Jimmy Carter campaigns against

[Firestarter 0]

"Compassion for Mordor" by Dennis Prager

[Guest Goodear]

This story is fictional, but not false.

 

Meaning its all bullshit.

[Firestarter 0]

But hilarious bullshit, and it hits the mark spectacularly well.

[Guest SP-1]

Why Carter? Unless I'm mistaken, he's a pretty knowledgable Christian, no? LOTR has alot of Christian/Catholic themes woven throughout (for obvious reasons). Why pick him for this fictional stab in the dark?

[Guest JMA]

Townhall? No thanks.

[Firestarter 0]

Unless I'm mistaken, he's a pretty knowledgable Christian, no?

You tell me. Should Christians, "pretty knowledgable" or otherwise, serve as Yasser Arafat's speechwriters?

 

Jay Nordlinger on Jimmy Carter

[BX 0]

 

EDIT: Nothing to say.

Edited January 6, 2004 by BX

[Guest SP-1]

Pretty interesting article, Marney. I've never really studied Carter, just picked up general things here and there. While the article has an incredibly strong bias and is more of a vent-piece than anything aimed at actually educating the reader, there are some disturbing things in there. It almost seems like he's . . . incredibly gullible. Which is quite dangerous for someone operating in the name of Christ.

 

Thanks for the read.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Good thing ol' Jimmy wasn't part of Middle Earth -- he would have asked the Fellowship for more time to negoitate with Mordor.

 

Of course, when the going got tough I'm sure Carter would have done what Faramir's dad (forget the name) did.

 

It’s bad enough that many of the actors in these films are anti-war hippies, but now this? Good lord...

[Swift Terror 0]

Speaking of not liking LOTR, I heard a guest on a radio show, Lloyd Hart (San Diego Progressives) who wrote a column saying that LOTR was racist because all the good guys were white and all the bad guys were dark-skinned. (Apparently he didn't notice Christopher Lee.) He said he and his wife (an Asian) were distressed that there were no light-skinned bad guys and no dark-skinned good guys. He suggested that perhaps Jackson could have made the Elves dark-skinned so as to include people of color.

 

BTW, Dennis Prager also said that he loves the glorification of violence in the films, i.e. waging war against Sauron and the forces of Mordor. Hear that, Viggo? HEHEHEHEHEHE

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Well, the Lion King was racist for the same reasons, too.

 

If Hart has a problem with only one Orc of color being portrayed in LOTR then he should take up action regarding Mordor's lack of an affirmative action program.

 

Wait a second! Saruman also employed poor white trash, too. I guess SOMEBODY doesn't own the extended edition DVDs (although the hillbilly brigade was shown in the regular cut for all but 3 seconds)...

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

Oh, by the way, here's the article Mr. Terror was talking about.

 

Wow.

 

Just wow. (kkk-ommentary in boldface)

 

I'm surprised he didn't whine about the good characters SMOKING...

 

The Racist Tapestry of Lord of the Rings !

 

By Lloyd Hart

 

I don't imagine that it was the intention of the director or the producers of the Lord of the Rings films to paint a racist stereotypical tapestry over what could be described as a basic set of principles of humanity's behavior in the natural environment and with each other. However, the fact is that the only people of skin color in the entire three part series of films are all associated with the Dark Lord Sauron, the destruction of the earth and all of its occupants. Not to mention the elephant riding mercenaries that resemble the cultures of the Arab world as well as Africa, Persia and East Asia and the fact that the Monarch of the land of Rohan, King Théoden a white guy yelled out "You great warriors of the West" I KNEW he was going to whine about the good guys being from the "West" in the final part of his speech to rouse the troops into battle in the third film.

