Posted: September 07, 1999 at 12:01:29: by Hugh Toner
: Recently, I read a review of the Lord of the Rings, which claimed that anyone who bought the book was "funding racism", and that as a result the book should be banned! I don't propose to recite the arguments that have been put so well by Michael Martinez, and which completely demolish that argument. My question is why do some people who (presumably) have read the book misinterpret it so badly?: Sean Because they want to, everybody has a different agenda, unfortunately some will use any means they can in order to draw attention to their agenda and so raise awareness, if it involves upsetting us poor Tolkien freaks then so be it. As far as I am concerned this is the moral equivalent of spam/hype - ignore them. I'm not going to bother with the usual pc disclaimers, there are some pc issues I feel very strongly about and others that just make me laugh (besides this is neither the time or the place), enough to say that even if there are areas in Tolkien's work that cause offence (and I am prepared to admit that this might be so) there is a real danger in taking it out of context and soon we'll have the anti smokers complaining about pipeweed and alcoholics anonymous pointing out the dangers of too much ale. Such arguments eventually hurt their own premises as people stop taking such issues seriously. This is the real problem.
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