Searching for Bobby Fischer

Koko: Would you search for this man? I wouldn't either. In his later years he collapsed into some kind of diocese diver or indigent Fidel Castro lookalike who happily Bob Balabaned for his king's rook pawn, pun intended, thank you. And while I've never fully understood why my high school girlfriend glorified Fischer but deplored Capablanca--who, by the way, was hotter than the sun and flunked out of Columbia--Jose Raul, that is, not my sordid other--I do appreciate 1. a lucid middlegame and 2. a human being turned self-parody turned histrionic myth. That said, the only thing creepier than staging one's national prowess on the legend of an emotionally retarded genius (bravo, Life magazine) is grooming an entire generation of kids to admire, master, and ultimately repeat his failure. Competition is a sickness. Any culture that uses games as an ethical forum, or worse, as an instrument for moral or psychological conditioning, needs a visit from those beyond-the-moon motherfuckers at the CDC. Don't believe me? Read your Adam Smith; even he warned against it, despite Stringer Bell's misreading of The Wealth of Nations.