Wingnuts and Tolkien

Senator Rick Santorum (R - Man on Dog) recently tried to make an analogy between Iraq and Middle Earth:

Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the “Eye of Mordor” has been drawn to Iraq instead.

Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic “Lord of the Rings,” to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.

“As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else,” Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.

“It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.,” Santorum continued. “You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States.”

(Via Yglesias.)

What is it with the wingnuts and Tolkien?

John Moe reports in his book Conservatize Me that the Lord of the Rings movies were among the movies recommended by Freepers as "conservative movies."

Has it come to the point when admitting my fondness for Tolkien is going to mark me not only accurately as a nerd, but inaccurately as a conservative? Are good liberals like me going to start rolling their eyes at mention of Frodo and Gandalf, in the same way we roll our eyes at mention of John Galt and Dagny Taggart?

It also saddens me that the Freepers recommended the movie Brazil, which, prior to The Big Lebowski, used to be my favorite movie ever.

Oh, well. At least my booze of choice is liberal.