Trolls attack Amazon's colorful 'Rings of Power' | MARK HUGHES COBB
In the first episode of "The Rings of Power," prequel to J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations by masterful director Peter Jackson, about that ringy-hobbity-elven-dwarven saga, young (either 5,000 or 24,000 years, depending on how deeply you RR-dive) Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) wipes out a snowflake-white troll.
Wait. Snow troll.
Similar creatures: Both shambling, grotesque and potentially harmful; though in actuality, fairly easy to defeat.
It's like show-runners foresaw the dry white whine of "Woke!" from the Ignorrazi. Amazon slowed user-reviews, vetting to weed out those made from naked racism, by up to three days. You could ship a monogrammed katana from Yoshihara Yoshindo faster.
The show has become Amazon Prime Video's biggest, with 25 million views debut day. By comparison, HBO Max's also-prequel, "House of the Dragon," set 200 years before "Game of Thrones," drew 10 million. Still not peanuts in this divided land, when streamer rises against streamer, striving for legitimate claim to home-view kingship.
Amazing it took Amazon until 2022 to uncover the Internet's mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging monsters who loom from basement gloom to threaten goodness and light.
The Tuscaloosa News learned this decades ago, after former owners, not among the foresighted, sinking millions into the Gwinnett Daily News -- If you're asking what? Exactly -- black hole while allowing prosperous newspapers to dangle, decided Hey, this Internetthingy will be all about reader-supplied content! Open forums!
A. No, and B. No.
Any journalist could have told those who fell for this catchphrase in search of a jackpot that A. Yes, while there are some non-pros you can trust, most don't grok deadlines (A primer: Now. Now. NOW!), confuse gossip with things happening (See: Alberta python), and will not re-write, re-source or back up.
Potentially, a forum could be lively and empowering. In reality, like teen clubs, any such devolves into depravity, insult and excess, when the dealers/weirdos/possibly insane and certainly aggrieved ooze in, anywhere two or more are gathered, and fling metaphorical if not literal feces around the joint.
Communication is a circuit best kept open. For as long as there have been emails, we've shared e-dresses. Before that, we kept doors open -- mostly -- and showed how to contact us via snail mail or phone. Truly, we want to talk.
Truly, we cannot share all we hear, unless we print in rear-window-melted crayon, to render the proper mood.
How do we cut meat from matter? We check, we verify. We don't share just because a thing sounds funny. That's what social media's about; the danger becomes when folks view random posts as true, though most times it's third-, fourth- or 55th-hand misinformation. The horror is real, as you can see from those who think there's a pedophile ring run out of the basement of a pizza joint that A. Doesn't have a basement, B. Sells pizza, not people, and C. Isn't owned by the Illuminati. Folks who share misinformation are just clicks from joining the chemtrail-infested, decked out in Jade Helm, dodging black helicopters while cosplay-attacking D.C. as if keys to the government would be handed over, capture-the-flag style, to the bozo sporting the ugliest hat.
Sloganeering too often supplants thought: Woke is a natural state of awareness; its opposite would be unconscious. The dreaded "anTEEfa" isn't a thing -- paraphrasing Will Rogers: "I am not a member of any organized political party. I'm a Democrat" -- but a catch-all to rustle herds of caffeinated kittens, each pawing toward various reforms.
What the words stands for is real, though: anti-fascist. Like that second World War thing.
Fascists? Bad. Fascists: Mussonlini, Quisling, Dollfuss, Mosley, Hitler.
Anti-fascists? Medic Desmond Doss, who saved as many as 100 men at the Battle of Okinawa; first conscientious objector to earn the Medal of Honor. Jacqueline Cochrane, who trained pilots for the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), earning the U.S. Distinguished Service Medal and three Distinguished Flying Cross medals.
Witold Pilecki witnessed the horrors of Auschwitz, organized prisoners into resistance fighters, escaped and tried to liberate it. Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy single-handedly held off an attack at the Colmar Pocket in France, wounded and armed with just a gun, until Allies could mount a counter, which he led ... at 19.
Noor Inayat Khan, descendant of Indian royalty, fought with the British, serving as lone Paris radio operator for four months, until betrayed by a double agent, nabbed by Nazis, imprisoned, tortured, and executed in 1944.
Fighting off a raid in the Argonne Forest, Henry Johnson suffered 21 wounds, yet still rescued a fellow soldier. A member of the regiment known as Harlem Hellfighters, he was denied disability and a Purple Heart due to errors in discharge papers. He died at 32, not before fathering Herman Johnson, who served with the equally gallant Tuskeegee Airmen. The U.S. didn't accept Black men as fighter pilots, so Eugene Ballard flew for France, over two dozen missions in a plane painted with "Tout sang que coule est rouge": "All blood runs red."
The Gestapo named Virginia Hall "most dangerous of Allied spies," serving undercover in France for three years until forced to escape, on foot, through the Pyrenees. "On foot" is crucial, because she limped, due to a prosthetic she'd named Cuthbert, having lost part of her right leg in a hunting accident. Nicknamed Artemis, for the goddess of the hunt, the wild, and nature, Hall later worked her way back into France as a radio operator, because screw you Nazis, I'll beat you with a wooden leg named Cuthbert.
Also anti-fa: Allied Forces of World War II, including grand- and great-grandparents shocked and saddened to see what their descendants post these days; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Winston Churchill, Oskar Schindler, Anne Frank, Captain America, Wonder Woman and basically all things and people good.
Some were white men; some white women. Some were men and women of color. All were heroes.
Yet still, in 2022, Amazon has to quell butthurt whimpers. Wizards, dragons, magic weaponry? Sure. Dark-skinned heroes? Never! These are the same who claim to fly the Confederate battle flag because "history." I'll be interested when they can prove they've read any history, say about the myriad non-white, non-male heroes of World War II.
Jeff Bezos orginally called his fledgling delivery system Cadabra, as in the magic phrase, though later opted for the massive river as alternate. Noteworthy that it shares a name with all-woman warriors of Greek mythology. Webster's, as you're re-printing "irony," here's fresh material.
In Jackson's filmed epic, it took a wizard, arrow-slinging elf, axe-wielding dwarf, sword-swinging humans and assorted bumbling hobbits to tear down a cave troll. TV's Galadriel beats this snow doof by herself, as fellow elves get slung about like chew-toys.
Normal folks watched and thought "Cool!"
Others squealed "Woke!"
Similar stuff happened at Disney Plus, regarding terrifcally fun "She-Hulk." Avalanches of comments created an impression the show's unsuccessful. "Review bombing" also attacked "Ms. Marvel," about a teenage heroine who's Pakistani-American, from a Muslim background. Yet incendiaries didn't fly for male-led "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" or "Hawkeye."
"RoP" isn't snow white. Arondir's played by Ismael Cruz Cordova, born and raised in Puerto Rico, who's in forbidden love -- Elves and humans, living together! Mass hysteria! -- with healer Bronwyn, played by Nazanin Boniadi, born in Iran.
Wonder what's triggering the revolting incels?
Mind blown: The actor playing High King Gil-galad appears not to be of zero bodyfat. He resembles a 40-year-old white man from Cartersville, Georgia, exactly what actor Brandon Walker is: distinguished, yes, noble, sure, but I'd swear I glimpsed the shadow of a whisper of a hint of jowls. Then dwarf woman Disa, played by African-Iranian actor Sophia Nomvete, doesn't have the decency to wear a beard! Naked brown face!
Come on, trolls. Burrow down to bedrock issues. Disinter Tolkien!
Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com, or call 205-722-0201.
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Trolls attack Amazon's colorful 'Rings of Power' | MARK HUGHES COBB
