I liked the description of Gollum by the New Yorker's Anthony Lane: "Think of Ross Perot after ten years on the Atkins diet, and you're almost there."

I certainly hope we don't take this Lord of The Rings metaphor stuff too far. The Battle of Helm's deep, at least as staged and portrayed by Peter Jackson in "Lord of The Rings: Twin Towers" only tells us that Tolkein didn't know diddly about tactics and was a hopeless romantic, despite his problems with the female of the species.

As for Bush being an evil lord...that would require him to think, which I don't believe he has done in quite a while.

Anne, most certainly Tolkien was a Romantic, and you are right that he didn't know tactics of Medieval warfare. You are unfair in regards to his view of women, as most people are who read the books shallowly or haven't read them at all.

Tolkien once wrote in one of his letters that he hated allegory as a tyranny of the author, but instead strove for applicability. Well, he's achieved it on many levels. Lunatics from every fringe seem to find something in Lord of the Rings to support their various forms of psychosis, from racists to fascists, from occultists to bible fundamentalists, and now war mongers and pacifists. Makes one wonder how many times a man can roll in his grave. Well, Professor Tolkien, it would appear that applicability is the tyranny of the reader.

>>Or is the lidless eye of Mordor actually America, ever questing the ring of ultimate power in all corners of the Earth?<<
A really good question! Who is the evil? And who wants the ultimate power?!

Greenpeace: An organization that fights for rights, the world and for peace and I absolutely agree with what you believe in. But personally, I don't think it shjould go so far that it involves Tolkien's masterpeices.

Really, guys, it is just a story - please do not start to sound like a typical English teacher who would like to take every sentence apart and put meaning to it that the author himself may have never thought of.

Enjoy it for the fiction it is.