{"id":33,"date":"2015-08-30T03:43:00","date_gmt":"2015-08-30T03:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/2015\/08\/30\/everything-i-needed-to-know-i-learned-from-pro-wrestling-pt-6-what-the-internet-wrestling-community-would-think-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-by-vince-mcmahon\/"},"modified":"2019-04-01T14:09:11","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T18:09:11","slug":"everything-i-needed-to-know-i-learned-from-pro-wrestling-pt-6-what-the-internet-wrestling-community-would-think-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-by-vince-mcmahon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ethanlewis.org\/icarus\/2015\/08\/30\/everything-i-needed-to-know-i-learned-from-pro-wrestling-pt-6-what-the-internet-wrestling-community-would-think-of-the-lord-of-the-rings-by-vince-mcmahon\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything I Needed To Know I Learned From Pro Wrestling (Pt. 6–What the Internet Wrestling Community Would Think of The Lord of the Rings by Vince McMahon)"},"content":{"rendered":"
It sure has been a long time since I posted on this blog! Lots has been going on: I moved to another state, started a new job<\/a>, and have spent quite a lot of my blogging energy on my college admissions related blog, Tip of the C.A.P.<\/a>\u00a0 But I’m always trying to come up with good ideas for this blog, and the latest one–while a bit complicated to explain–is a doozy.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Not everyone knows this about me, but I am a very big fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s\u00a0The Lord of the Rings<\/a>\u00a0trilogy.\u00a0 I first read The Lord of the Rings<\/i>\u00a0when I was 12 in 1982, and I read it twice each year until 2003. Since then I’ve cut back, but I still read the trilogy (along with\u00a0The Silmarillion<\/a><\/i>) annually, to the point where I have large parts of the works memorized. I’ve always taken the books seriously; in fact, I remember a student-led January Term class about the books in college that I left in disgust when the teacher couldn’t pronounce the Elvish words properly. It’s not that hard<\/a>–the books have pronunciation tables and everything! Of course I love the stories, but I also love how it is possible to find new ideas in the books. For instance, while Tolkien said he had always had “a cordial dislike of allegory”, in the last decade I’ve come to read the One Ring as a drug, and the people who would possess it as addicts, permanently scarred by their experience with something so destructive.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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While the Tolkien fandom might be less well-known, I have not made a secret of the fact that\u00a0I’ve been a fan of professional wrestling for over 30 years<\/a>. And if there is a real life, “Lord of the Rings” today, it is none other than Vincent Kennedy McMahon<\/a>, the longtime owner of (and frequent onscreen participant in) World Wrestling Entertainment<\/a>. McMahon, or “Vince” as he is known to the dedicated fans who make up the so-called “Internet Wrestling Community<\/a>“, or IWC is frequently blamed for unpopular storylines, match outcomes, and the successes (or lack thereof) of particular wrestlers. Wrestling is based around the idea of fans (or “marks”) being suckered into giving their money to a promoter, and Vince is the greatest promoter of all time. But some fans are considered “smart marks”, or “smarks<\/a>” and they derive the most fun out of second-guessing everything they see from WWE, almost always while blaming Vince McMahon for everything they dislike or disagree with.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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All of this helps to explain the brainwave I had the other day. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what the feedback would be if Vince McMahon got rid of Good Ol’ JRR<\/a> and was responsible for what happened in Middle-earth. I imagine it might go a little something like this:<\/span><\/div>\n

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