Gandalf Makes the World a Safer Place

“Gandalf Wins!”

     That was the banner headline on most U.S. papers the morning of Nov. 3, 2004. It was a shocker, to be sure, one that nonplussed the pundits and dumfounded the spinmeisters.

     We should have seen it coming, they said later, as everybody loves a war hero who also happens to be a wizard.

     Gandalf led the armies of The Dead Men of Dunharrow in the decisive Battle of Fallujah, in which Gandalf and his minions routed Al-Zarqawi and his insurgent hordes. Gandalf, of course, was impervious to RPGs and IEDs, as were his warriors, who already were dead. Everyone in Fallujah perished, along with a few battalions of U.S. troops, as the strike was geared more to surprise than to surgical precision.

     “The world is a safer place,” Gandalf, astride his steed Shadowfax, said to reporters after the battle. “Iraqi elections may now be held on schedule.”

     Reporters asked few questions. They remembered how the press corps was literally turned to stone during the infamous September 18 Green Zone interlocutory. One cub reporter dared to question Gandalf’s credentials as a war leader. Gandalf raised his staff and cried “How dare you question Gandalf the White!” Then, pfft!, 112 reporters were turned into statues which now, as most of you know, makes up the The Baghdad Media Garden and Peace Grove.

      Two days following the Fallujah victory, Gandalf was in the Kabul town square. He hoisted the severed head of Osama bin Laden and proclaimed that he had vanquished evil and the world was a better place because of it.

      Both Republicans and Democrats issued statements praising Gandalf for his victories against evildoers. Said Bush: “Like I’ve been telling you all along, the world is a safer place because of the efforts of my administration and heroes like Gandalf.” Said Kerry: “Why I don’t condone the beheading of Osama bin Laden, I have personally been to war and know it's a messy business. Let us now praise Gandalf’s skill in bringing this terrorist to justice.”

       A week before the Nov. 2 election, Gandalf was not on any state’s ballots. On the day of the election, baffled voters confronted ballots that listed the candidates this way: “Gandalf the White, George W. Bush the Puny; John Kerry the Waffle Man; Ralph Nader the Almost Invisible.” When Republican and Democrat lawyers protested the doctored ballots, giant eagles swooped out of the sky, carried them away, and dropped them into the belching fires of Mount St. Helens, which has been renamed Mount Doom.

       Gandalf won the popular vote by a landslide. The electoral college caved in, with all electors mysteriously casting their ballots for Gandalf. The wizard converted The White House into The White Tower. The giant eagles whirl overhead, which makes for pretty neat photos for tourists. Gandalf instituted a universal health care plan, which is run by Elrond and his elves; they dispense that healing elvish magic like candy. Aragorn runs the Department of Defense. Homeland Security is managed by the Hobbits. It turns out that they elisted the help of Tom Ridge, who actually turns out to have been a Hobbit all this time. Nobody knew, because he always wore clown shoes to cover his hairy feet.

       Gandalf kept on only one member of the Bush team. You guessed it: Dick Cheney, who is the wizard’s closest adviser. Some citizens have taken to calling him Wormtongue, although not to his face.            

           ---Michael Shay, 10/16/04                   

(EDITOR'S NOTE:This piece was inspired by an Oct. 2 syndicated column by Kathleen Parker, in which she advocated we all take up Tolkien's black-and-white world view in regards to the war on terror. Last weekend, a UW bookstore supervisor in Laramie mysteriously gave me some "Gandalf for President" lapel buttons.)