 

In these times when a homicidal maniac from Texas (the Texas capital punishment policy under Bush) HITLER! has stolen the American throne and called for a "crusade" against the "evil doers" in nations that white people have been invading, terrorizing, raping and pillaging in for 5000 years with zero provocation, I think we could manage some cultural sensitivity in our popular culture which one must acknowledge has a powerful propaganda affect on the general population that participates in it. this guys HAS to be a professor

 

Can you imagine how people of skin color, of Persian, Arab and East Asian ethnic background feel when they come out of these films where all the heroes are white and all the "evil doers" are of dark skin. Being married to an Asian American I watch people disregard my wife everyday while regarding me, simply because of her skin color. they probably disregard her for picking a douche for a husband Being part of a European family that has lived on the North American continent for 400 years I've been lucky enough to gain perspective that when you create an evil character (Uruk-hai) that resembles native Americans as they have done in the Lord of the Rings films a great deal of cultural and racial alienation will occur duh -- most of the bad guys used crossbows in the movies. Indians used bows. And where were the teepees and wigwams?.

 

I am sure that once the filmmakers read this article there will be claims that they had to stay true to the story that J. R. R. Tolkien wrote, but the fact is, African and Asian cultures have always been a part of the European fabric whose ancient legends and fairy tales gave birth to J. R. R. Tolkien's epic portrayal of the battle between good and evil. And what about the Ancient Picts, a tattooed darker skinned cultured that once dominant in the UK. As someone who has grown up in one of the nation's of the Commonwealth of the British Empire, I know for a fact that J. R. R. Tolkien's generation were deeply influenced and thus deeply moved by all those people of skin color that fought alongside white members of the British forces in World War One and World War Two forming lifelong friendships and deep emotional ties.

 

In fact all Europe's mathematics, reading and writing and technological advancements in transportation and warfare are all based on African and Asian concepts. The reason that Western medicine has not advanced to the enlightened technological level as Chinese herbal medicine and why most Western technology is diametrically opposed to all life on this planet, poisoning our air and water and causing widespread disease and death is for the simple fact that the Freemasons and the Church have not yet let go of the death grip they have on each other's throats. In other words, the enlightened knowledge that the church has attempted to destroy that the Freemasons attempted to save and capitalize on with Western patents has turned into a death struggle that has created destructive technological paradigms here in the West that are now being forced on the populations of the entire earth destabilizing life and bringing with them the pollution of the air and water that once existed only in Christendom. Wow, didn't know this had to do with LOTR

 

Of course there are redeeming images and ideas portrayed in the films such as the Ents protecting the forests by destroying the industrial military complex as well as the fact that white people can be turned to evil to join forces with all the evil dark skinned man flesh eating Orcs and Uruk-hai. which contradicts his all-baddies-are-blacks statement

 

It is important to understand that young people are impressionable and influenced by the symbols foisted on them by the popular culture. It would not have been that difficult to make a contemporary version of the Lord of the Rings that included the heroic symbols of people of skin color. I think J.R.R. Tolkien wouldn't have minded including people of skin color as heros in these films if he were alive today. Especially after witnessing the rise of the civil rights movements in both the U.S. and the U.K.. I'm so glad that the Dwarfs, Elves and Hobits finally got their due but unfortunately this was washed away by the lack of heroic images of people of skin color. After watching the Lord of the Rings films I thank the universe and Mother Earth for the Rap/hip-hop culture and the counterbalancing influence the Rap/hip-hop culture has on the youth here in America and around the world. you're a fucking idiot and I hope you die -- San Diego PROGRESSIVES? Seems like "Regressives" would be a more fitting title...

Edited January 6, 2004 by kkktookmybabyaway

[Guest MD2020]

I thought that the Orcs looked like Orcs.

 

 

Shows what I know.

[BX 0]

Fucking ridiculous, every bit of it.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Speaking of not liking LOTR, I heard a guest on a radio show, Lloyd Hart (San Diego Progressives) who wrote a column saying that LOTR was racist because all the good guys were white and all the bad guys were dark-skinned. (Apparently he didn't notice Christopher Lee.) He said he and his wife (an Asian) were distressed that there were no light-skinned bad guys and no dark-skinned good guys. He suggested that perhaps Jackson could have made the Elves dark-skinned so as to include people of color.

