Ralph Nader Plays the Chess Card

Not to be upstaged by Michelle Obama when it comes to woodpushing, Ralph Nader told Politico: “I was a good chess player. I did it more for the enjoyment than to crush my opponent.”

And chess was not the only game he played. “I used to play a lot of ping-pong,” he recalled. “I have a wicked backhand.”

The most interesting thing he told Politico had nothing to do with games. It was about an incident from elementary school and shows that his self-righteousness goes back at least sixty-five years:

“I was in the third grade and my teacher, Miss Franklin, said there was a public library near the school. I raised my hand and told her that it was a private memorial library and not a public library. ‘Don’t you counter me!’ she said. And she made me sit in the dunce chair. A dunce chair in the corner, and she was factually wrong.”

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Chess Admits a Prospective First Lady and a Serial Killer

Two people in the news this past week were revealed to be practitioners of the royal game. The New York Times reported that Michelle Obama and her brother played chess as children. Their mother prohibited them from watching more than an hour of television a day, and so they “were expected to fill their time with books, chess, sports….”

Michelle Obama is an illustrious addition to the gallery of chess players. Not so for the other addition, Steve Kazmierczak, who shot up Northern Illinois University. In high school, the Times revealed, Kazmierczak “was a B student with a baby face who was active in chess club….”