Plot neeping in The Lord of the Rings (the novel)

No real spoilers here.

One of the perennial fannish discussions of The Lord of the Rings revolves around a significant plot hole. At three key points in the novel, the Giant Eagles show up and carry either Gandalf or Frodo and Sam a long distance in a very short time. (They also act as deus ex machina at a couple of points in The Hobbit.) So, naturally, people have wondered, "Why didn't the eagles just fly Frodo to Mt. Doom?" (This plan was the punchline of a Dork Tower sequence, but I can't find it in the archives.)

There's a good, though not quite complete, discussion of this issue on "Could the eagles have flown Frodo into Mordor?", <http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/eagles.html>.

(A semi-recent thread on rec.games.frp.dnd pointed out that a better route into Mordor would have been between Minas Morgul and the Black Gate, keeping Mt. Doom between the Ring and Barad-Dur at all times to reduce the visibility of the flight.)

Not mentioned is my favorite objection, which is that Gwaihir, the Lord of the Eagles, is one of the Valar err Maiar err a being of great power, and as such should not be trusted carrying the One Ring, even indirectly. The corrupting strength of the Ring is clearly stronger as one approaches Mordor--Sam and Frodo both understand that wearing the Ring within Mordor would be catastrophic. In Tolkien's universe, power calls to power, and there is every reason to believe that the Lord of the Eagles would fall completely under the spell of the Ring as he approached Mt. Doom.

The cited page mentions a couple of other plotting problems in LotR, including one that Christopher Tolkien mentioned in Unfinished Tales--that Saruman doesn't steal the Ring of Fire from Gandalf, even though one of the unfinished tales shows that Saruman coveted it.

Even Homer nods. (Marge: "Homer, the sea isn't wine-colored!" Homer: "D'omicron!")

Someone Set Up Us The Lack of Bomb

Atrios gives us the Google version of everything that needs to be said about the "intelligence failures".

Andrew Sullivan: A Very Full Sack of It

Josh Marshall--my favorite pundit--has an essay in The New Yorker about the question of America and empire.

Andrew Sullivan, not even in the running for my least favorite pundit because he's so transparent, lied about the essay on his website:

SPOT THE MISSING PIECE: Josh Marshall has written an engaging and artful essay about the notion of an American empire for the liberal New Yorker magazine. I read it yesterday and then re-read it. Josh manages to write about the Clinton era "soft-imperialism" and the Bush era "hard imperialism" with nary a mention of a certain even that occurred on September 11, 2001.

He somehow missed this:

After September 11th, a left-wing accusation became a right-wing aspiration: conservatives increasingly began to espouse a world view that was unapologetically imperialist. You could watch this happening in Washington’s think tanks. Over their lunchroom tables, in their seminar rooms, on the covers of their small magazines, the idea of empire got a thorough airing--particularly among ideologues close to the policymakers planning the war on terror.

Last week, Sully (as he's unaffectionately known) appeared on NPR with leftie blogger Atrios and went out of his way to accuse Atrios of lying. Sully was lying then, too.

It's called "projection"--accuse your enemies of the crimes you are committing or planning to commit. It's one of the cornerstones of right-wing discourse in the US. Don't let it go unnoticed.