I’m trying this here first because of the Hobbit bit, but if it needs to go to GQ or GD, that’s totally ok.
(I’m also flagging it for that purpose, because I really don’t know what’s best for this one.)
Weird intersection of politics and literary references that I don’t get.
Apparently, McCain called the Tea Party members “hobbits” because they were holding the line on their insistence on debt reduction.
I don’t get it. Why hobbits? What makes hobbits like the Tea Party?
If there’s some simple explanation that I’m totally missing, please enlighten me.
(I would like to avoid political discussion and relative merits or flaws of the TP and/or McCain and/or any other political figures. All I want to know is - hobbits?
Frodo and his three young companions were not typical halflings; nor, really, was Bilbo, though he comes closest to being so at the beginning of The Hobbit. Shirefolk tended to be provincial, small-minded, and obscurantist: not merely ignorant of the outside world, but proud of themselves for being so, and faintly contemptuous of other folk of their race who were in any way different. Note the way that some Hobbitoners spoke of the inhabitants of Buckland, and the reverse.
I take it that whoever compared Tea Partiers to hobbits was doing so in an uncomplimentary way.
I doubt that McCain or the WSJ have given Tolkien a close read. What I take from the criticism is that McCain and WSJ think that the tea party supporters are living in a fantasy world with little understanding of how reality works.
What Bayard said. The implication also seems to be that the Tea Partiers are seeing themselves as underappreciated underdogs who could nonetheless turn out to be the real heroes of the hairsbreadth victory over the powers of darkness.
That scenario is indeed analogous to the function of the hobbit characters in LOTR. Whether or not the Tea Partiers are indeed picturing themselves that way, or whether they’d be justified in picturing themselves that way, is another question.
But the notion of a humble and overlooked but valiant peasant folk changing the course of history “when they arise from their quiet fields to shake the towers and counsels of the Great”, whatever its validity as applied to the Tea Party, is definitely valid as applied to Tolkien’s hobbits.
I’m not sure how much of a gift it is - I doubt that Tolkien fans would be inclined to have fan favs compared to that particular group, but thems the breaks. (eta: what Elendil’s hair said)
It seems that they would make much better -baggees than -baggers…
While this *would *have been a brilliant analogy, reading the original context, it seems more likely that he chose the term in a “questing” sense. The Tea Partiers are on a quest, the Hobbits were on a quest, they’re the little guy/underdogs who defeat the Big Bad, etc.
I like your version better, but I don’t think it’s what the original writer had in mind.
My reading is that they’re poking fun of the idea that the Tea Party see themselves as the “little guys” going up against the big, evil monolithic government. So like David vs. Goliath or hobbits vs. Sauron.