Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

A consequence of cucumbers

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

I’m sure you banged some questionable people yourself. We’re allowed to grow past that.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The willow is too close to the house.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / The Jan.6 Committee Open Thread: Spoiling Today’s Surprise (Maybe)

The Jan.6 Committee Open Thread: Spoiling Today’s Surprise (Maybe)

by | 114 Comments

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I’m not 100% sold, because Punchbowl is the answer to ‘What if Politico, only even less selective?’

But they do have ‘proximity’ (much as roaches under the frig have proximity to the kitchen), so…

Her ex-employer, Mark Meadows, on the other hand (note dates):

I’m using my front-pager privilege to repost this (slightly edited) screed from last night, since it was only top-of-page for half an hour…



… The five sessions have revealed a storyteller’s eye, with focus, clarity, an understanding of how news is digested in modern media, and strong character development — even if former President Donald Trump’s allies suggest there aren’t enough actors…

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s decision not to participate gave the committee a gift, the chance to craft hearings as a unicorn of sorts in today’s political age.

The hearings are concise, no more than 2 ½ hours, each day with a specific theme. It goes like this: First, viewers are told at the outset what they’re going to hear. Then they hear it. Then they are told at the end what they just heard. Usually there’s a preview of what’s next — a trick that likely reflects the advice of James Goldston, a former ABC News producer hired as a consultant…

“It’s just focused on the witnesses and the evidence,” said Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the panel who also led the second Trump impeachment hearings. “We know we have a precious opportunity to get this information to the American people, and we don’t want to waste a minute of it.”

The committee uses clips from taped testimony like a journalist would include quotes in a story. Questioning of live witnesses doesn’t wander.

Committee Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Republican Vice Chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., question witnesses alongside one other member who is in charge of each hearing…

Each day’s hearing fits the overall theme — that the plot to nullify the 2020 election was multi-faceted, with the events of Jan. 6, 2021, only one part, and that many of the people surrounding Trump didn’t believe his claims of election fraud.

Witness testimony gains power because it mostly comes from Republicans, Trump’s former aides and allies, Jamieson said. It’s one thing to have Schiff declare Trump’s rigged election claims were bull, quite another to have it come from the former president’s attorney general, with an Ivanka Trump endorsement…

The hearings also command the attention of journalists by consistently offering something new or unexamined, such as Thursday’s revelation of congressmen who pleaded for presidential pardons, or the extent of Trump’s fundraising off his false claims of fraud…

There’s so much material to review!

Last week:

Today:

Another strong contender:

A sample — hey, those Danes have a documentary to promote! — from the Independent:

… In an interview with The Independent, Mr Holder said Trump family members — and Eric Trump in particular — were unbothered by the idea that the often violent rhetoric they and their patriarch espoused after his loss to now-president Joe Biden would inspire his supporters to act out.

“When I asked Eric about the potential danger of sort of rhetoric and the sort of the belligerence, he felt that it was … fair game in that it … was sort of the equivalent on the other side of the political discourse, or he felt that it was the right thing to do … because the election was stolen,” he said.

Mr Holder said he had a foreboding feeling about the chance for violence as filming went on and the former president and his family continued to claim the 2020 election was stolen, even as courts rejected at least 60 lawsuits seeking to invalidate the results…

The filmmaker said his Trump-focused documentary, which is titled Unprecedented and will be released this summer “chronicle the events leading up to the Capitol attack” and serves also as a “fascinating insight into the Trump dynamic” that “shows a sort of Succession type vibe between the three siblings and who potentially could one day take over from their father in terms of heading that sort of Trump dynasty”.

Back story:

Reader Interactions

114Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    Like I said in the previous thread, she may have information on something they found on Meadows’ phone.

  3. 3.

    zhena gogolia

    She provided good info in the last hearing. Of course it’s a woman who has the balls to stand up.

  4. 4.

    TS

    Nothing like rolling out all the names of those who may help bring down donald trump and his team of helpers.

  6. 6.

    Tony Jay

    Are we absolutely sure that it’s not the Slovenian double-agent who’s been calling herself ‘Melania’ for all these years? Or maybe it’s the parts of Ivanka that have been cut off by plastic surgeons but have reconstituted and retained a mental link to whatever passes through the vacant space behind the First Fluffer’s eyes?

