While people ignored Donald Fehr’s warning about gene doping,

thinking it’s just science fiction or wishful hoping,

 
and focused on McGwire as he fell from liked to disliked faster than anyone since Kirby,

today we learned that David Cassidy wants to win the Kentucky Derby.

 
And even though I doubt Mr. Cassidy would make a very fast horse,

genetically altering an athlete’s species is not something I can ever endorse.

 
But at least now we know that if Fehr was right about genetic manipulation, the first sign we’ll see

is a thoroughbred in a pear tree.

 
* * *

 
Bobby Fischer, the old master of chess,

found a unique way to escape a mess:

 
after spending eight months jailed in Japan

because he ignored a US government ban

 
against playing chess in Yugoslavia back in 1992,

after which the US government withdrew

 
his passport, meaning he’d entered Japan illegally,

he found one country to treat him regally:

 
the one country that revered him the most,

the one country that played the host

 
to Fischer’s greatest cold war success

the most famous ever matchup in chess.

 
Iceland accepted Fischer’s application

to become a citizen of their island nation,

 
and thereby effectively thwarted

America’s plans to have Fischer deported.

 
The US government found it hard to swallow.

“If the resolutions of the world are to be more than ink on paper, they must be enforced. If the institutions of the world are to be more than debating societies, they must eventually act. If the world promises serious consequences for the defiance of the lawless, then serious consequences must follow,”

 
American President Bush once said in Australia about Iraq.

No word on how long before the US will attack;

 
The military doesn’t like to give out its plans in advance.

But there can be no doubt: Iceland is America’s new France,

 
rivalled in its evil by only bin Laden, al Qaeda, North Korea, Iran,

and Major League Baseball’s anti-steroid plan.