Monday, November 4, 2013

On Bobby Fisher and Noam Chomsky

I'll take, "Two Really Brilliant Guys Who Thoroughly Know Their Field but Only One of Which Has the Good Sense and Decency to Refrain From Spouting Off On Other Subjects that He Basically Knows Jack-Shit About", for a thousand, Alex.

5 comments:

Marcus said...

Will: Bobby Fischer was a brilliant chess player but he was not a very nice person...Even in his younger years he wasn't comfortable in social situations. After basically giving Anatoly Karpov the World Championship, Fischer became increasingly paranoid and delusional. One story is that Fischer refused to go dentists fearing spying devices would be implanted. He was rabidly anti-Semitic which was quite odd given that his Mother was Jewish. Fischer belongs to a circle of troubled American chess geniuses which include Harry Nelson Pillsbury and Paul Morphy. As a kid Fischer was a hero to me and inspired me to go on to participate in tournament chess...A sad tale.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Yeah, I seem to recall now him being somewhat the dick in that epic with Spassky.

dmarks said...

The big difference is that no one listens to Fischers nutty rants, and many people take the truly evil views of Chomsky, also an antisemite, seriously. Chomsky also cheered on the Khmer Rouge.

Will "take no prisoners" Hart said...

Welcome back, dmarks. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of Chomsky, either; a multi-millionaire who literally considers himself an "American dissident" and whose views on the Middle-East are slightly to the right/left (however you want to characterize it) of Arafat.

dmarks said...

only in America can members of the "1 percent" whose main argument is that those who rule have too little power be called a "dissident"