    Or Barron, finally getting back at the hateful toad for forgetting his birthday (and name) one time too many?

  7. 7.

    JPL

    Speculation is now turning to something big happening tomorrow at the DOJ.  Since the DOJ and the committee are not working in unison, I think it’s doubtful.

  8. 8.

    hueyplong

    @TS: I agree that a nice side effect of all this speculation is to make GOPers even more paranoid and either (1) more anxious to go to ground (i.e., STFU) or (2) willing to jump the gun to denounce one another in the belief that loudly obnoxious loyalty to Trump is still the best card to play.

    Note how there seems to be less of #2 at present.

  10. 10.

    germy shoemangler

    … The five sessions have revealed a storyteller’s eye, with focus, clarity, an understanding of how news is digested in modern media, and strong character development — even if former President Donald Trump’s allies suggest there aren’t enough actors…

    Theater criticism. They can’t help themselves. I’m glad the article goes into the substance of the testimony, but the Jan. 6 committee was smart to hire the ex-ABC News guy to stage manage.

  13. 13.

    Tony Jay

    @Starfish:

    Only the ones that have been Red Room trained, trimmed off with scalpels or raised far, far away from the Dignity Drain.

    All the others can swivel.

  14. 14.

    Immanentize

    @hueyplong: Hmmm. Makes me wonder. The first snitch always gets the best plea deal. Given that both the J6 Cmmt. and the DOJ are plowing the same field, if I were the defense attorney for a big fish (but not  primary target) I would urge my client to ignore the Cmmt and start dealing pronto with the DOJ.

  16. 16.

    Immanentize

    DAW!:

    good prosecutors are good story tellers

    Lucky for me, most prosecutors are very poor storytellers. Defense attorneys, by necessity, have to be at least good at the art.

  21. 21.

    germy shoemangler

    @zhena gogolia:  @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I think Democrats are doing a better job than Republicans in telling stories, because the Democrats’ stories are actually true.

    But the media first of all focuses on theater criticism when it isn’t covering elections  (and all important issues) like the superbowl, red team vs. blue team.

  23. 23.

    zhena gogolia

    @germy shoemangler: Yes. I saw a clip of Liz Cheney on an interview show, and she immediately put me off when she used the phrase “both sides” (about extremism in our elected officials). But when she’s speaking on the Jan 6 Committee, every word rings with truth, justice, and the American way. Truth is quite powerful.

  24. 24.

    Starfish

    @germy shoemangler: This has always been the trouble with political reporting, a too-cool-for-school focus on superficial details instead of a focus on the real underlying issues.

    Are they informing us about anthropogenic climate change or critiquing THE WAY the person spoke about it and whether he was handsome or disheveled? Did he live on a leafy street?

  25. 25.

    Ken

    @germy shoemangler: Telling the truth does help you keep your story straight.

    Fortunately they’re also managing to make it interesting for the news people, who have always been fans of what W. S. Gilbert called “Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative,” and what Bob Peterson later characterized as “Squirrel!“

  26. 26.

    sdhays

    I’m sure we all remember that Mark Meadows is someone who personally committed election fraud in 2020, having fraudulently registered as living in someone else’s run-down trailer in the middle of the woods.

    Surely, there aren’t other skeletons in the walk-in closet of this upstanding citizen.

  27. 27.

    hueyplong

    @Immanentize: And you could see the DOJ (if it made a good deal with someone) telling the J6 committee it’s important not to call that one witness.

    If I were a mischief maker, I’d put forth lots of stories along the lines of “Why isn’t XXX being called?  There must be some sort of DOJ co-operation deal with that person” so that the GOPers either go to ground altogether or tear each other apart.

  30. 30.

    Tony Jay

    @Immanentize:

    “Your Honour, I will demonstrate that not only is my client innocent of all charges, he is in fact the victim of a premeditated and entirely cynical campaign of lies and innuendo manufactured by his accusers solely to blacken his reputation and make it all but impossible for him to receive a free and fair trial. All of it, and I do mean all of it, because he has the misfortune to appear on this plane of existence as a gigantic cat-pupiled eye wreathed in the ice-cold flames of Udûn, and some people, well, some people don’t like that.”

