Weekly Roundup: Racism from Middle America to Middle Earth
Brad and Dan begin by discussing the recent "controversy" over the casting of BIPOC actors in a new Lord of the Rings series. Dan lays out the reactions from American conservatives who claim that casting a diverse cast is nothing but woke nonsense that denigrates Tolkien's vision and makes the series unwatchable. Dan analyzes how this reaction reveals the racism at the heart of their concern. Brad discusses how conversations about fictional characters matter, recalling Megyn Kelly's famous proclamation that both Santa Claus and Jesus are White.
In the second segment, they discuss the hold a federal judge placed on the investigation into the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. Brad calls attention to the holes in the judge's opinion and worries that this will delay the investigation months or years, leading us into the 2024 election with nothing decide. Dan worries about the precedent this will set in terms of famous people not being lawfully indicted to their reputational capital.
In the final segment Brad breaks down a new report from AP on how Michael Flynn has become a central figure in the network of Proud Boys, QAnons, election deniers, and conservative Christians by turning himself into a Christian nationalist figurehead.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Our show sits in partnership with the Kapp Center UCSB, and I'm here today with my co-host.
Dan Miller, Professor of Religion and Social Thought at Landmark College.
It's nice to see you, Brad, in the sweltering, sweltering heat.
People should be glad that they can't see you, because Brad is currently just sitting in a pair of boxer shorts and like, you know, dripping chipped ice onto him.
I'm not.
I am not.
I am appropriately clothed, I promise.
But yeah, it's been, it's been bad.
I know people out there just kind of think of California is always hot or something.
It's, yeah, it's, Anyway, we're in the midst of a historic heat wave that has been pretty terrible.
So there's that.
As always, lots of stuff going around the nation, Dan.
Things happening from Michael Flynn, new report out, which we'll talk about, to the judge in the Mar-a-Lago search case and her questionable decision, at least from our perspective, and kind of some things that are happening there that will Perhaps delay the trial and everything else that we expect from this search for months or years, and so we'll talk about that.
But, you know, we need to start somewhere that's really important in the American imaginary, right to the heart of Americana.
You know, Dan, like you're in Massachusetts, out there like in this blue state, you know, Basically a socialist haven.
That's how I think of Massachusetts.
I'm in California, which everyone thinks is somehow communist or something.
Let's go to the heart of America, Dan.
All right?
Let's just quit screwing around with these coastal bastions, lattes, and the like, avocado toast, and million-dollar homes.
Let's go to Middle Earth, because that is where the heart of America lies, and we need to talk about it.
There's a big controversy this week about Middle Earth and a new Lord of the Rings series that's coming out.
I need to stop though, Dan, and it's time for us to do a little nostalgia.
I didn't prep you for this.
So friends, you might be thinking, wait a minute, you were talking about Middle Earth.
Well, guess what?
We need to go back in time because Dan Miller and I, Both went to the same college for our master's degrees at Oxford University.
And I don't know about you, Dan, but when I got to Oxford University, I was fully unprepared and I did not come from a family of fancy people who had degrees from fancy universities.
And so I was like in awe of walking around this town, Oxford, which is a thousand, you know, has a thousand year history of education and cobblestone streets and spires and dressed Like, they're going to Hogwarts.
It's incredible, right?
And so, Dan, when we got there, I don't know about you, but one thing that added to the aura of the place is that our college, Regents Park College, shout out to RPC, shares a wall.
It literally backs up to a pub called The Eagle and Child, and The Eagle and Child is where Tolkien and C.S.
Lewis and their Their friends met every week to talk.
They were called the Inklings.
And so anyway, Dan, I'm not going to lie.
For the first six months I lived there, I thought it was pretty neat to go over there and be able to drink in the same place.
Now, I wasn't even really used to drinking beer at that point.
So there was probably a good amount of Diet Coke in there.
But, you know, eventually I figured out how to drink beer and it was all good.
Do you have those memories?
Do you have any good, like, you know, nostalgia for the Eagle and Child?
I do.
And for Tolkien in general.
Yeah, it's funny you say that about The Eagle and Child.
I was the same way.
I was all excited.
I knew that The Eagle and Child was in Oxford.
I had no idea where.
And I find I was just like right around the corner from the college, like you say.
And my experience was I went in there and it's kind of a lame pub.
Like it's sort of...
There goes the sponsorship, Dan.
I was about to sign the contract and they're going to back out.
There are some really great pubs in Oxford and a lot of them have cool historical things.
You can go to the one where Bill Clinton didn't inhale.
They've got a big sign up and all this other stuff.
It's not that it's lame, but it's just that it's been kind of updated and it's got some modern features and stuff.
I don't know what it is that you expect, but I didn't expect that.
I did also, once upon a time in the library at Regent's Park, there was some like dictionary of mythology or something and somebody had it open to the section on hobbits.
And whoever wrote the thing referred to them as a species of gnome and whoever was reading this was really angry and the Hobbit it was like all circled and there was profanity written in the margins and stuff which might bring us to the uh the anger over the treatment of Middle-earth.
So the first thing like I love the way you set this up and say to the heart of Americana right because we're talking about an elitist British author, right?
J.R.R.
Tolkien, who created The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, that whole mythology.
Powerful mythology, but it's... I'm about to dive in here for a minute about why I think this all just gets to the heart of a lot of American nationalism, and to me there's a deep irony about All the kind of right wing defenses of Middle Earth and Tolkien's vision and whatever, as if Tolkien were some sort of ordinary, you know, beer swilling person with everybody else.
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