Russell had emailed me earlier about some post that might garner interest, but I’ve been sidetracked. Bobby Fisher died at age 64, and I was transported to my childhood in 1970, when I learned how to play chess at age 16 because Fisher – a Chicago native – had begun to steal chess headlines. But, when he began to snag world championships in America’s name, it was all we could handle as American teens. I mean, I learned chess as this man taught me to trust my neighbor and to trust my government. He was the coolest thing to geeks in 1972 when he snagged the world championship with his win over Soviet Union’s Voris Spassky in Reykjavik.
But Fisher became a recluse, and he eventually renounced his American citizenship and moved to Iceland in 2005. This all happened because Fisher decided to play Spassky again, but not in a U.S. government sanctioned match. He played on the resort island of Sveti Stefan in 1992. Because of that location, Fisher became a wanted man in the U.S. for violating sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia. Nothing was said of his skill or intelligence. Instead, Fisher was treated as an egoistic person who hated the U.S.
And, he eventually did come to hate the U.S., a country that harassed him until he died. The whole story makes me wonder about U.S. intelligence. Yes, I mean that as a double entendre.