  31. 31.

    Eolirin

    If they really were keeping the name secret for security reasons, FUCK THESE REPORTERS.

    We did not need advance notice of who this was going to be.

  32. 32.

    Immanentize

    @Tony Jay: What really did my client do? He certainly was not at the scene of any crime as he is an elderly disabled veteran, sadly confined to one space because of injuries suffered in a great battle long ago.

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    @P Thomas:

    The Twitter “live” links are limited because in the current state of the blog they cause a huge performance hit on page loading. Anne Laurie and the other front-pagers pick the ones they think are most important, I’m sure, and often they transcribe some or all of the tweets in the thread.

    For this post, Anne Laurie’s original version last night includes more live Twitter links, I think.

  35. 35.

    oatler

    @zhena gogolia:

    Next time Chuck Todd fellates a Qanon guest on his show the upcoming Democratic guest should bust in, grab Chuck and smack his goatee into the parking lot. Sound uncouth? “But we’re not like that…”

  36. 36.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    Lucky for me, most prosecutors are very poor storytellers.

    Jeez, how many times have you been prosecuted? I mean, I’m glad you were acquitted all those times, but …

  39. 39.

    SFAW

    @Starfish:

    Are they informing us about anthropogenic climate change or critiquing THE WAY the person spoke about it and whether he was handsome or disheveled? Did he live on a leafy street?

    When I used to listen to NPR, I called them “Soft brown eyes” stories. As in:

    “Mercedes Guadalupe Perez, her soft brown eyes focused on the dirt path in front of her, walks the 437 steps from her shack down to the Rio del Diablo, carrying clothes to wash. Those eyes notice the dead fish floating in the Rio — dead from an unknown cause, but some speculate it’s due to  etc etc ”

    I realize I’m a humorless asshole, but stories starting out like that would elicit “Will you STFU and get to the point?!?!?!?” from me.

  40. 40.

    Tony Jay

    @Immanentize:

    “And let us not forget that this entire sorry saga stems from a conspiracy to conceal my client’s own property, a much-loved heirloom of great personal significance, from him. A conspiracy that drove his accusers to commit a whole range of criminal acts including, while not limited to, trespass, breaking-and-entering, and animal cruelty. A conspiracy that culminated in the deliberate destruction of that property right in front of my client’s horrified eye.”

    Damn, I think he might walk after all.

  41. 41.

    SFAW

    @sdhays:

    I’m sure we all remember that Mark Meadows is someone who personally committed election fraud in 2020, having fraudulently registered as living in someone else’s run-down trailer in the middle of the woods.

    Fake news! It was actually committed by a Demon-crap posing as The Most Honestest Chief of Staff EVAH!

    Or so ONAN or Fux tells me.

  42. 42.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize: ​
     
    “In said battle, he was set upon by Elves — and we all know how trustworthy THOSE people beings are. Especially considering their ‘tendencies’ to specialize in interior design, and ballet dancing, if you know what I mean.”

    Oops, sorry, that was BOTR.

  43. 43.

    HeleninEire

    Here’s the thing about it being Hutchinson. The committee has said it is “new” information. We have already seen her deposition naming the pardon seekers. So what is “new?” And how is it new given that she gave her deposition weeks/months ago?

  45. 45.

    lowtechcyclist

    @SFAW: Oops, sorry, that was BOTR.

    A classic in its own right.

    He would have finished off Goddam then and there, but pity stayed his hand.  It’s a pity I’ve run out of bullets, he thought, as he went back up the tunnel, pursued by Goddam’s cries of rage.

  49. 49.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @OzarkHillbilly: ah, so “Ms Cassidy, can you explain….”, “Did you ever see/hear….” “Did Mr Meadows meet with this person…” “Was the President present at that meeting…” ? That makes sense

  50. 50.

    geg6

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I also read somewhere yesterday (TPM?…GOS?…not sure where) that they had a witness testifying in private for 6 hours on Friday.  Don’t know who it was, but maybe the lawyer switch sent her back to the committee and was what prompted this?

