Rooked

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The Record Hackensack, New Jersey Wednesday, September 22, 1965 - Page 49

Rooked
Editor, The Record:
The news that Bobby Fischer, at age 22 a chess prodigy, had been denied a visa by the State Department to go to Cuba and compete in the international grand masters' tournament now in progress there must have come as singularly cheering news to marines patiently munching their dried eggs in the cruddy foxholes of Vietnam. What a smashing victory for our side, boys, in the global struggle against the global specter of you-know-what!
I would like to know whether these anti-Communist experts ever really consider the facts at all; or do they just go muddling through, intent on a messianic crusade? Are they aware that only one person born in the United States, Paul Morphy, was ever able to claim the world title in chess, that this was more than 100 years ago, and that the claim was not complete because there was no international organization at the time so that Staunton, the English champion, was able to avoid meeting him?
In his infinite knowledge and wisdom, Big Brother must know that Bobby Fischer has developed into one of the strongest players in the world and is making mighty convincing moves in the direction of that title.
… How Big Brother must have rocked with laughter as he saw Fischer, shortly after being denied the visa, turned down by the telephone company, which quoted him a price far beyond his ability to pay! What certainly must have been one of its deadest and least profitable lines (due to the whole political situation between the United States and Havana) now suddenly became very costly.
As we know, there is a total monopoly on brains in the Pentagon and all Communists are stupid dolts. Sure! That's why the Cuban government, which obviously had been slyly following the whole comedy of errors right from the beginning, suddenly stepped in with a low bow and offered to teletype all the moves of Fischer's opponents to New York City.
What new ingenious plans are our theoreticians on Pennsylvania Avenue concocting now? Oh, sure; if Fischer wins now and later knocks off Tigran Petrosian, the present Soviet title-holder, they are sure to say that actually they were rooting for Fischer right along.
…Let the men who are still capable at this late date of using their heads and reasoning for themselves congratulate Bobby Fischer, who worries not about propaganda victories but victories over the chessboard. That, as far as he is concerned, is where they really count.
PETER DUNCAN
301 11th Avenue Paterson, Sept. 19, 1965.

Voice Of The People: Bobby's Gambit

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The Morning Call Paterson, New Jersey Friday, September 10, 1965 - Page 4

Voice Of The People: Bobby's Gambit
Editor, The Call:
The recent confrontation between United States chess champion Bobby Fischer and the State Department surely deserved more attention than it got in your newspaper. It is only a small incident that will probably receive little notice from future historians, but it contains some important lessons for those who advocate a blind policy, down the line in every single anti-Communist detail. Consider the facts.
Mr. Fischer announced some time ago that he intended to compete in the international chess tournament in memory of Capablanca, to be held in Havana where leading luminaries from both sides of the Iron Curtain were slated to participate. “Well, so what?” you may reply. “He should know better; he knows what's going on with Castro.”
True … but it is equally true that Bobby Fischer is a chess prodigy who has been on his way up for some time, makes his living playing chess, has developed into one of the strongest players in the world (he is 22), and is making louder and louder noises at the world title.
Bear in mind this additional fact: only one person born in the United States was able to claim the world chess championship, and that person was Paul Morphy, more than 100 years ago. Morphy's claim was limited by the circumstance that Staunton, the English champion of that day, and awful snob, refused to play him.
Mr. Fischer's adherents are loud in their assertion that he can take that title, which the Soviet government has been left free to exploit ever since 1948, when Botvinnik officially assumed it after winning the tourney arranged by the International Chess Federation. It goes without saying that the Russian propagandists have made the most of this right up to the present day.
Not withstanding these important facts the anti-Communist heroes of our State Department promptly denied Mr. Fischer the visa he needed to go to Havana, and, once that particular political door was shut, all the others began to hurriedly slam as well. If you are a conformist politically, then you will be a conformist everywhere else too. Mr. Fischer's next move was to engage the telephone company, but here apparently he was quoted a price far beyond his means to wire the moves from Havana to New York City; so things continued to develop a la George Orwell, with Big Brother's baleful eye right smack on Bobby Fischer, the snotty kid who wanted to play chess.
It was at this point that the Cuban government, which had obviously been following and studying the whole comedy of errors right from the very beginning, came up with an offer to foot the bill and pay expenses of teletyping the chess moves to New York.
Final item: Mr. Fischer accepted.
What a great victory for our side! Surely every G. I. in Vietnam will be comforted by this news! Now we know our tax dollars are not being spent for nothing!
By means of its brilliant theoretical maneuvering, its profound grasp of all of the factors involved in this extremely complex situation, the geniuses of the State Department have forced Mr. Fischer right into the tender embrace of Mr. Castro. Truly a magnificent achievement!
What is the real point about all this hoopla? The real point is not that Bobby Fischer is a chess genius or even that he may win the title later on. Chess champions come and go; on the huge panorama of world politics today chess, as every one knows, is a relatively minor matter anyway.
The real point is that in order to pursue his livelihood Fischer has been compelled to resort to all sorts of dodges, subterfuges, schemes, etc., to achieve something which should have rightfully been his without any nonsense at all. The real American (this is the only phrase I can use) is now placed in a politically suspect position. The smear brush is sure to come. He will be condemned as Pro-Castro, Red, subversive, guilty of plotting to undermine the very foundation of our nation. All this, just to compete in a chess tournament!
Despite his troubles, however, Bobby Fischer must he a happy man. In the second round, under the kindly auspices of the Cuban teletypist, he rejected curtly the offer of a draw (only one half point in the tournament score) by the tough former-world champion Russian Vassily Smyslov, and went on to win by exploiting his positional advantage over Smyslov's doubled pawn on the king's file, a full point. He now leads the pack, and if he continues in his present form he should finish without a loss. If that happens his claim for the world crown now held by the wily Russian Tigran Petrosian would have to be given serious consideration by the International Chess Federation.
Congratulations, I would say, are due Bobby Fischer.
PETER DUNCAN

