Well, This Is Weird

So, about the only lighter moment involved with the ongoing debt/default/government shutdown crisis is that over the last two days various Republican politicians have taken to accusing each other of being various characters in Tolkien's LotR.
It all started with a WALL STREET JOURNAL editorial which portrayed the House Republicans as naive "tea party hobbits":

The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against . . . Barack Obama. The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576470061986837494.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
It probably would have ended there, had not John McCain taken it up and read this same passage from the floor of the Senate (so this Tolkien analogy is now officially in the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- how weird is that?) on Wednesday; see the C-Span footage included under the following link:
http://www.thestreet.com/story/11202157/1/mccain-speaks-of-tea-party-hobbits.html
Things got even more complicated after that, with Rand Paul wandering into the fray, mildly observing that it's better to be a hobbit than a troll,** and the hapless Angle referring to the original "fable".
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60151.html

But they reached apotheosis when Steven Colbert, who like Adam Savage has serious LotR geek credentials, had a go at it on his show; the Tolkien bit starts about a minute into the four-minute segment:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/393421/july-28-2011/the-republican-ring-of-power
And that seems to be a good place to leave it.
--John R.

*who herself is something of a Tolkien fan
**though it's weird in itself that anyone named after Ann Rand cd admire Tolkien's hobbits.