“I don’t think any of Obama’s ass kissers can remember and quote anything he has specifically said.”

Not without a teleprompter they won’t.

For example, when Whitney Houston sang “I Will Always Love You,” she wasted no time in reaching and sustaining climax phrasing and volume. Her version was an extended end point, designed to reward us over and over with a rush of emotion.

Hers was the first take on the song I ever heard. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I listened to Dolly Parton’s original version. What a contrast! Dolly starts out slow and pensive, setting up her reasons for a heart-rending goodbye, then climaxes with a deeply felt and expressed—not yelled—declaration of eternal love.

What a treat to be led so slowly and expertly to the pay-off instead of being jerked too quickly along by a singer’s need to show her chops and ingratiate me with a cheap reward.

Obama is like Whitney Houston. He thinks everything he says has to be uplifting, compelling and memorable. The problem for him is that nothing he says is memorable in terms of substance. Rather it’s the performance that’s memorable. In many ways he’s like Bill Clinton, who never said one memorable thing (unless it was in reference to fellatio). I don’t think any of Obama’s ass kissers can remember and quote anything he has specifically said.

(In another way, Oabama’s speeches are like the stuff that Andrew Lloyd Webber churns out on Broadway. You can count on one hand the number of his tunes that you walked out of the theater humming to yourself. The music seems good at the time but does nothing more than leave a faint impression.)

People are starting to tune out Obama. He’s becoming like the cheerleader at a football game your school is losing 73-0 who keeps yelling, “DEE-fense! DEE-fense!”

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

“We read the books to the kids, but when the movie came out, I found the Gollum so repellent that I have trouble watching it. That’s odd, but still a fact.”

Not really, when we read we imagine what we can tolerate.

“it’s what its promises make the bearer think it can do – which effectively makes its potential seem unlimited.”

Oh…I see, it’s like giving a 90 year old Viagra or make a 79 year old politician think he can grab the brass ring on the merry-go-round on his high horse.

>>The ring is semi-sentient, so it promises power to the bearer…>>

That would explain some of it…it’s not what it _does_, it’s what its promises make the bearer _think_ it can do – which effectively makes its potential seem unlimited.

We read the books to the kids, but when the movie came out, I found the Gollum so repellent that I have trouble watching it. That’s odd, but still a fact.

Could I make the analogy that Arlen Spector is a Gollum. It seems to me that post election (and the power of the Republicans having been degraded) that he opted to switch parties in the hope of reacquiring the ring as a Democrat?

wink-wink/giggle-giggle

Only Sauron can use the Ring’s full power. I believe one of the Elves used the ring to wash away the Nazul and Celeborn used it to destroy the gates of an orc fortress.

The ring is semi-sentient, so it promises power to the bearer in hopes of getting that bearer nearer to Sauron. For, after all, the bearer thinks that he will be the one that gets the ring, but in reality, he is nothing but a tool, an expendable tool used to carry the ring to its true owner.

Interesting about the meaning of golem. You’re probably right in that that was probably the source of the name. The hobbits are a race of man-like creatures in the trilogy “Lord of the Rings”. They’re the “good guys” among all sorts of bad guys and sorta good guys.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings if you want more info)

Gollum was the original possessor of the ring, but became so degraded by its use that he became the dispicable repellent creature of the story who is also treacherous, since he seems to offer his help, but actually his sole concern is to reacquire the ring. You know… as I remember, the only thing the ring does is make it’s wearer invisible, so I must have missed something in my reading. That hardly seems like a totally corrupting power. But it’s been a while.
Tolkien seems to have written it as a children’s book, so use of actual corruption would have been difficult – lust would have been inappropriate and lust for power would probably have been incomprehensible to children. Still, the idea of personifying dehumanization as the truly repellent character of Gollum and developing the idea that Frodo could use the power of the ring and by doing so become like Gollum was a powerful one to get the idea of corruption across to children.