The new USA: Chess players, like Socrates, busted for corrupting the youth.
“Ah, now isn’t that much better,” asked a soothing Nurse Ratched.
Police officers approached [seven chess players in Upper Manhattan] at the stone chess tables in Inwood Hill Park and issued them summonses for failure to comply with signs.
The tables are behind the gates of the park’s Emerson Playground, which the signs in question state is off limits to adults unaccompanied by minors… to deter what a parks official called “inappropriate adult use of space designated specifically for children.”…
The tables are separated from the rest of the play area by a fence, [and reportedly] there were no children present at the time.
“This incident is an embarrassment to the officers from the 34th Precinct who felt that it was necessary to use their badge and authority to issue such a random summons,” Joanna Johnston, who said that her 7-year-old son learned to play chess from the men in the playground, wrote in a letter to the police and the mayor.
Careful, lady. The parent lobby is not going to like you one bit. Children must be protected from the sight of adults playing chess. We wouldn’t want them to grow up reading Averbakh.
Now do you wonder why Fischer spit?
The nanny state rationale, the protect-the-children copout used to oppose responsible adult decision-making is one of the central legs supporting ethical cowardice among American liberals – suppression of intellectual dissent by the American right.
moss
November 20, 2010 at 11:38 am