borlaug's honor, calling it "Borlaug Hall."
In 1986, Borlaug was inducted into the Scandinavian-American Hall of Fame during Norsk Høstfest.[61]
Borlaug was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) in 1987.[2][62]
In 2012, a new elementary school in the Iowa City, IA school district opened, called "Norman Borlaug Elementary".
On 19 August 2013, his statue was unveiled inside the ICAR's NASC Complex at New Delhi, India.[63]
On 25 March 2014, a statue of Borlaug at the United States Capitol was unveiled in a ceremony on the 100th anniversary of his birth. This statue replaces the statue of James Harlan as one of the two statues given to the National Statuary Hall Collection by the state of Iowa.
In addition to the Nobel Prize, Borlaug received the 1977 U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the 2002 Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences,[64] the 2002 Rotary International Award for World Understanding and Peace, and the 2004 National Medal of Science. As of January 2004, Borlaug had received 49 honorary degrees from as many universities, in 18 countries, the most recent from Dartmouth College on June 12, 2005,[65] and was a foreign or honorary member of 22 international Academies of Sciences.[66] In Iowa and Minnesota, "World Food Day", October 16, is referred to as "Norman Borlaug World Food Prize Day". Throughout the United States, it is referred to as "World Food Prize Day".
In 2006, the Government of India conferred on him its second highest civilian award: the Padma Vibhushan.[67] He was awarded the Danforth Award for Plant Science by the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, St Louis, Missouri in recognition of his lifelong commitment to increasing global agricultural production through plant science.
Several research institutions and buildings have been named in his honor, including: the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Farmer Training and Education, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 1983; Borlaug Hall, on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota in 1985; Borlaug Building at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) headquarters in 1986; the Norman Borlaug Institute for Plant Science Research at De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom in 1997; and the Norman E. Borlaug Center for Southern Crop Improvement, at Texas A&M University in 1999; and the Borlaug Institute for South Asia (BISA) in 2011. In 2006, the Texas A&M University System created the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture[citation needed] to be a premier institution for agricultural development and to continue the legacy of Dr. Borlaug.
The stained-glass World Peace Window at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral in Minneapolis, Minnesota, depicts "peace makers" of the 20th century, including Norman Borlaug.[68] Borlaug was also prominently mentioned in an episode ("In This White House") of the TV show The West Wing. The president of a fictional African country describes the kind of "miracle" needed to save his country from the ravages of AIDS by referencing an American scientist who was able to save the world from hunger through the development of a new type of wheat. The U.S. president replies by providing Borlaug's name.
Borlaug was also featured in an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, where he was referred to as the "Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived". In that episode, Penn & Teller play a card game where each card depicts a great person in history. Each player picks a few cards at random, and bets on whether one thinks one's card shows a greater person than the other players' cards based on a characterization such as humanitarianism or scientific achievement. Penn gets Norman Borlaug, and proceeds to bet all his chips, his house, his rings, his watch, and essentially everything he's ever owned. He wins because, as he says, "Norman is the greatest human being, and you've probably never heard of him." In the episode—the topic of which was genetically altered food—he is credited with saving the lives of over a billion people.[69]
In August 2006, Dr. Leon Hesser published The Man Who Fed the World: Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Norman Borlaug and His Battle to End World Hunger, an account of Borlaug's life and work. On August 4, the book received the 2006 Print of Peace award, as part of International Read For Peace Week.
On September 27, 2006, the United States Senate by unanimous consent passed the Congressional Tribute to Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Act of 2006. The act authorizes that Borlaug be awarded America's highest civilian award, the Congressional Gold Medal. On December 6, 2006, the House of Representatives passed the measure by voice vote. President George Bush signed the bill into law on December 14, 2006, and it became Public Law Number 109–395.[70] According to the act, "the number of lives Dr. Borlaug has saved [is] more than a billion people" The act authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell duplicates of the medal in bronze.[71] He was presented with the medal on July 17, 2007.[72]
Borlaug was a foreign fellow of the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences.[73]"The Borlaug Dialogue (Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium) is named in his honour", but he wasn't a basketball player!
Rust is a fungus that attacks wheat and left unchecked it's devastating. He worked diligently for all of his life to stop this crop disease, and paraphrasing his last words: "Be vigilant as rust never sleeps". But he only saved a hundred million lives, he wasn't a basketball player.
However for those who reject that which is frivilous and shallow but admire courage, self sacrifice and dedication to duty, he truly was an American Hero. He was Borlaug the Great!
No comments:
Post a Comment