 

BTW, Dennis Prager also said that he loves the glorification of violence in the films, i.e. waging war against Sauron and the forces of Mordor. Hear that, Viggo? HEHEHEHEHEHE

This shit really burns me. Why does every fucking thing in society have to be about race these days. Just sit there and watch the fucking movie and stop whining like a little bitch because a heavily British influenced movie had "::gasps:: mostly white people in it.

[bobobrazil1984 0]

What's so bad about Morder? The towns they attacked were harboring terrorists, and Minas Tirith was an imminent threat to Morder. They were just defending themselves!

[The Metal Maniac 0]

I like how he kinda glosses over the fact that one of the main villians is Sauruman THE WHITE.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

I like how he kinda glosses over the fact that one of the main villians is Sauruman THE WHITE.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but in the book didn't Sauruman turn from white to having a multi-colored robe (or something) once he turned heel?

 

Sauruman is a MULTI-CULTURIST!...

[The Metal Maniac 0]

Yeah, in the book he eventually takes to calling himself Sauruman of Many Colors.

[Vern Gagne 0]

Any thread criticizing Jimmy Carter is perfectly exceptable.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

It's a fucking story about elves, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs. IT'S NOT REAL. NOT. REAL. GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

[Vern Gagne 0]

It's a fucking story about elves, hobbits, dwarves, and orcs. IT'S NOT REAL. NOT. REAL. GET THE FUCK OVER IT.

LIAR

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Well, you're partially right. The battle of Helm's Deep really did happen, but the rest is bullshit.

[Justice 0]

What the FUCK about the Wild men of Dunland? Those boys are white trash all the way, fucktard! And the Uruk-Hai are a mix of Orc and Dunlanding anyways, so technically all the Uruks you see are half white. God, what idiots.

[Guest Cerebus]

I bet Moria is the inner-city ghetto and the Balrog is the local gang leader.

[Swift Terror 0]

Well, I couldn't resist taking this a little further off topic. Here is another article that will make you want to wrap your head in duct tape to keep it from exploding. You may want to grab a dictionary as this is an 'intellectual' piece.

 

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/artic...&articleId=1653

 

The Return of the King: Tolkien and the new medievalism

K.A. Dilday

18 - 12 - 2003

 

 

The obsession with power, will and hierarchy in Peter Jackson’s film trilogy adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings fuels its dangerous topicality: a vindication and veneration of empire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the 1880s the lay anthropologist L.V. Helms, witnessing satya (sati) in Bali, recorded several reactions. As young, white-clad widows stepped delicately to their fiery deaths on a funeral pyre, Helms (as the professional anthropologist Clifford Geertz points out) not only felt moral horror but was torn by his aesthetic appreciation of the dramatic beauty of the pageant and his awe at the power of ritual over life.

 

It’s all in the eye of the beholder, the old adage says. And that is why politics and art have always had an uneasy relationship, although some would say they have none at all. Earlier this month in New York, the writers’ organisation PEN sponsored a panel with the expository title “Mind the Gap – writers eye the U.S.-European cultural divide”. The organisers had assembled a diverse lot of cosmopolitan writers – Tariq Ali, Ian Buruma, Jane Kramer, Bernard-Henri Levy, Peter Schneider, and Carles Torner to discuss a subject that is not easily definable: is it culture, literature, music, art?

 

On that night it was none of these. Although one panelist admitted that they had been asked to speak about books, most bit off big chunks of world politics in their opening comments and chewed fiercely for two hours, passing mouthfuls of Ariel Sharon and George Bush along the row. I heard scant words about books and nary a one about film, theatre or fine arts. As the debate escalated, I wondered: how much does the cultural divide between Europe and the United States have to do with whether one can dislike Ariel Sharon and not dislike Israel?

