Is Bush a modern-day Aragorn?
From the Newsweek MSNBC site, a column about the much hated Senator Santorum:
Is Rick Santorum trying to tap the geek vote? Under fire back home for his ties to President Bush and his support of an unpopular war, the Pennsylvania senator recently tried to explain how the war on terrorism has kept America safer by comparing it to, of all things, the plot of the Lord of the Rings. But in a roundtable with reporters and editors of the Bucks County Courier Times, a newspaper based in the Philadelphia suburbs, Santorum botched his Tolkien terminology, which immediately sent obsessed fans into a web fueled frenzy. The Senator compared modern-day terrorists to the "Eye of Mordor." But what he meant to say was the "Eye of Sauron," a disembodied flaming eye that is one of the book's central villians.
All might have been forgiven had Santorum not told the paper that he's a "big Lord Of The Rings fan." He tried his best to explain his view of the modern day connection. "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, according to the Courier-Times. "It's being drawn to Iraq, and it's not being drawn to the US- You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."
Trust us, we're as confused as you are. In modern-day speak, it seems he was trying to make the same point that President Bush often emphasizes: "We are fighting them over there so that we won't have to fight them here at home."
Yet no Tolkien analogy is ever so simple. In the wake of Santorum's attempted geekery, the blogosphere has lit up with speculation about the bigger picture: Is Bush a modern-day Aragorn? Is he symbolic of Frodo? Does the President have giant hairy feet? One thing is clear: If it was a campaign bid for the sci-fi crowd, it probably isn't working. As one disgruntled fan wrote on a message board dedicated to discussing the paranormal (Yes, Santorum's analogy even played big there), "How can he expect to win the elfin vote if he can't even properly identify their foes?"
Is Rick Santorum trying to tap the geek vote? Under fire back home for his ties to President Bush and his support of an unpopular war, the Pennsylvania senator recently tried to explain how the war on terrorism has kept America safer by comparing it to, of all things, the plot of the Lord of the Rings. But in a roundtable with reporters and editors of the Bucks County Courier Times, a newspaper based in the Philadelphia suburbs, Santorum botched his Tolkien terminology, which immediately sent obsessed fans into a web fueled frenzy. The Senator compared modern-day terrorists to the "Eye of Mordor." But what he meant to say was the "Eye of Sauron," a disembodied flaming eye that is one of the book's central villians.
All might have been forgiven had Santorum not told the paper that he's a "big Lord Of The Rings fan." He tried his best to explain his view of the modern day connection. "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, according to the Courier-Times. "It's being drawn to Iraq, and it's not being drawn to the US- You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."
Trust us, we're as confused as you are. In modern-day speak, it seems he was trying to make the same point that President Bush often emphasizes: "We are fighting them over there so that we won't have to fight them here at home."
Yet no Tolkien analogy is ever so simple. In the wake of Santorum's attempted geekery, the blogosphere has lit up with speculation about the bigger picture: Is Bush a modern-day Aragorn? Is he symbolic of Frodo? Does the President have giant hairy feet? One thing is clear: If it was a campaign bid for the sci-fi crowd, it probably isn't working. As one disgruntled fan wrote on a message board dedicated to discussing the paranormal (Yes, Santorum's analogy even played big there), "How can he expect to win the elfin vote if he can't even properly identify their foes?"