Em10

Poison Pen Attack Backfires on Disgruntled Arguers

December 2nd, 2009

Do you read fantasy books? When you do so, do you wonder about minor characters in those books? This is a common happenstance and many readers go online to share their ideas about how they think their favorite fantasy worlds might look like if they were real. Sometimes these online ponderings lead to intense debates that cause division and strife on an epic scale. Unfortunate though such arguments are, they are rarely noticed because most people simply cannot get to enough places on the Internet to see all the arguing.

The Internet can be a level playing field. People are free to publish their ideas in their own venues, leaving visitors to decide for themselves what to believe. Unfortunately, some people decide it’s acceptable to engage in personal attacks against others, in the hope of discrediting the victims of their verbal abuse. One recent debate where at least two people launched a series of personal attacks involves the long-running Balrog Wings Debate.

The question of Balrog wings has been settled many times over, always in favor of what the the creator of Balrogs (J.R.R. Tolkien) wrote: the wings of the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings are simply extensions of a darkness it used to make itself seem more terrifying. A minority of people (less than 25%) believe these wings are not actually in the story, but rather are metaphors. The rules of metaphor show this cannot be the case (as the narrative passages that mention the wings are not written metaphorically).

The latest pro-metaphor essay, written by someone using the screen name of Elenhir, makes several mistakes that have already been rebutted. When Tolkien scholar Michael Martinez, who published the truth about Balrogs in a widely read essay several years ago, declined to comment on Elenhir’s essay, Elenhir and a friend (David Gransby, posting as halfir) launched a series of personal attacks against Martinez. Both writers have published several false statements, including alleging that Martinez — whose reputation for meticulous and detailed citation from Tolkien’s book has been widely acknowledged for many years — fails to support his views with citations.

This latest attempt to gain some notoriety by attacking a well-known author without provocation may seem like just another childish display of intolerance, but it has drawn criticism from several commentators. Elenhir and Gransby should stand down and admit that resorting to poison pen campaigns doesn’t do their cause any good. They won’t be taken seriously otherwise. And maybe next time they’ll try publishing some good research instead of personal attacks.

Tell the community These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.