Saturday, March 2, 2019

Ubiquitous

So, casual Tolkien references continue to show up in what you might think unlikely places.

As, for instance, in the middle of a recent piece in The Guardian describing harassment tactics used online by anti-vaccine advocates against people who let it be known they support childhood vaccinations.  

Here's the quote, with the key phrase highlighted in bold:


“We are at the point where doctors are creating their own anti-vaxx social media attack response teams to help other doctors” . . .
One such rapid response team is being organized by Dr Todd Wolynn and Chad Hermann, the CEO and communications director of Kids Plus Pediatrics (KPP) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“If you’re being attacked, we’ll light the signal fires of Gondor, and you’ll have pro-science, pro-vaccine cavalry come to your aid,” Hermann said of the nascent project, called  “Shots Heard Round the World”.
And here's the link to the full article it came from:

As with most other such references I've been coming across, this one is marked both by its appearance in a non-literary context and by the (no doubt correct) assumption that it needs no explanation, that the average reader will know what the author's talking about.*

--John R.
--current reading: THE FALL OF GONDOLIN,   an old issue of LOCUS (Sept 2004)


*actually in this case that assumption applies twice, once when Wolynn & Hermann said the line and again when The Guardian quotes it.

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2 comments:

  1. N.E. BrigandMarch 6, 2019 at 10:33 AM

    You might like this observation made by one August J. Pollak on Twitter but being widely shared:

    "The one cultural metaphor I actually enjoy using in politics is Lord of the Rings but for a particular reason: they destroy the Ring about a third of the way through the last book and then THEY STILL HAVE TO DO YEARS OF OTHER S&^% TO FIX EVERYTHING."

    source:
    https://twitter.com/AugustJPollak/status/1103299962018951170

    ReplyDelete
  2. ErikMHMarch 13, 2019 at 5:15 AM

    John, it was a delight as always to see you last month at the exhibition! Please, don’t feel bad about my name — you were quite close; it’s Erik Mueller-Harder. I myself suffer mildly from face-blindness, and I’m frankly in awe of the grace with which you navigate such social settings. Thank you so much for your flattering words about the Tolkien Art Index!

    ReplyDelete