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Irish Times beats out The Sunday Times for mangling Tolkien-related facts - Lord of the Rings news - J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

August 06, 2000 at 15:51:10

Credit the dedicated souls at Tolkien Online for bringing this travesty to our attention. The Irish Times has outdone Terry Pratchett, The Sunday Times, and even the Tolkien Sarcasm Page.

Their article, "One Ring To Keep Them Out", manages to devastate Tolkien fandom by portraying all Tolkien fans as "geeks, fat on Internet innuendo" and "hard-core nuts - obese, corn-fed Tolkien zealots who wear medieval garb at weekends and boast about watching the Star Wars: Phantom Menace trailer 16 times".

Perhaps the author (Edward Power) is being tongue-in-cheek, but in his further efforts to cloud the facts with the most bald-faced yellow journalism yet to arise on the Internet (as far as Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies are concerned), he adds "Tolkien was a fusty Oxford don, his female characters were gilded wallflowers, more concerned with eliciting appreciative coos and simpers from his central protagonists than actually doing or saying much of substance".

Hm. So much for Luthien and Idril. Never mind Galadriel. And Ioreth. "eliciting appreciative coos and simpers from his central protagonists"? What book were these guys reading?

Well, don't blame all the Irish. Clearly Mr. Power was aiming for notoreity with an in-your-face ignorance and brashery that was intended to infuriate Tolkien fans. Ignore him. You'll get the real facts from the Tolkien movie sites. And if he's joking, he should try being funny.