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Tolkien's King Confused
Over Right and Wrong
JANUARY 15, 2004
By
GREGORY J. RUMMO
AMERICA IS A wonderful country
where one is allowed to speak his mind—even if the opinion
being offered is mindless.
Michael Medved’s January 12
USA Today column, “Actors’ politics pollute ‘Ring’” is the
latest expose of ignorance, arrogance and hypocrisy among the
acting fraternity.
Medved’s column deals with
the movie, “The Return of the King,” the third installment in
the “Lord of the Ring” trilogy.
The Lord of the Rings is a
story about the corrupting influence of power and the ultimate
triumph of good over evil. It is a film in which the
demarcation between these two forces could not be sharper.
Apparently this aspect was
lost on Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn, the rightful heir
to the throne of Gondor; the leader of the race of men.
Medved writes: “This fall,
with the distribution of the biggest movie of his career just
weeks away, he appeared at a Washington anti-war rally
sponsored by International ANSWER (a coalition to ‘Act Now to
Stop War and End Racism’), identified by its own leaders as an
offshoot of the Socialist Workers Party, a Stalinist fringe
group…[which featured]…speakers defending Palestinian
terrorists, Cuba’s Castro regime and the saber-rattling North
Korean government.”
“Mortensen read an
interminable original poem about exploding bombs, burning
flesh, flattened huts and American guilt.”
No one denies a person the
right to offer his opinion. I do it all the time right here on
the opinion page of this newspaper. But while everyone is
entitled to his own opinion, not all opinions are morally
equal.
There are forces of evil
attempting to drag 21st-century American culture
deeper and deeper into the abyss of moral relativism. Those
helping to push us in the wrong direction contend there are no
moral absolutes. Tolerance has taken on a new meaning—we are
no longer allowed to criticize improper social behavior or
lifestyles deemed immoral or perverted by previous
generations. We must now accept all behavior no matter how
bizarre or risk being branded as ‘intolerant’.
These are the same people who
see nothing strange with the behavior of Michael Jackson for
example.
This is nonsense. Right and
wrong has never changed. And it can be applied to both fact
and opinion.
In the case of Mortensen’s
tirade set to verse, he is simply wrong.
What is happening in Iraq
occurred because a president, elected by the people—something
that never happened under Communism by the way; a small detail
Mortensen obviously overlooked—worked together with an elected
Congress who gave him the power to exercise whatever means he
felt was necessary in the US’s war against terrorism in the
wake of 9/11.
The president however went a
step further. In an attempt to cement world opinion, he sent
his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the United Nations to
make America’s case. This resulted in over a dozen UN
resolutions urging Iraq’s dictator to comply with the demands
of the international community. While Saddam procrastinated
for months, the US built a coalition of 44 nations before
actually going to war last spring.
Coincidentally, two days
after Medved’s column appeared, USA Today ran a page of
interviews with all of the stars from “The Return of the
King,” in its entertainment section. Entitled “Life after
Middle-earth,” the actors were asked questions such as “What
was your favorite moment in King?” and “What will you miss
most?”
Another question was, “What
would you throw into Mount Doom?”
Viggo Mortensen’s answer—I
kid you not—“arrogance.” n
Gregory J. Rummo is a
syndicated columnist. Read all of his columns on his homepage,
www.GregRummo.com. E-Mail Rummo at GregoryJRummo@aol.com
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