Christine O'Donnell explains dating history using 'Lord of the Rings'

[Liberal_in_LA]

Christine O'Donnell explains dating history using 'Lord of the Rings'

By Emi Kolawole

Christine O'Donnell's victory on Tuesday has many digging through archives to find footage of the Republican Senate nominee. This digging has produced a 2003 C-Span recording in which O'Donnell delivers her assessment of gender roles in the works of J.R.R. Tolkein

"You see Tolkien's wisdom applied to just about everything: Tolkien and communism, Tolkien and industrialization," said O'Donnell, while leading a December 2003 discussion at the Heritage Foundation as communications director for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI). "In researching this topic I even found a book with a chapter on Tolkien and sexual fetishes."

The discussion centered on Bradley Birzer's book "J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth," which was published by ISI in 2003.

"It's so surprising, then, especially in today's very hyper-sensitive, post-Gloria Steinem world, that there's such a lack of commentary on Tolkien and women. While we were researching this topic, the only writings that we could find on this subject were on those freebie high school essays, you know, budding feminists who were saying what a chauvinist Tolkein was," O'Donnell said. "Is it that people assume that women don't have an interest in Tolkien? ... Whatever the reason why this topic hasn't been explored, it's an excellent topic that when you do dive into it it can provide very fun insight and amusement into the creature that we call the woman."

O'Donnell, alongside her intern and niece, Jenna Murray, continued at length on Tolkein's treatment of women, taking on his individual female characters one by one. "To throw in a female just to appease the misguided demands of today's moviegoers would severely take away from the film's legitimacy," she said.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/09/christine-odonnell-and-middle.html

[RandomThoughts]

1. Buzzzz wrong.

Tolkien has been called above the waist fiction. He wrote about stories with no comments on sex, he did not have that filter blocking any of his writings.


That is a smear. Although his personal life is his business, he was more G rated on sex topics then any other writers.

He didn't even have nuance topics on sex in his books.

He also had some strong female leads in his books.


That article is completely unreal, and only meant to try and poke a response. It means nothing, it is not a real comment.




:hi: Rove

[ginnyinWI]

5. agree--

Tolkien wrote fantasy fiction for the heroism, not the sexual. People fighting for The Noble Cause, for their homelands and peoples-- with great bravery and risk to themselves against evil forces--that's where the thrills are to be found in his writing.

[LostinVA]

9. Exactly, and she is also forgetting Eowyn

Who was trained as a warrior/shieldmaiden.

[mrs_p]

6. wow RT

i understand what you are saying and agree!

:hi:

[NightWatcher]

2. poor thing she needs to have her toes curled

[noel711]

3. She reads books? Teabaggers don't read!

And she has no concept of Tolkein and his cerebral world.

more than likely she considers his writing pagan
because there ain't no bible therein.

[damntexdem]

8. Hey, she saw the movies!

What more do you want from her?

;-)

[ginnyinWI]

11. lol, that's what I was thinking too.

Way to many words in those books!! :) As for myself, I'm on my third LOTR read-through, after having just read the Silmarillion for the second time, and also this summer finished The Children of Hurin and The Book of Lost Tales I. I'm a fan. :)

[sinkingfeeling]

4. I guess this is right before ISI fired her and she sued them for over $6 million?

[damntexdem]

7. My precious. I loves it.

Yeah, O'Donnell as Gollum. Don't worry about gender -- she says she doesn't. ;-)

[sdfernando]

10. Is it just me...or

does this woman seem preoccupied with sex???

[ginnyinWI]

12. good point. n/t