 

Even in tranquil times the definition shifts (culture is dynamic in practice as well as concept) but in times of war, the definition of culture is loaded with meaning: it is a way of setting your world apart from the enemy’s. To be worth dying for, it must be weighty and distinct. In these times are we so consumed by war that all art takes sides, or does art cease to become art once it is political? Theodor Adorno wrote that the genius of art lies in its ability to reveal what ideology conceals.

 

These are not new questions, but in this increasingly fraught world, they become ever more salient. The relationship between politics and art began to trouble me anew when I walked out of the The Fellowship of the Ring, the first instalment of the Lord of the Ring film trilogy in December 2001. It was just three months since the apocalyptic attacks and New York was still reeling. The tension of worldwide anticipation was palpable, something was coming, but what?

 

By the time the second part of the saga, The Two Towers was released last year, the invasions had begun and the nascent 21st century had become eerily similar to Middle Earth. Now, The Return of the King opens around the world at the same time that global news media display images of a defeated enemy undergoing public, intimate, physical inspection as a symbol of his complete submission and degradation.

 

We are living in times when the public rhetoric is medieval. Politicians and pundits invoke the words good and evil casually, as if the age of reason never happened. They speak proudly of killing, bullet-ridden corpses are triumphantly paraded. And like in Lord of the Rings, we define evil by demographics. The bloodline, the colour of skin, the ethnic background or nationality makes someone immediately suspect.

 

 

 

 

J.R.R. Tolkien 

Can one judge a film with the morals of politics? Is Lord of the Rings seen differently in the United States than it is in Europe where the majority of people were against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? A fable is “a narration intended to enforce a useful truth.” When I look at the Lord of the Rings as the fable its author, J.R.R. Tolkien, intended it to be, I see a world clearly divided into races and regions of leader and followers, I see Calvinist pre-determinism and I see the vindication and veneration of empire unfolding in frame after frame. And I feel the quick burn of shame that I always feel when realising that as a child I was taken in by a “useful truth” that now seems odious.

 

I can’t lay the sole blame for the Lord of the Rings’ atavistic classicism, racism and xenophobia with either auteur or author. It was Peter Jackson, the director, who chose his alabaster cast and decided that the camera would lovingly caress their sky-bold eyes. But Tolkien had lived through the horror of the “great war”, and he imagined a world where the qualities of leadership were in the blood and where social and moral hierarchy was clearly identifiable through race and appearance. As the spectre of a second world war loomed, it was a soothing reordering of the world with a clear delineation of good and evil.

 

Lord of the Rings was a “faerie story” according to Tolkien. Unlike many writers who prefer not to talk about craft, in 1939, he wrote a detailed description of the nature of faerie stories. He claimed that the best of them create ancillary worlds and do not ask the reader to willingly suspend disbelief, but draw them into a “secondary belief.”

 

 

 

 

A global phenomenon 

Middle Earth was such a world, Tolkien claimed: his creative force sprang from a knowledge of folklore and a political blank slate. Never mind that he wrote the tale of a vast world-consuming battle in the years between 1936 and 1949, during which there was a vast world-consuming battle, he insisted that the real war did not resemble the legendary war of his books “in either process or conclusion,” since, he wrote:

 

“I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history true or feigned, with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory; but the one resides in the freedom of the reader and the other in the purposed determination of the author.”

Yet in the same short foreword, Tolkien asks the reader not to forget that his generation had already lived through hideous times and that he personally experienced the first world war: “By 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead.”

The world Tolkien lived in frightened him, and despite his protestations, he transferred his fears and experiences to his secondary world. Middle Earth reflected the deathly struggles he’d seen but he made it much simpler to distinguish good from evil. Elves, humans, hobbits and wizards were good for the most part. Orcs, trolls, and Sauron, the evil genius and lord of Mordor were smelly, ugly, and bad and none could shake their destiny. What was bred in the bone came out in the flesh. As Tom Nairn wrote in openDemocracy.net after he saw the first film in the trilogy, hordes of people preferred the simplicity of Tolkien’s secondary world to their own more complicated one, so much so that they wanted to live in it.

