Tolkien Media Watch

[Galadriel55]

http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2011...erview_lo.html

I'm not really sure where to put this, so I just put it here. It's not really political, but...

What Obama read as a youth: "I think I was getting into, like The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and stuff like that. And I confess that I did read comic books as well, like Spiderman was one of my favorites. And then I read what I was assigned at school.
....But by the time maybe I was Malia's age, I was starting to read more serious books like, To Kill a Mockingbird, or some of the things that I see her reading now that made you think a little bit more. They weren't just kind of adventure stories, but they were also stories that taught me about social problems and taught me about how people interact with each other, and how some people are kind and some people are cruel. And history sweeps them along, and people have a lot of challenges in their lives.

I felt more than a bit indignant when LOTR was called "just kind of adventure story". It might not have been as "useful" to Obama the polititian as To Kill a Mockingbird, but it's certainly more than an adventure story.