| Parrthenon 2004-11-29, 6:45 am |
| <<My grandmother, who is now 92 years of age, is the most honest person I ever
met. She often told me that she could smell a liar a mile away. Yep, Sam
smells, literally and figuratively. Larry should stay upwind, or my grandmother
might think the same of him.>> -- Randy Bauer
"Might" think the same of me -- well, that is a novel supposition because Mr.
Bauer has yet to accuse me of telling a lie. Such suppositions are supposed to
follow a charge of telling a lie rather than precede them. Later, these
suppositions are strengthened when grandmother would catch a nostril-full of
perfumed mendacity from yours truly; and finally, it would be announced that
even if yours truly were a mile upwind, granny's olfactory apparatus would be
twitching.
One does not have to read Randy Bauer's message very carefully to understand
that he agrees with the points I made -- and damns me for making them. An
unusual message. Let us take his response, point by point.
First, Mr. Bauer accused Sam of being a "loser." I wanted to know what that
means in the context of a life and noted that Sam apparently has little money
but is widely known in the chess world, which comprises a good portion of his
life.
Mr. Bauer responds, "Damning with faint praise."
He doesn't seem to be disagreeing with what I wrote, though I have to disagree
with what he wrote. I neither damned nor praised Sam faintly. I was merely
trying to figure out what being a "loser" means in the context of a life in
chess. Was Nicholas Rossolimo a "loser"? Bent Larsen once hinted that such
might be an interpretation of his life, if the poet Gray's "chill penury" is
the measure.
Secondly, I said that Mr. Bauer wrote an evident untruth when stating that
"Sam's sole claim to notoriety and attention is to make outlandish claims and
plaster them on the Internet and other places." I said that this was not the
case and that his reports on FIDE and other hard chess information are followed
widely in the chess world.
Mr. Bauer's reply reminds me of what he accuses Sam of: he doesn't deny my
point that he Bauer wrote falsely but that Sam ought to confine himself to FIDE
and hard news rather than lie about Mr. Bauer, etc.
Well, okay, I can agree that it is better to write accurately than
inaccurately, but I don't see how Mr. Bauer's response in any way takes issue
with what I wrote. Our state budget director is so hot that he is ringing his
collar with his finger to let out some steam, but he is not actually attacking
what I wrote! Indeed, to the extent that he addressed my point, he appears to
agree with it.
Thirdly, Mr. Bauer wrote, "What a great standard Parr sets for Sloan -- if
there isn't anybody worse than the man, he should he held above reproach."
Never mind that I did not make the argument atrributed to me. Never mind that
Mr. Bauer, just as he accuses Sam of doing, will not issue a retraction. Never
mind that Mr. Bauer is not actually writing what he meant to say either
substantively or even grammatically, given that the "he" following the
conditional "if" clause would refer to someone other than Sam! That sentence
should read, keeping Mr. Bauer's bad grammar, "if there IS anybody worse than
the man, he should be held above reproach."
I reproached Sam dozens of times both here and on the fide-chess group, and I
defy anyone to show where I ever argued, as Mr. Bauer claims, that Sam "should
be held above reproach."
My point, which Mr. Bauer did not address, is the strange standard whereby a
real killer and torturer in our world of chess like the FIDE president goes
unmentioned by Mr. Bauer, whereas someone such as Sam is bemerded with pails of
excremental intellectual substances. Moreover, I did not speak about just
"anybody" being worse than Sam; I spoke about a major figure in our little
world of chess.
Fourthly, I noted that on the occasions I met Sam, he did not smell literally
and that Mr. Bauer was demeaning himself with his effusions rather than
demeaning Sam. This led to Mr. Bauer's anecdote about his grandmother smelling
liars from afar. I was told to stay upwind, etc. What made this remark unusual
is that Mr. Bauer has yet to disagree with much that I have written here,
though he is evidently steaming to do so.
To be fair, he did finally concede that Sam smelled only figuratively rather
than literally.
-- Larry Parr
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"FIDE has made its decision. Players who refuse to be drug tested will not be
able to play chess." -- Dr. Press, co-founder of the FIDE Medical Commission.
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