  51. 51.

    oatler

    @SFAW:

    Feel the same about BBC stories that try to “take you there” with a sound effect: “Meanwhile, at this Cambodian rice paddy…”[SQUOINCH SQUOINCH]

  55. 55.

    different-church-lady

    @Tony Jay: “Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that…”

  56. 56.

    mrmoshpotato

    @oatler:

    Next time Chuck Todd fellates a Qanon guest on his show the upcoming Democratic guest should bust in, grab Chuck and smack his goatee into the parking lot. Sound uncouth? “But we’re not like that…” 

    I like the cut of your jib, but I’d prefer Hillary Clinton slapping the shit out of Chuckles with 3 emails in the dead of night.

  57. 57.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @OzarkHillbilly: On a serious note, it wouldn’t surprise me that they’ve got smoking-gun-level evidence.

    On a less serious note, I’m trying to imagine what would cause an email to smoke, and my brain keeps on cross-referencing smartphone battery fires.

    On a much less serious note, I can’t wait to see a GOP scandal somehow blown wide open by a smoking gnu (no, that is not a typo).

  62. 62.

    RobertS

    If half this stuff is true about Meadows, he’s the last person you want to use as a witness.  The history of lies would completely undercut him.

  63. 63.

    debbie

    Am I the only one who thinks they may want to ask her about things they found on Meadows’ phone?

  66. 66.

    Immanentize

    I declare this one of the most clever and happy making comment threads in a while. I salute all in the Jackalariat (although I do note Disc World has not yet made an appearance which is against norms).

  69. 69.

    Soprano2

    @rikyrah: Boy, this is the truth. The person who sits as the front desk knows more about what’s going on in an office than almost anyone else.

  70. 70.

    Immanentize

    @Soprano2: I know this is just my own personal wish as SCOTUS destroys the country I love, but wouldn’t it be nice if today’s witness had a lot to say about Ginni Thomas’s involvement with Mark Meadows? That would be gnu.

  72. 72.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Could be, but there must be a new element of urgency here to account for the hastily convened hearing, and phone records Meadows turned over before Trump told him to stop cooperating seem like an unlikely source of something new.

    Maybe Hutchinson’s new non-Trumpian lawyer advised her to shed more light on existing material? Maybe the White House archives handed over more damning docs that Hutchinson can help explain? Maybe one of the many cooperating documentarians’ footage brought a new issue to light

    ETA — @Immanentize: YES! That would be worth adding a hearing to the schedule at this particular time.

  73. 73.

    MisterDancer

    @Gin & Tonic: An angry Richard Stallman is on his way to your house to say “That’s ‘GNU/Linux’!”

    I had to step in as Stallman harassed a Burlesque dancer friend of mine in the most awkward way possible at a SF con in Boston.

    Hilariously, she’s a brilliant second-generation techie thru her Mom, and if he wasn’t such an awful human being he could have had a lovely conversation with her, as I was doing when his stupid ass decided to ride up on her.

    Asshole.

  75. 75.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: And the TPTB (especially brutish bullies like the Orange Error) behave like they are invisible. I am sure she has seen and heard some things. She probably even has notes and/or tapes.

    Popcorn time!

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize: ​

    my own personal wish

    Oy veh. First you reveal you’ve been prosecuted multiple times (although [thankfully] you beat the rap), now we need to send the Department of Redundancy Department to “pay you a visit.”
    Sorry, couldn’t figure a way to work in Discworld, but I’m sure better minds than I (which doesn’t really narrow it down, I guess) can come up with something.​

  80. 80.

    lowtechcyclist

    Dafuq?!

    “Top Biden officials plan US travel blitz to try to keep focus on combating inflation during Biden’s Europe trip” – CNN headline yesterday

    Yeah, let’s not focus on abortion rights, which has our side up in arms right now, let’s talk about inflation instead.  Is there a GOP strategist mole in the White House?  Because this is exactly what I’d love to see if I were playing the black pieces.

  81. 81.

    Ken

    @geg6: maybe the lawyer switch sent her back to the committee

    Lawyer: “Oh hell no. You go to the committee and tell them all of this. Then we’ll take this case, and maybe — maybe — we’ll be able to get you life in prison, where at least you’ll be safe from the mobs.”

