How Bobby Fischer Won the Cold War

I know I will get a lot of flack from my fellow conservatives for saying this, but it wasn't Ronald Reagan who won the Cold War; it was Bobby Fischer, who died today in Iceland at 64. Sure, Fischer, who was probably the greatest chess player who ever lived, was anti-Semitic (although his mother was Jewish), renounced his American citizenship after he was arrested in Japan for violating sanctions against the former Yugoslavia, and rejoiced on September 11 saying he wanted to "see the U.S. wiped out," but nobody is perfect. For me Bobby Fischer will always be an American hero.

Young, handsome, brash, spoiled, somewhat insane, Bobby Fischer became a role model for American youth when he beat Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship. That this uncouth punk, playing a game most Americans didn't understand or care about, beat the cultured, pampered product of Soviet government largesse stunned the world. For one brief shining moment from July to September 1972 Americans huddled in their living rooms around their televisions debating the relative merits of the Sicilian Defense, the Queen's Gambit and Tartakover Variation. Fischer showed that an individual could triumph on his own merits and you didn't need government handouts to succeed. All you needed was confidence in your own genius, a big sense of entitlement and a lot of style. You can see the influence of Fischer not only in America's steroid-pumped baseball stars and Olympic athletes but even in the carefree arrogance of our own President.

When Fischer beat Spassky, America was at a low point in its history. The Vietnam War was winding to a close without any sign of victory. The American basketball team lost the Olympic gold medal to the Soviets in a controversial game that summer. Communist influence was on the rise. But Bobby Fischer showed the world that we Americans still had one weapon in our arsenal. That weapon was our faith that we are better than anyone else in the world and therefore we don't need to play by the world's rules and if you rile us we are just as liable to overturn the chessboard as we are to humiliate you in 41 moves.

Richard Nixon had once proposed to his aide Bob Haldeman a strategy for victory in Vietnam he called the Madman Theory. "I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war," Nixon told Haldeman. "We'll just slip the word to them that, 'for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about Communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry -- and he has his hand on the nuclear button' -- and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace." But Nixon just talked about the Madman Theory. Bobby Fischer put it into practice. And Nixon was right. Just a month after Fischer proved how crazy Americans can be, the North Vietnamese agreed to end the war. Earlier that year the Soviets signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the United States, no doubt because Soviet chess players had already relayed reports of Fischer's nuttiness to their government officials. Seven years later the Soviets signed the SALT II treaty. Bobby Fischer was the closest contact the Soviets had with a real American and he terrified them. By the time Ronald Reagan arrived, joking about dropping the big one on Russia, the Soviets were already running scared. To them it seemed as if Bobby Fischer had been elected President of the United States.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said there are no second acts in American lives, but he was wrong. American second acts are played as farce. American genius is often too great for any one man to handle. Like Howard Hughes, Elvis and Tom Cruise, Bobby Fischer was always teetering just this side of complete and total looniness, so it is no surprise that he finally went all the way over. And yet he still managed to beat Boris Spassky again in their 1992 rematch.

The terrorists are probably too young to remember Bobby Fischer. But maybe there is a young American backgammon player out there who knows the game as well as Fischer knew chess. And maybe someday he will play the Arab world's champion backgammon player and he will complain about the lights and cameras and walk out in protest and generally cause a ruckus with his eccentricities. And then he will come from behind and crush their champion backgammon player. Maybe this young American backgammon genius will win the War on Terror the way Bobby Fischer won the Cold War.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Chess, Nixon, Cold War, Soviet Union, Politics
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Quit Doggin' Dog the Bounty Hunter

Can't a man use an offensive racial epithet in the privacy of his own home anymore without jeopardizing his lucrative reality television program? Duane "Dog" Chapman, star of A&E's Dog the Bounty Hunter has had his show suspended after he was taped saying the N-word repeatedly and he is devastated. Now reporters are hounding the poor bounty hunter, walking around his neighborhood, showing his picture to friends and neighbors, saying, "Have you seen this man? Do you know where we can find him? We just want to talk to him."

The irony of this whole thing is that anyone who knows Dog -- and who doesn't feel they know him from his well-edited television program -- knows that he isn't a racist. This whole misunderstanding started when he was actually trying to protect his son's black girlfriend from having to hear all the racial epithets he and the members of his crew and family say in a typical day. He was afraid they just wouldn't be able to stop themselves from using the N-word around her and she might take offense. We all know how touchy black people can be about these things, which is why Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck have been forced to stop socializing with all their black friends. So Dog told his son, Tucker, that he would either have to dump his girlfriend or quit the show. It was really for her own good, to spare her feelings.

