By Mark Lassiter

When Muhammad Ali faced Joe Frazier in the first of three immortal championship fights from 1971 to 1975, widely considered the most famous rivalry in boxing history, Ali improvised his way into a strategy of allowing his relentless opponent to throw punches into a stationary target with subtle resistance. The strategy was later branded the “Rope a Dope,” as Ali knew a strategy meant nothing without a catchy hook.

Unfortunately, in the first of three bouts, Frazier caught Ali with a ferocious left hook in the fifteenth round, sending Ali sprawling to the Madison Square Garden canvas. Although Ali courageously finished the fight, Frazier waded directly into the famous Ali jab all evening and gained what he coveted most: the victory.

In the face of mounting attacks by conservatives, it may be time for President Barack Obama and those who organized to get him elected to take a page from the Ali playbook.

Four of the most popular syndicated names in news-talk radio—Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage—have consistently painted President Obama as enemy of the state, and far worse. Hours after the presidential election, the country’s most popular (and highly paid) radio host, Rush Limbaugh, was talking about the “rebirth of principled opposition.” Sean Hannity, the second highest-rated host, quickly cast his afternoon show as the home of “conservatism in exile.” The assault was primed and ready.

With people such as Hannity (whose Fox News blog is titled “The Great American Blog”) and Beck (“Obama is a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people,”) and Limbaugh (“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate”) firing vicious punches at President Obama from as many coordinated (and well funded) angles as Joe Frazier fired at Ali, the strategy of passively absorbing punishment may be as costly as the Ali “Rope A Dope” against Frazier in 1971.

According to Savage, Obama is “surrounded by terrorists” for friends and is “raping America.” He’s a “neo-Marxist fascist dictator in the making” with a plan to “force children into a paramilitary domestic army.” Savage has also attacked gays as people who are “raping our children’s minds.”

Meanwhile, Limbaugh pours more fuel on the fire, comparing “[T]he Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo,”on air. He went on to explain “the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany.” This is nothing more than a call to arms for any crazed “conservative” willing to stand for what is “right”, or in Hannity’s words, “American”.

The byproduct? At one of his constituent sessions on August 5, Representative Todd Akin, a Missouri Republican who opposes President Obama’s health plan, remarked that some of his colleagues “almost got lynched” at their town halls. His sympathetic audience laughed and clapped; Mr. Akin replied, “I assume you’re not approving lynchings,” and made a choking gesture. The clip quickly turned up on YouTube, and now the chagrined congressman faces accusations that he was making lynch-mob jokes about Democrats.

It is also imperative that President Obama respond directly to Sarah Palin’s FaceBook torpedo, ”… the America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”

Is this the same person who branded Obama as “palling around with terrorists”? The cumulative net effect of the resentment can be found on any blog on The New York Post, Washington Post or Fox News.

It is no coincidence that death threats against the President have intensified. Since Mr. Obama took office, the rate of threats against the president has increased 400 per cent from the 3,000 a year or so under President George W. Bush, according to Ronald Kessler, author of In the President’s Secret Service.

One of the photographs in The Oval Office is of Muhammad Ali. Our fearless President only needs to be reminded of the Ali-Frazier rematch where Ali directed the outcome with a ferocious attack from the first round.  It is time for President Obama to get off the ropes and respond to the festering hatred by unleashing a rapid and effective barrage of moral and emotional jabs in the Ali tradition. For the record, Ali won the second (and third) Frazier bouts.

A scholarly response from The White House is not enough. It is time for The President to challenge the authors of hatred with an unprecedented offensive led by smart people. This process will make the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings look like a casual afternoon at Disney World, because it will force Americans to be held accountable to each other in ways that are not so impersonal as AM talk radio.

The “next” conversation of power, privilege and politics will not be held over a beer on The White House lawn, it will not be pretty but it WILL be televised, podcasted and streamed. The First (Presidential) Forum will be unfiltered and have no need for spare CNN commentators to explain what someone said. There will be no exclusive broadcast rights. There will be no advertisements for Lunesta, Cialis, Exten-ze, Vagisil or Viagra. Ads from Geico will be accepted. Those are entertaining. The First Forum needs to be carried on HBO so that language will not be censored.

All three million people who attended The Inauguration on that bitter cold January gettin’ up morning also need to understand that brilliant, sun-kissed day was not the end of the campaign. It was only the beginning.

As Ali’s famous words and prowess remind us, sometimes the best maneuver is to simply “Float like a butterfly… sting like a bee.”

Mark Lassiter is a marketing consultant who has also worked telecasts of college football for Fox Sports Net South, a loyal fan of The New York Knicks and a regular at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.