'Dolly' Leads World To Total Cultural Warfare Escalation

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The Evening Sun Baltimore, Maryland Thursday, September 09, 1965 - Page 41

'Dolly' Leads World To Total Cultural Warfare Escalation
Moscow's abrupt decision to keep “Hello Dolly” off the boards in Russia is bad news. The official interpretation—that the show was banned in retaliation against United States war policy in Vietnam—is not taken seriously by people who understand relations between modern super-states.
These people find it laughable to suggest that Moscow thinks it can give American bombers tit-for-tat by cutting off David Merrick's rubles. (Merrick is the show's producer.) The “Hello Dolly” crisis, they agree, is retaliation all right, but not against anything that is happening in Asia. In the words of one war-room thinker, “What we are faced with is the danger of total cultural warfare.” In striking against Broadway's most successful musical, Moscow is overreacting in an escalation out of all proportion to the original American thrust.

Chess Champ Missing
The crisis was begun quietly enough last month when Soviet photographic planes flying over Cuba recorded the absence of Bobby Fischer from the Capablanca chess tournament. Scanning news-paper cuttings in the Ministry of Cultural Warfare, several commissars reported simultaneously that Fischer, the American chess champion, had been denied American passport permission to attend the tournament. Here, it seemed, was a quiet, concealed move by the United States to strike a sneak blow against Communist culture. This suspicion may have been heightened by the negligible coverage given to the United States' Fischer gambit in the American press. The State Department's motives are obscure. The Fischer affair may have been merely a case of bureaucratic bumbling, or it may have been a small probe by the CIA designed to test Communist cultural defenses.

Popgun In Arsenal
Whatsover the case, no one anticipated a violent Communist response. Compared to “Hello Dolly,” Fischer is scarcely more than a popgun in the American cultural arsenal. At most, the Soviets were expected to hit hack by throwing a couple of touring American engineers out of Dnieperpetrovsk.
In banning “Hello Dolly” Moscow abruptly confronted Washington with a cultural challenge of the deepest gravity. The men here who favor lobbing one into the men's room of the Kremlin are already urging a five-year prohibition against the Bolshoi Ballet, and Sol Hurok has been warned that, “We're eyeball to eyeball under the complexion bulbs.”
The voice of sanity behind the scenes belongs to Dr. Hugo Hans, whose seminal work, “Culture Can Turn the Tide,” defines 93 brilliantly thought out steps up the escalation ladder which precede the dreadful Step 94, universal cultural war. Banning pre-dawn Russian classes on educational TV, permitting unlimited export of movie magazines to the Soviet Union, etc.
Dr. Hans points out that in refusing to let Fischer go to Cuba to play chess, the United States, unwittingly perhaps, was escalating to Step 22. (“Insulting the enemy's national game.”) A reasoned response by the Russians would have been a long article in Pravda denouncing baseball as hooliganism.
Dr. Hans's critics have vilified him for daring to think about ways of making culture an effective weapon of the state. As the Russians have shown again, however, culture in the era of the superstate is as much an instrument of policy as the I.C.B.M. and the secret agent. As Dr. Hans puts it, “You can't make an omelet without cracking a few eggheads.”

Dayton Daily News Dayton, Ohio Monday, September 13, 1965 - Page 22

Goodbye, Dolly!