  82. 82.

    dmsilev

    @MisterDancer: There’s a whole (very extensive) set of stories of “Richard Stallman being a skeevy asshole towards women”. I think my favorite one was that he evidently doesn’t like plants, so for a long while, women working in the MIT AI lab were advised to adorn their offices or cubicles with as much greenery as possible basically to serve as Stallman-repellant.

  84. 84.

    MisterDancer

    @Immanentize: @Gin & Tonic:

    Whew. It wasn’t really great when it was happening, nor really in the recollection. Mostly it’s one of those things that reminds how guys think other guy’ll just let this shit happen, and get put out when it (all too rarely) gets called out by anyone, even gently.

    At the time: I had already heard he was a hot mess, but…y’know, he’s THE GUY. I had just left, a year or two before this happened, a sysadmin job I got thru my love of Linux and running it at home for years. And specifically, I was pretty used to using gcc; I had to compile Perl for some of Linux Distors I used at the time, which led me to use Gentoo, which compiles all apps from source. So yeah, he started as a hero, and this certainly made him a Zero in my book.

    Plus there was personal issues going on at the time and before, PLUS I was a regular member of the con’s yearly panel on (and this is not a joke) Harassment at SF Cons. Doing this shit in front of me was wild, y’all.

    And it wasn’t, by any means, the last time — just the most famous.

    (If this makes no sense to anyone else, suffice to say this Stallman fellow pretty much made key baselines of much of modern computing, including the idea of sharing code of apps freely, and core tools used to build the WWW, happen. To the right audience, he’s Really A Big Deal.)

  85. 85.

    Immanentize

    @Ken: You usually only go back to testify more if you lied ab initio. Which might be the case, here. They all thought this would quickly blow over. Fox told them so.

  86. 86.

    lowtechcyclist

    @SFAW:

    now we need to send the Department of Redundancy Department to “pay you a visit.”
    Sorry, couldn’t figure a way to work in Discworld

    You got Firesign Theatre in there, so extra points for that!

  87. 87.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize: ​
     

    BTW, who said I beat the rap? Why do you think I spent a dime in Texas?

    From your comment at 16:

    Lucky for me, most prosecutors are very poor storytellers.

    I guess I assumed, from this statement, that you had beaten the rap(s). I see now that you said “most,” so I guess that left it open.
    Apparently I also interpreted it incorrectly when you said you were a “criminal lawyer.”

  88. 88.

    Geminid

    @RobertS: I speculated last night that Meadows might possibly have flipped and had a secret interview with Tim Heaphy, the Commitee’s lead investigator. Maybe with Adam Kinzinger sitting in. In the bright light of morning, though, I think that if Meadows wants to flip his attorney will advise him to save his tea for prosecutors. All he would tell the Committee is, I’m taking the 5th.

    But it is a nice fantasy to imagine Meadows realizing that his wounds are fatal, and like Alec Guinness in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, exclaiming “what have I done?” as he falls on the plunger and blows up the bridge, sending the Trump train tumbling into the muddy water.

  91. 91.

    Soprano2

    @schrodingers_cat: I’ve always thought the best job for a spy to have would be as a cleaning person or clerical assistant. People who are always there and have a lot of access to things, but are “invisible” to most people. James Bond would be a terrible spy!!!

  92. 92.

    Geminid

    @SFAW: Colonel Nicholson had a sense of duty, even if he strayed from it. With very few exceptions, most Republicans are just power hungry and money hungry. That’s what got Meadows into this fix. I think he dreamed of a Trump win, and then taking over Richard Burr’s Senate seat on the strength of his boss’s endorsement. Things didn’t quite work out that way, but it could have happened. Now Meadows is in the shit.

  94. 94.

    Tony Jay

    I come back after the school run to find the sub-thread had descended inexorably towards an Orcs In Prison 3: And They Call It Wookie Love denouement.

    This is pleasing to me.

  96. 96.

    Tony Jay

    @Paul in KY:

    I hear she auditioned for the Russian remake of Fox Force 5 but found that porn and courtesan work paid better.

    Story of my life!

  97. 97.