"I don't care if she's a Mexican, a whore or whatever," Dog patiently explained to Tucker. "It's not because she's black, it's because we use the word n----r sometimes here. I'm not gonna take a chance ever in life of losing everything I've worked for for 30 years because some fucking n----r heard us say n----r and turned us in to the Enquirer magazine. Our career is over! I'm not taking that chance at all! Never in life! Never! Never! If Lyssa [Dog's daughter] was dating a n----r, we would all say 'f--k you!' And you know that. If Lyssa brought a black guy home ya da da... it's not that they're black, it's none of that. It's that we use the word n----r. We don't mean you f--king scum n----r without a soul. We don't mean that s--t. But America would think we mean that. And we're not taking a chance on losing everything we got over a racial slur because our son goes with a girl like that. I can't do that Tucker. You can't expect Gary, Bonnie, Cecily, all them young kids to [garbled] because 'I'm in love for 7 months' - f--k that! So, I'll help you get another job but you can not work here unless you break up with her and she's out of your life. I got 'em in the parking lot trying to record us. I got that girl saying she's gonna wear a recorder."

"I don't even know what to say," Tucker replied.

It turned out that Dog was right to be worried about someone recording his words and people misconstruing them. Unbeknownst to him, Tucker taped their telephone conversation and sold it to the National Enquirer. If this incident shows anything, it shows what a good father Dog was in the way he instilled his values into his son. After all, Dog's work often depends on family members turning in their relatives.

Now America has the wrong idea about Dog even though it's hard to see how anyone could interpret his words as racist. As he explained to his son, when he uses the word n----r, he means it in the good way. In fact, Dog always thought of himself as practically an honorary black person: "There’s a special connection that I thought I had between me and black America," he explained. "And I used to say, 'I’m black, too.' In other words, I — my whole life I’ve been called a half-breed, a convict, king of the trailer trash, this and that. I take that and stand. So when I stood there and said, 'I kind of know what you feel like, because I’ve been there, too, I felt that I could embrace and like, as brothers or, even as a black woman, say the word."

And he didn't want his son to break up with his girlfriend just because she was black. If Tucker brought a Jew home, Dog would have been worried that his girlfriend would hear them making anti-Semitic remarks. Or if Tucker had a homosexual lover, think how difficult it would have been for the family not to let the word "faggot" slip out. Yet people insist on making it a racial thing.

It's hard not to feel sympathy for Dog, who still has a lot of fans. Even Whoopi Goldberg defended Dog on The View (she's not the one who thinks the world is flat, she's the other one), claiming that she uses racial slurs around her house all the time. Who doesn't? And Dog is really trying hard to make amends. Like Michael Richards, Mel Gibson and Don Imus, Dog has gone on CNN's Larry King and made a tearful apology. He went on Sean Hannity on Fox and cried there, too, saying "If I could kill myself and people would forgive me, I would do that," an offer some people are considering. He has asked to meet with the Rev. Al Sharpton. He has promised to seek counseling for anger management and to do something about his inability to stop saying the word n----r, which could take years of work. But that's not all. To show just how sorry he is Dog is making arrangements to spend eternity surrounded by black people. He wants to be buried at a slave burial ground near George Washington's home, Mount Vernon in Virginia. "I want to be buried right where they're at because I will never be forgiven as (long as) I'm alive," Chapman said. After he is dead, Dog should have no problem at all being around black people and not saying the word n----r. I think we all can be pretty sure of that.

Update: Now a Cat has had a remark he made "miscontrued" as racist, too. KT Cat was criticized when he wrote these words on his blog: "Blacks in America have become the perfect laboratory for the consequences of annihilating traditional sexual mores. At 70% illegitimacy, they have destroyed civilization at the molecular level. Still think it doesn't matter? Live it up, guys. Enjoy." Unfortunately, some people think that claiming blacks are destroying civilization is racist for some reason. But Cat was luckier than Dog. All he had to do was erase the statement from his post and all comments that referred to it and now it's like he never said it.


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Jon Swift, Duane Chapman, Dog the Bounty Hunter, A&E, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, National Enquirer, Larry King, Don Imus, Racism, Television, Media
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My Favorite Comedy, Explained

The folks at the wonderful site Newcritics are holding a Comedy Blogathon from November 6-11 and they have asked me and other bloggers to answer the question, "What is the purest comedic moment you have ever experienced?" (And they are also calling for entries from anyone and everyone who wants to participate. Answer the question on your blog and send your links to M.A. Peel at josquin21@aol.com.) Because Jon Swift is a nominee for Funniest Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards, I often get asked, "What's funny?"

Of course, nothing makes comedy funnier than to explain it. I often find that I don't get a lot of jokes until someone explains why they are funny, and sometimes not even then. According to scientists, this is the world's funniest joke. I still don't know why it's funny, but when I find out, I will probably laugh for a very long time.

The study of laughter is called Gelotology, after the Greek word for JELLO, nature's funniest food. Aristotle believed that only humans laugh, but scientists have discovered that other primates, rats, dogs and, of course, hyenas also emit sounds that might be called laughter. Although cats do not laugh out loud, many scientists believe that they are quietly snickering at us on the inside, though this has not been proven definitively. At one time physicians believed that laughter could be therapeutic. Reader's Digest even had a column once called "Laughter Is the Best Medicine," but most reputable scientists abandoned this theory after the movie Patch Adams actually made many people sicker. In fact, a number of people have reportedly died laughing, including Pecos Bill, King Nadabayin of Burma, Damnoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream truck driver, and Alex Mitchell of King's Lynn in Norfolk, England, whose last laugh was triggered by a Scotsman fighting a black pudding with his bagpipe. Comedy is a serious business and could be dangerous if not handled carefully.

