True fact: my son came very close to being named Malcolm instead of Kenneth.  At the moment, we do not plan on reproducing again.  But if we do, and if we were to have another boy, I plan on pushing very hard to name him Malcolm Abraham Siler, except, y’know, with my real last name instead of Siler, because that would be kinda weird otherwise.  To the right there is my favorite picture of him (“him” meaning Malcolm X, not my son; the kid hasn’t been born yet, geez, pay attention.)  I have a poster of that image that has been on the wall either in my house or my classroom for almost twenty years now.

Malcolm X was assassinated fifty years ago today.  And ten years ago yesterday, Hunter S. Thompson shot himself.  I hadn’t realized until this  year that their deaths were so close to each other– calendrically, at least.  And I probably still wouldn’t have noticed were not both anniversaries years easily divisible by 10.

It should be obvious to anyone who has spent more than about ten minutes reading my writing– particularly my nonfiction writing, of course– why I hold Hunter Thompson in such high esteem.  My love for the man’s work dates back to my uncle handing me Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in high school, right around the time when I was contemplating going into journalism as a career.  I already had one journalistic idol, a guy by the name of Mike Royko, who you’d better have heard of, and Thompson’s work blew my mind.  I’d read everything of his I could get my hands on within a few weeks, and Fear and Loathing is on a short list of books that I try my damnedest to reread every couple of years.  If I’m ever half as good as either of them, I will be very good at this wordsmithery thing indeed.  Thompson’s fine ear for invective hurt him not one bit, as you can probably imagine; both of my journalistic idols were, at least in print, angry men.

My affection for Malcolm may perhaps be slightly harder to understand.  Leave the politics aside for now, although truth be told there’s no reason to; the fact that Malcolm may not have liked me very much has no real bearing on what I’m allowed to think about him, after all.  Here’s what is, to me, amazing about Malcolm’s life: the man quite clearly and deliberately turned himself into the man that he decided he had to be.  Now, if you’d have asked him, he would of course have given the credit to some combination of Elijah Muhammad and Allah, depending on precisely when in his career you asked him.  But Malcolm’s transformation in prison is one of the great human stories of our time regardless of his motivations for doing so.  I reserve my deepest esteem for the autodidact, for people who went out and learned for themselves what society was either unable or unwilling to teach them.  Malcolm spent his entire adult life learning and exploring about the world– and changing his mind when it seemed like he needed to.

The as-yet-unborn boy’s name is to be Malcolm Abraham, of course, speaking of men who formed their own intellects and personalities by force.  I’m not quite cruel enough to force a kid in this day and age to go by Abraham, mind you– although at least some of the more traditional-sounding Bible names do seem to be making a bit of a comeback nowadays.  Nah, we’ll go with Malcolm, which shortens nicely to Mal.  In a pinch, I can remind people what a big Joss Whedon fan I am.  Lincoln was America’s greatest president, of course, and looking into the future I see no equal anytime soon.  But again, it’s the private Lincoln and not the public one who interests me; the man who, in the absence of schools, took it upon himself to gain his education, and his law degree, and eventually the presidency itself.  I am no politician, and never wanted to be.  But I would kill to have a fraction of Lincoln’s drive, and his keenly analytic mind is plainly apparent to anyone who has ever read any of his writing.

This isn’t all of my heroes, of course; that would require a bit more time and space than I’m willing to devote tonight.  But I didn’t want to let the anniversaries miss without saying anything.  Rest in peace, gentlemen; all four of you.

(Lincoln and Royko both died in April; Lincoln on the 15th and Royko on the 29th.  Not as close as Malcolm and Hunter, but still kinda interesting, if you like coincidences.)