    Paul in KY

    @Tony Jay: Mild quibble here, Tony. If you’re being canonical, Sauron has a physical body at the time of LOTR.  Described by Prof. Tolkien as  around 10 feet tall, skin completely black and burning hot, countenance hideously ugly. Sorta like the dude at beginning of Fellowship of the Ring without the armour.

    Yes, I have spent too much time reading that stuff….

  98. 98.

    Tony Jay

    @Soprano2:

    James Bond would be a terrible spy!!!

    To be pedantic Bond isn’t a spy, he’s an operative, specialising in exploiting the information the spies provide by shooting tons of people and causing a great big scene, distracting the bad guys, and spreading really virulent STDs across five continents.

    Again, story of my life!

  99. 99.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: Who says they can’t do both? Hate to tell you this, but lots of people are a lot more worried about inflation than about what the court just did to Roe. That’s sad but true.

  100. 100.

    Tony Jay

    @Paul in KY:

    Are you sure? I know he was clonked with the ugly stick after playing Limbaugh amongst the Numenoreans, but I thought he was shorn of any kind of humanoid form and reduced to a raw, formless, but still powerful presence after he was separated from the Ring.

    Though it’s equally likely I’m just confusing it with the films.

    Incidentally, IMHO the one genius image of the Hobbit prequels had them showing the ‘catseye’ at the centre of The Great Eye was actually Sauron standing amidst flames.

    Back to the Appendices I go! You can never spend too much time reading that stuff!

  102. 102.

    Paul in KY

    @Tony Jay: I have read ‘Collected Letters of JRR Tolkien’ and in one of them he comments to a friend on Sauron’s physical appearance at time of LOTR.

  103. 103.

    SFAW

    @Tony Jay:

    Back to the Appendices I go! You can never spend too much time reading that stuff!

    I started reading it in elementary school or early junior high (not sure the terms for those in Old Blighty). After reading through the first time, I then read it annually for a number of years, but it was not until the third time that I finally read the Appendices. When I finally did read them, my reaction was “Shit! Why didn’t I do this sooner?”

    But I’m still annoyed that Jackson felt he had to have Arwen do Garfinkel’s job at the Ford of Bruinen, to show that he wasn’t a misogynist or some such. And the whole “Arwen is dying! Re-forge Narsil/Andiron/Orccrust ASAP, Arrowroot!!! And kick Sorhed’s ass! Or else she’ll expire!!!” thing was a bit silly.

  104. 104.

    SFAW

    @Paul in KY: ​
     

    Described by Prof. Tolkien as around 10 feet tall, skin completely black and burning hot, countenance hideously ugly. Sorta like the dude at beginning of Fellowship of the Ring without the armour.

    Or Ted Cruz, but taller and with better skin.

  105. 105.

    oatler

    @Paul in KY:

    How did Tolkein the Practicing Catholic let his beliefs influence his mythology? Not at all, it seems. L Sprague DeCamp  complained that the trilogy had no religion, money, or “Mankind’s ancient sport of fornication”.

  106. 106.

    Princess

    I’m not going to call this a nothing burger because every new bit of evidence is a something-burger. But the pressure to move quickly may have less to do with the explosive quality of the evidence than a sense she is balking or caving and a need to get her to say whatever it is — which may not be much more than we already know from her — quickly.

  107. 107.

    Tony Jay

    @Paul in KY:

    I defer to the honourable member’s esteemed scholarship. Burnt lava makes sense. What else would a corrupted Maia of Aulë look like when stripped of the ability to look appealing?

  108. 108.

    Tony Jay

    @SFAW:

    Agreed. The Appendixes are where the action is at, which gives me some hope for the LOTR series on Amazon Prime.

    Plus, yeah, I can understand giving Arwen something to do but look pretty and increasingly anxious to knock boots with (King) Aragorn, but some of Jackson’s choices were odd.

    ETA – I now have the image of Art Garfunkel repulsing the Ringwraiths at the Ford and I couldn’t be happier.

    And now guess who I see when I think of Legolas snd Gimli!!!

  110. 110.

    Paul in KY

    @oatler: There’s a great DeCamp book called ‘The Fallible Fiend’.  Great rollicking story in there. Some fornication too!

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