GREG GOT SOMETHING RIGHT FOR A CHANGE
For once, Greg Kennedy got something right.
David Kane did strike a nerve. For one always
reprehends those who are, to employ Trotsky's term,
fellow-travellers. Vladimir Nabokov has some nice
pages devoted to these Kanester types.
Greg appears to be on a roll in his brief
posting. It is also true, as he suggests, that he
knows little about the history of the Soviets and
their activities in either the larger world or in our
little world of chess.
Families of defectors often ended in slave camps
or in the cellars of the Lubyanka or Lefortovo. Their
bodies would then be ****pped to assorted hecatombs.
Perhaps some of Gouzenko's relatives ended up in, say,
one of the 1,500 or so mass graves around Kuropaty.
We shall never know for sure.
The consensus among the Kane-Gregs here
appears to be that holding Korchnoi's family hostage,
while not ideal, may be usefully compared with
Korchnoi complaining about such treatment. Torturers
are wrong to rip out human organs, but those who are
being thus treated are wrong to scream too loudly.
SOME APPARATCHIK!
<You cannot rely on Evans for unbiased information.
Evans is the classic USCF apparatchik. When the
Chess Life "bosses" demand cold war rhetoric - he
complies. Say or write anything to maintain lifetime
employment, that's the ticket.> -- David Kane
David Kane is becoming quite the big liar in
retailing the big lie. His latest effort comes in a
response to John Savard.
The Kanester calls GM Larry Evans (a millionaire)
an apparatchik" who needs lifetime employment by
the USCF (even though the current editor eliminated
Evans On Chess to please his new bosses). The
Kanestar evidently has as little respect for Mr. Savard
as this writer and others have for the Kanester.
Mr. Savard: for the record, no columnist in
the history of Chess Life had a rockier road than GM
Evans. He was fired and rehired many a time; and he
was typically the subject of Policy Board and
policy board discussions about how to get rid of
him. He angered chess politicians when he attacked
Bobby's match conditions; later, he angered the
politicians and editor Hochberg when he broke the
ludicrous ban on mentioning Bobby's very name in CL.
The second time around, he got fired.
The problem -- and how the likes of Greg Kennedy
and Kanester hate the fact -- was that in every Chess
Life reader survey ever conducted, GM Evans was either
at the top or second behind Andy Soltis in reader
approval. One of the surveys had over 3,000 responses.
Among GM Evans' political enemies was Gary
Sperling, who served a number of terms on USCF
governing boards. During his final stint, when he was
treasurer, a discusson about GM Evans was conducted in
a public Board session. Unlike your Kanester or Greg,
Sperling had an intelligence that readily recognized
facts as he set about trying to work his will. During
this Board debate, when Evans' sup****ters pointed out
the 5-time U.S. champion's high popularity among readers,
Sperling did not try to deny the known evidence of both
surveys and his own anecdotal experiences.
Not at all.
Sperling conceded Evans' popularity and then
pointed out, "But he is not the kind of writer we want
in Chess Life" or words very close to that effect. His
point was that as members of the governing Policy
Board, his colleagues and he had an obligation to seek
writers of the kind that they preferred, if such were
their considered judgment that changes should be made.
And it was Sperling's judgment that Evans should
go, popular or not. He could not summon a majority
or, possibly, a consensus in that debate, but he
always kept trying.
I usually enjoyed talking with Sperling. because,
although he was devious, he was devious in an
intelligent and, to a degree, honest way. He did not
serve up the intellectually scrofulous stuff about
Evans offered here by Kanester and Greg. Sperling
was the frank type who said that far from being an
apparatchik (the kind of writer Sperling wanted in
CL) Evans was a thornchik in their political
posteriors. Sperling and Don Schultz (who sued
Evans unsuccessfully for $21 million) were enemies
who worked long and hard to fire the famous GM.
So, then, one says to Mr. Savard that Evans'
long-time political enemies hated him and wanted to
destroy his career in chess precisely because he was
NO apparatchik. They wanted him to write as they
pleased, but he never would. No American writer has
been more critical of the USCF as attested by chapter 31
("How America Was Betrayed") in his new book
THIS CRAZY WORLD OF CHESS.
Mr. Savard also needs to know that in the debates
over Karpov, Evans was NOT spouting the USCF line.
Far from it. The USCF political class, quietly led by
Ed Edmonson at Caracas, helped Karpov get back the
rematch clause for title matches, a far bigger edge
than any advantage ever sought by Bobby Fischer.
Federation politicians, while publicly condemning
Campomanes for stopping KK-I, privately hoped to
downplay what happened. When Campo came to
America for the 1985 U.S. Open, this writer was told by
then USCF President E. Steven Doyle not to attack
Campomanes for his decision because although Doyle
himself had publicly announced at that year's Amateur
Team East that the USCF reprehended Campomanes for
making such a decision, the real, behind-the-scenes
policy was to sup****t Campo and FIDE.
The USCF political heat always was on Evans to tone
down his comments on Karpov and Campomanes, which
he would not do. Several of his comments were censored.
He was fired for a brief period in 1990 over this issue.
In short, Mr. Savard the truth is 180 degrees
the opposite of what Kanester wrote.
Most lies have an element of truth and are not
diametrical inversions of what was or is the case.
Most liars have enough respect for their audience to
know that lies must contain elements of truth. Our
Kanester is, in this sense, not so much a liar as
something even worse -- an inverter of fact and truth.
Yours, Larry Parr
help bot wrote:
> On Apr 28, 10:03 pm, "parrthe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <parrthe...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > KANE'S VERSION OF HISTORY
> >
> > >Don't get your history from Larry Parr. Refusing
> > emigration requests for families of defectors has little
> > do with chess and less to do with Karpov. It was
> > routine Soviet practice.
> > Karpov and Korchnoi have been cordial in later years - hardly
> > what one would expect if Karpov had been behind some evil plot.
> > -- David Kane
>
>
> Long-winded rant snipped.
>
> It certainly appears that Mr. Kane struck a nerve
> by correcting another of Mr. Parr's innumerable
> fallacies.
>
> In ratpacker world, the Soviet Union was supposed
> to allow Victor Kortchnoi's entire family to emigrate
> as a sort of public relations stunt. Well, in the USSR
> chess was immensely popular, so perhaps this pig
> could fly; to hell with our totalitarian principles! Let's
> set everybody VK knows free, and then hope that AK
> wins. Wait-- there is a problem; Mr. Kortchnoi is a
> genuine Russian-trained chess powerhouse. What
> if we abandon our evilness, our principles, set all
> those people free, and then we *lose*? Yikes.
>
> Mr. Kane's point was that (he says) the Soviets'
> *routine practice* was to deny such emigration
> requests as those by family members of defector
> Victor Kortchnoi. Now, while I don't know about
> such things, I do know that Mr. Parr studiously
> avoided addressing that issue, instead doing
> another of his ad hominem dances, with both feet
> flying this way and that. It must be concluded then
> that Mr. Kane struck a nerve.
>
>
> -- help bot
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