In order to scientifically analyze just how comedy works I'm going to dissect one of Woody Allen's funniest films, which is probably my purest comedy moment. Unlike many critics, I prefer Allen's older, funnier movies and I don't think he has ever topped his 1978 comedy Interiors. Interiors, which is about the madcap antics of three artistic daughters (Diane Keaton, Mary Beth Hurt, Kristin Griffith) dealing with the disintegration the marriage of their parents (Geraldine Page, E.G. Marshall), was influenced by the films of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. Bergman and Antonioni were often considered to be the pranksters of European art cinema until their recent deaths within a day of each other, which may have been their final practical joke.

A lot of Interiors' humor comes from the cinematography, which can make or break a comedy. Interiors takes place for the most part in darkly lit interiors (a visual pun, get it?) and uses a lot of black and white, which are probably the funniest colors. That is why black-and-white comedies are usually funnier than color movies. The movie also uses a lot of red, which is the third funniest color. The least funny color, of course, is blue, which is why getting the blues means being really sad. Green is also a not very funny color (which explains the name of the completely humorless Green Party), while orange is usually good for a giggle or two. There is quite a bit of controversy about yellow, however. Is yellow funny? That is a question that has haunted jokesters for centuries. I think yellow can be funny if used sparingly. A dollop of mustard skillfully applied, for example, can be quite comical.

Another thing that makes Interiors such a rib tickler is that the characters hardly ever laugh. A joke is usually funnier if the person telling the joke keeps a straight face, which is why Harvey Korman and Tim Conway on The Carol Burnett Show were so excruciating to watch, as you can see for yourself in these very unfunny clips. The actors in Interiors play it straight all the way through, which just makes the comedy build and build. If you watched Interiors with a laugh track it would be a completely different film. Allen must have done multiple takes of some scenes so that the actors did not crack up in the middle of a scene and break character. I would love to see a blooper reel of Interiors to see if I'm right.

There is one scene where the characters laugh at a joke that has just been told, but we don't hear the joke, which is yet another example of Allen's genius. Although it may sound counterintuitive to a layman, many experienced comedians will tell you that actually telling a joke can sometimes ruin the joke. I can't tell you how many times I have seen young comedians who didn't understand this simple rule and insisted on telling a joke when they would have been much better off not telling the joke at all. Not telling the joke forces the audience to imagine what the joke might be, and nine times out of ten the joke they imagine is much funnier than any joke the comedian could have told.

Although Interiors is usually known for its slapstick and physical comedy, the wit of Allen's dialogue should not be underestimated. Allen is an expert at comedic wordplay and there is no shortage of it in Interiors. One line that always slays me is when Mary Beth Hurt's character says, "At the center of a sick psyche is a sick spirit." What makes this line so funny? It's obvious to anyone who knows anything about comedy. Give up? It's the alliteration of the "S" sound. S is probably the funniest letter in English, followed by the K sound, which also appears in this line, compounding the hilarity. (In Cyrillic Zhe (Ж) is the funniest letter and in the Xhosa click language it's the "ngq" sound, although some experts make a convincing argument that the glottal fricative "hh" is even funnier. It may just be a matter of taste.)

The number three appears a lot in Interiors and this is no accident. As any funnyman will tell you, three is the sacred number of comedy. There are always three people walking into a bar, not two and not four. The number 276 is also pretty funny but it's hard to work into a joke so it is rarely used. A joke in which 276 people walk into a bar would certainly be funny, but it would take a very long time to tell. Some mathematicians claim that the imaginary number 3i is also very funny but no one has yet been able to work it into a joke, as far as I know, although some students at MIT reportedly have tried.

In a recent episode PBS's American Masters about Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, Schulz said that what makes people laugh is suffering. I think Woody Allen would agree and what he once said about life could also be said about his film Interiors, that it is "full of misery, loneliness, and suffering -- and it's all over much too soon."

I have to admit that the first time I saw Interiors I did not get a lot of the jokes. I remember my initial reaction to the film was, "Is this supposed to be funny?" It was only after seeing the film a number of times that I began to realize just how funny it was. Often it is the case that if a comedy is not funny the first time you see it, it becomes funny after you watch it again and again and again. This film taught me everything I know about comedy and made me realize that if your first reaction to a joke is "Huh?" that often means that it is a very good joke indeed. In fact, the world's oldest joke is a Jewish joke found in a clay jar and written on ancient papyrus not far from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. Scholars are still studying this joke and not one of them has laughed yet. It may turn out to be the best joke of all.

Crossposted at Newcritics. Illustration by Blue Girl.



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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, New Critics, Woody Allen, Interiors, Ingmar Bergman, Michelangelo Antonioni, Humor, Comedy, Charles Schulz, Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Peanuts
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