December 13, 2003
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF:
Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, recorded Summer 2002, for the Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition DVD (Jeff Alexander and Tom Bissell, McSweeneys.net, 4/22/2003; via Professor Bainbridge)
Chomsky: We should examine carefully what's being established here in the prologue. For one, the point is clearly made that the "master ring," the so-called "one ring to rule them all," is actually a rather elaborate justification for preemptive war on Mordor.Zinn: I think that's correct. Tolkien makes no attempt to hide the fact that rings are wielded by every other ethnic enclave in Middle Earth. The Dwarves have seven rings, the Elves have three. The race of Man has nine rings, for God's sake. There are at least 19 rings floating around out there in Middle Earth, and yet Sauron's ring is supposedly so terrible that no one can be allowed to wield it. Why?
Chomsky: Notice too that the "war" being waged here is, evidently, in the land of Mordor itself — at the very base of Mount Doom. These terrible armies of Sauron, these dreadful demonized Orcs, have not proved very successful at conquering the neighboring realms — if that is even what Sauron was seeking to do. It seems fairly far-fetched.
The first time was farce too.
Posted by Paul Jaminet at December 13, 2003 1:01 PM
Isn't it a great country where we can have idiots like these two? People actually take them seriously?
Umm, I guess I'm an idiot, but I genuinely can't figure out if this is satire or not.
That alone says a lot about Chomsky et al.
Posted by: Andrew X at December 13, 2003 5:22 PMHey, "The People's History of Middle-Earth" was awesome. Almost right up there with "Manufacturing Fellowship: The Political Economy of the Lidless Eye."
Posted by: R.W. at December 13, 2003 6:47 PMI can see them now - "nice Nazgul, nice little Nazgul...."
Posted by: jim hamlen at December 13, 2003 8:38 PMI've never been intelligent enough to fathom Chomsky. But I am smart enough to recognize that Zinn is a far left Marxist/communist progessive left wing #@%hole. I once asked him, following a lecture, if conscripts should be used beyond national borders in wartime. He replied he would have to think about it. Perhaps I should have qualified it as ... in support of...
Posted by: genecis at December 13, 2003 9:48 PMIt's satire. But only just...
Posted by: mike earl at December 13, 2003 10:24 PMR.W., don't forget Chomsky's: "What Uncle Samwise Really Wants"
Posted by: scott h. at December 14, 2003 12:47 AMgenecis:
Roger Kimball appositely described (the now-retired) Zinn as a former "pustule on the faculty of Boston University." Zinn, as you may know, likes to tout the fact that his book's sales increase every year, never seeming to notice that this is because lefty history professors assign it as required reading all the time.
Zinn's most recent nugget of wisdom came during a recent trip to Harvard University, when he lumped Bush in with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as international terrorists who must be stopped.
Zinn was beaten up by police while attending a peaceful (or so he says) protest as a young man, and he says this experience made him believe that the United States was a fundamentally unjust society. He then attended college at Columbia, landed a tenured professorship at Boston U., and became a famous man. Poor baby.
By the way, this "dialogue" IS a joke, right? I don't think even Zinn and Chomsky are THIS pathetic.
Posted by: Matt at December 14, 2003 1:56 AM