|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chessville
From the
|
You see her here you see her there, you see her everywhere in print from coast-to-coast, and now or at least very soon, on varieties of television programs, including very prominent ones. A hundred articles already this year in mainline print media. Are you sick of this too?
Are you approaching your Polgar-limit?
Frankly, I am getting sick of it. This woman is traveling about the country promoting chess development for young people, especially young women, and successfully getting herself into mainstream media twice per week.
It is because she seems to be the only person doing it. Now – I know about other people who promote chess, on the west coast there is the excellent Jude Acers [who is OK post New Orleans, BTW] and I know about the historic George Koltanowski, the very sort of American Staunton who promoted chess, but the Polgar phenomena in the States is at a greater level. Quantitatively she is achieving an average of two major media write-ups per week, vastly exceeding all other players and institutions combined. Why should I resent this? Because I compare it to the paid staff of USCF, some 30 people, who achieve two articles in major media, not per week, but per year.
In effect I am asking “what’s the matter with the rest of us?” Next week my friend, Mr. Paul Truong, VP of Susan Polgar Foundation, is going to send me two more articles beginning “Susan did …” and this is an obnoxious practice, no? I really want to send him something beginning, “This week Maurice….” or “coming soon, a Brit GM tour of the States, taking in the following cities…” and of course the friendly jibe “take that! Mr. T.” but damned if I am good enough to do it! But I am going to try to put one in his eye, and so should you, dear reader. This Polgar woman has proven that it can be done. She has demonstrated that Americans have a huge interest in the well-being of their sons and daughters, and are conscious of what benefits them, and to whom they can relay this aspiration and trust. She has also demonstrated that it does not take a million dollars to begin, or ‘going Hollywood’ and relying on glamour. In person Susan Polgar is a quiet spoken individual, modest, attentive to other’s opinions, but most of all, dedicated. Am I a bit “struck?” Sure! But I am also a mean, sometimes a very mean realist. In short, this person is not cute, she is compelling. So what’s the matter with the rest of us? We should follow this lead and compete on several broad fronts, and do so without distortions by simply representing the real nature and character of our game as genuinely as we can – with complete confidence that the general public is receptive. If I have learned anything from these exposures to S. Polgar, it is this!
This Polgar woman disproves both our objections as to our capability and to the public’s reception of chess, and for all these reasons I hope her share of the chess-development market is sensibly diminished in proportion, while the volume of her reported contributions increases. Cordially, Phil
Innes
|
Place Your Ad Advertise to Single insert:
The
|
||||
|
||||||
.jpg)
.jpg)
We
have seen her in Mexico City surrounded by 30,000 fans; then in Florida
surrounded it seemed by that many media people during an attempt
(successful) on the Guinness Book of records simul., in Texas opening a
new metro chess HQ and even on the cover of Parade and Lifestyles
with prominent celebrities from our time and before.
I
ask myself all sorts of questions about my resentment; “Is it because I
don’t like chess promotions?” and “Am I jealous?” and “Do I somehow, as
a secret factor kept from my conscious self, not want to see chess
promoted?” and “Is it because she is female?” or “because she is not
born here” and “insert your own miserable question,” why one has Polgar-exhaustion.
Ostensibly
both the Susan Polgar Foundation and the United States Chess Federation
exist for the same purpose – to further chess into mainstream culture.
Yet anyone reading these statistics, or even the newspapers, and who had
a few dollars to promote chess, would make their choice as a no-brainer!
Which of the two actually can be said to promote chess into mainstream
culture in a superior way? My ten dollars is going to get 100 here
and 2 there….jpg)
We
should not do this in order that I can write my friend Paul Truong,
wiping his eye! He would be the first to applaud the effort (whatever
the result). We should do this because we have to-date misled
ourselves that it cannot be done. Somehow we convinced ourselves in
this country that unless Robert James Fischer is looking over your shoulder…
and that the American public has no interest otherwise… we convinced
ourselves that Americans cannot generate grandmasters [two in 25 years!] and
that we could not follow Olympiad victories in the thirties which provided
four gold medals from four attempts.
