Why do Americans like Bobby Fischer?

http://nofreepasses.com/?p=250

Look here to view a tribute to Bobby Fischers' contribution to the chess world and to all of humanity on the planet. A bit over the top but insightful none the less. An interesting read if nothing else. 

Interesting...

Having watched the documentary on Bobby Fischer I believe he was mentally ill im someway, either way he lived quite a sad life and I feel sorry for him.

Ah, good to see this thread still going! Thought it died a month back.

Yes I can (and I do).

No one should feel sorry for someone who was the best in the world at one point in his life. That accomplishment alone deserves respect. I wish he had played Karpov but Fischer made enormous contributions to chess on and off the board

How about OJ?

Are you suggesting people should feel sorry for OJ? I don't feel sorry for him nor do I feel sorry for Fischer

I don't think it would be too tough to come up with someone who was "best in the world at one point" who subsequently became pitiable...that was my point.  Nor do I think that being best in the world at something makes you immune from such concerns.

For what it's worth, I don't think Fischer would want anyone's pity. He lived a fantastic life, traveled the world playing chess, improved the sport he loved like no one had before him, was the best in the world in the early '70s and has his name permanently enshrined on this big, blue marble. He had an amazing life. He had difficulties, sure, but I think his life, judged in its entirety, is hardly worthy of pity

As for OJ, why is he worthy of pity? He committed a crime and is serving (or may have finished) serving time for it. Is every criminal worthy of pity?

I was being wry.  But obviously you're not the type to listen anyway, so...never mind.

Whatever. Sounds to me like you were trolling lol

Hey, I resent that!  I never troll, I spam (corrijean says there's supposed to be a difference)...

Trolling is making a statement pretty much guaranteed to cause controversy. Spamming is either an electronic (unasked for) commercial advertisement, or it can be repeating a statement in a really irritating manner. Huge difference between the 2. 

Well, actually it was puported to be 187 from Fischer's leaked school records of an actual IQ test taken and not an 'estimate'. I find this number to entirely plausible.

--Vic.

It's an exaggerated number. Brady gives it as 180 in his Profile, as I recall, and it's not like there's been a shred of documentation to support either number.

This test, whatever it was (a true, full-blown IQ test or one of those many aptitude tests? Someone give the evidence), was administered to him as a child, not an adult.

I've never seen evidence of his genius outside chess. He expressed himself normally, so he had no particular facility with words. His supposed language skills seemed limited to fluency in Spanish (hey, me too, and I'm a little shy of genius, much less super-genius), and picking up enough in other languages that he could make some sense of chess text (again, ditto).

This extreme genius notion has become an urban legend almost.

Boy, are you no fun...

Okay, so what if I repeat a controversial statement in a really irritating manner?  Huh?  Huh?  Huh?  Poof!  There goes your great chasm of difference, blown up just like a house of cards.

Well gd, I think you're assuming that great facility in piecing block puzzles together is always going to manifest itself in speech.  But is that really true?  Is wordsmithing a true test of IQ?  The only true test of IQ is an IQ test (which is just the sort of circularity I like to see these things reduced to).

He was good at spatial reasoning I guess.

In the Wechsler I took, verbal skills were tested, as one of several components. Do great in one and average in others? Maybe you can be a great chess player (or Scrabblist) without being an "IQ genius."