A Damn Shame

So, Bobby Fischer shrugged off this mortal coil yesterday a long, long way from home. The greatest chess player who ever lived, could only resolve conflicts on the board. Everywhere else he got into a series of never ending fights. Eventually he was left without his country, his people and what could have been a fabulour legacy. In 1972, not long afte the Soviets had stolen the goald medal in basketball away from America in Munich, Bobby Fischer went to Iceland and kicked Boris Spassky's ass at chess. It was a huge blow for Democracy and a great thing for our country. However; between then and his death yesterday, he managed to alienate everyone who'd ever cheered for him. It's hard to tell what went wrong, but some of the problems seemed to start when he joined and gave significant chunks of his winnings to a religious cult in Pasadena, CA. He became disillusioned when Christ didn't return in 1976 and started a series of run-ins with the law and the US Government. He wouldn't play chess again till 1992 when he came out of retirement to beat the crap out of Spassky again and make several terribly sick anti-semitic pronouncements. He would go onto praise 9/11 in 2001. It's easy to speculate about what what went wrong, but ultimately, it was just a shame. A damn shame.