Bobby Fischer

I've been reading accounts, from diverse places, of Bobby Fischer's death today.

He was at the top in his field, almost as elusive as Howard Hughes in his personal life, and I dare say the only American chess player whose name was known to most (or any) Americans.

He captured our imagination and attention by beating the unbeatable Russian player at a time when chess' cold calculating environment would be a perfectly fine metaphor for the cold war that locked together our two countries. And he made money, eventually big money, doing it. There was even a movie, Searching For Bobby Fischer, that counted on his name being enough of a curiosity, enough of a draw, to bring in the public.

But along the way we discovered that Fischer was anti-Semitic and a Holocaust denier, though a Jew on his mother's side, and probably, it turns out, on his long gone father's as well. Then we read and heard his anti-American rants after 9/11 in which he said we deserved what we got. The man who was King thought of himself as a pawn.

So, today when after he died in Iceland (another perfect metaphor --- for his soul) I read with fascination and then disgust the obits posted by some of the main media outlets.

Without fail they characterized him a "brilliant," "gifted," player. Most I saw also called him "eccentric," (CNN and Washington Post and Reuters and BBC), or "reclusive," (AP), or "iconoclastic" (NY Times). But while The Times had a few details recalling his virulent anti-Semitism as well as his anti-American outbursts, many barely mentioned that at all, or only in passing. And in the AP story, syndicated around the world, there was nothing at all.

An update: There is a follow-up article in the NY Times today (Saturday) about Fischer. I found it a mushy, oddly sympathetic piece, filled with soft, slightly dismissive references marking what the writer calls Fischer's chess playing "gifts" and labeling his remarks about 9/11 and that Jews were "filthy lying bastard people," only as "delusions." How generous. How kindly. How charitable and non-judgmental.

Oh, and the President of The World Chess Federation recalled Fischer as, "an intellectual giant I would rank next to Newton and Einstein."

Somewhere Hitler is smiling, and every past, practicing, and potential hate deviant is relieved.

Weighing In...

I am recuperating here. Some dental surgery. Not much, actually the continuation of a process that began six months ago or so. And not likely to set me back for too long they say. Just enough to get me to thinking about the some recuperation needed by others after the New Hampshire primary.

So, I am weighing in. Words on a page to take my mind off my muffled mouth, though I know this dental discomfort is making me testy.

The recuperators:

The media: I mean all those men and women who slogged through the never ending days leading up to the vote, all those reporters, print and video, who not only jumped on the Obama bandwagon, but constructed the bandwagon just so they could ride on it.

As Tom Brokaw so retrospectively pointed out to the often insufferable Chris Matthews on MSNBC:

BROKAW: You know what I think we're going to have to do?

MATTHEWS: Yes sir?

BROKAW: Wait for the voters to make their judgment.

MATTHEWS: Well what do we do then in the days before the ballot? We must stay home, I guess.

BROKAW: No, no we don't stay home. There are reasons to analyze what they're saying. We know from how the people voted today, what moved them to vote. You can take a look at that. There are a lot of issues that have not been fully explored during all this. But we don't have to get in the business of making judgments before the polls have closed. And trying to stampede in effect the process.

-0-

Oh yeah? Come on back from OZ Tom.

Brokaw has been around long enough to know that's not going to happen. Didn't in the Truman-Dewey race, didn't in elections within recent memory, surely didn't in New Hampshire, and won't this time as we head to super-whatever-they-are-calling-it coming up in February. The media will never recuperate because what they need to recuperate from is in the DNA of their business. They will only press (no pun) on, grabbing or creating the story whenever the opportunity presents, particularly when it's the polls, their collective sniffers ever ready for the slightest indication of an aroused or a potentially interested public. Especially when that opportunity presents itself to media folks who are already tired and bored, and repeating themselves to an audience that hasn't been really listening. Their very careers depend on grabbing that opportunity.

Obama: Sure he came from way behind to almost catch up, to almost take it. I really like him; I think he just could be the answer if only we can remember to ask the right question. But in the last days before the vote he started to appear slightly smug on the stump. Like someone spending the money before the check arrived. He needs to recuperate from that urge, though I think he has enough intelligence and enough drive to possibly be able to do that.

Clinton: I don't know whether she spontaneously welled up, I don't know if she really promised to iron the shirts. I do know that somehow she (and those others) are trying to position her huge slide in the New Hampshire primary from a commanding lead to a small, slight win as a wonderful accomplishment. She is quoted today as saying it was the last debate that pushed her through and not those wet eyes, not that heckler with the shirts, and not the women who rallied 'round and pulled the lever. She also said today that she had finally found her voice. Where was it hiding while she was piling up all those 35 years of experience she keep going on about? Who can know what she actually thinks about what happened in New Hampshire; who ever knows what is real with Clinton and what is opportunistic and programmed. To me, from a slight distance, it felt like a mercy win for her up there. And it feels as though she doesn't really understand that she needs to recuperate from being Hillary and the fact that so many people (voters included) just didn't like her even in this latest version.

McCain: He sometimes seems like a more genuine rendition of himself now. And maybe he has the legs to get to the nomination. But he is so boring on the stump. Can he recuperate from that? Perhaps a start would be to get some energy and actually talk to us, instead of stumbling head down through a terribly written victory speech that sounded like it came from someone running for president of the 9th grade.

Romney: Clinton lite. If he wore pantsuits and frosted his hair he would be her, but without any of the bona fides. There so much recuperation needed here that I don't know where to begin.

The pollsters: Actually, they don't need to recuperate. And wouldn't admit it even they did. They will just keep on asking their questions, compiling their results, and watching with the rest of us as the media gleefully runs with it, Brokaw not withstanding.

... and this just in: In his own blog, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams writes, "Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat."

Ain't that the truth.