 

Tolkien’s fusty belief in hierarchy was probably common in 1930s Oxford, but Peter Jackson’s energetic interpretation of it in the 2000s is regressive. Although fantasy is not science fiction (the latter tends to envision a progressive future, the former often rewrites the past) the two have always been linked. Science fiction writers and filmmakers realise that a secondary world allows one to imagine a camaraderie that is born of like minds rather than phenotypes.

 

Tolkien’s physical descriptions are spare and therefore liberating for a director, yet Peter Jackson has cast the film according to codes of East vs West and black vs white. The evil creatures have darker skin and flat broad features, some wear turbans, others ride atop elephants in flat gazebos reminiscent of those that carried Indian maharajas. It resonates in a war-charged world where the rules of war have changed. States are no longer enemies so people must be.

 

In 1950, shortly after Tolkien had finished writing his epic, William Faulkner was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature. The second world war had just ended and nuclear war was the new threat. “Our tragedy today,” Faulkner said in his acceptance speech, “is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer questions of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”

 

 

 

 

Pure fire or dark blood? 

This struggle, this conflict in the human heart, is barely audible in Lord of the Rings, either in film or on paper. Character development is sparse and the only conflict seems to be with one’s destiny. When Aragorn the reluctant king is forced to make difficult choices he is exhorted to follow the destiny of his bloodline. And of the enemy’s struggles or motives we know nothing save that Sauron wants dominion over all. Do the Orcs follow him for love of the same? Money seems to figure little in Middle Earth. We hear only of power, of bending people to their will. The Orcs seem to be motivated primarily by a desire to eat their enemy. For all we know the realm of Mordor is barren, driving them out to seek food and fertile land. Tolkien and Jackson give us little to interpret.

 

Tariq Ali, Bernard-Henri Levy, Jane Kramer et al were consumed by the divide between world views. Until they had settled politics they could not turn their thoughts to culture. It meant little that the most recent successful foreign film in the United States was the cheery French film, Amelie.

 

Children most often want to know whether a character is good or bad, J.R.R. Tolkien claimed in his faerie essay. He and Peter Jackson have delivered us a simple meal of good versus evil and served it with pomp and circumstance. It may have been easy for me to yield to this fantastical secondary world had I come with adolescent naiveté. But like the PEN panelists, and yes like Tolkien, the fearsome spectre of war haunts me even as I try to abandon myself to art. Tolkien’s saga was voted the best-loved novel of all time by British readers, Jackson’s film version of it has earned critical and popular accolades. Yet primary beliefs invade secondary worlds, and it means that despite the beauty and grandeur of the pageant, to me the film series The Lord of the Rings stinks like an orc.

[The Metal Maniac 0]

the invasions had begun and the nascent 21st century had become eerily similar to Middle Earth.

 

Wait...

 

How exactly is the people of middle-earth being invaded by Orcs while they try to destroy the enemies' source of power at all similar to the US invading Iraq? Seriously now.

 

And of the enemy’s struggles or motives we know nothing save that Sauron wants dominion over all. Do the Orcs follow him for love of the same? Money seems to figure little in Middle Earth. We hear only of power, of bending people to their will. The Orcs seem to be motivated primarily by a desire to eat their enemy. For all we know the realm of Mordor is barren, driving them out to seek food and fertile land. Tolkien and Jackson give us little to interpret.

 

Evidently, this person's never actually READ the books. Orcs hate everything, thus they want to smash everything. Besides that, it's Sauron's will that drives them to do what he wants.

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

Very powerful evil wizard + simple-minded killing machines = brutal legion of army at wizard's command.

 

It's not like the Orcs are intelligent in their means of killing. Big, sharp objects can be wielded even by retarded apes.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Very powerful evil wizard + simple-minded killing machines = brutal legion of army at wizard's command.

 

It's not like the Orcs are intelligent in their means of killing. Big, sharp objects can be wielded even by retarded apes.

The orks were dumbed down quite a bit for LOTR though. They seemed much more intelligent in the Hobbit.