Bless Us that We Don't Go the Way of Bobby Fischer

   Look no further than a magazine called Confidential to know how chess genius Bobby Fischer went a little bit crazy (or a lot)  -- or how today's American public can fall into a collective bit of mental insanity. 

  Confidential: a tabloid. Confidential: a pioneer in the world of scandal and gossip. Confidential was surely not the only factor behind Fischer going crazy, but surely it was one.

   "What kind of magazines do you like?" a news personality once asked a young Fischer.

   "My favorite magazine is Confidential," Fischer replied. "I read it all the time. It's got a lot of inside stories on things like water pollution." (He chuckles.) "It's pretty interesting. I like to read up on that -- a lot of things that the government has been stealing."

   Who knows what all was in Confidential. Perhaps some true stories. But, to go along, probably a lot of trash. And, trash can trash the brightest of brains.

   The news commentator rushed on after sharing the clip from Fischer -- oblivious to the fact Fischer's thinking was being influenced by a tabloid. "Fischer looked at the world his own way." the commentator said. " . . . Every idea he had virtually had to come to him through his own thinking."

   Guess again. Fischer was letting the tabloids do some of the thinking for him.

   "In his day, he was unusual," said another commentator in the HBO documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World, "but he hadn't gone off the deep end yet." 

   That would come. And, one must wonder if the same can happen to our nation. Look to the tabloids for signs a nation's sanity is in jeopardy. If a nation follows the tabloids -- or their modern-day versions on the Internet  -- that nation is in trouble. 

    And, the nation's Internet is filled with such counterfeits of truth. Depending on where you land on the Internet, the tabloids of yesterday are but the Internet of today. Bless us that we don't go the way of Bobby Fischer.