People have different reasons they game. Some like to fully explore a fantasy, crafting an interesting character in the context of the fantasy world, and play that character to their logical end, whether that's retiring to a tower on a hill or suffering a tragic or glorious death.

Others like to imagine a better happier world than their current one, where any number of ills are magically solved, and bigotry and prejudice, if they exist, take a different form than they do in this reality--for example "Mudblood" and "Cakesniffer."

What I want from a Tolkein game is the same sort of story I get in a Tolkein novel. This isn't to say that there aren't gay dwarves or even for that matter cross-dressing dwarves (and when the women have beards, this makes it a lot easier) somewhere in the world, but it breaks a lot of the feeling of the place to see them taking center stage, the same as it rather breaks the feeling of the world to imagine what Beorn the werebear and his presumably female bride would do in the privacy of their own cottage on their wedding night and if would involve any shapechanging and would it count as bigamy or even bestiality if he had a she-bear on the side? And Tom Bombadil and the River's Daughter? Do we describe them "Welcoming the May" in the oldest sense of the term, in all their May-December romance glory? And after having enough Ent-water, Tolkein notes that Pippin and Merry could pass as small men. Given the nature of the two, is there any chance that they wouldn't go over to the Prancing Pony and see if the barmaids let them take advantage of that?

I can easily imagine all of that, and yet I really don't want to read or roleplay any of it. It's not what you go to Tolkein for.

David,

It's a convenient whine of those who've screwed up and keep screwing up to tell people to quit crying over spilt milk and just fix the problem.

Not only did the Iraqis not spill the milk, but the spilling is not an event that happened only in the past. If someone is still spilling milk on the floor, the best thing to do is to point out the fact so that they can stop it and then and only then get to the mopping up.

The Iraqis have not been liberated -- they had a dictator deposed by a foreign power who has since been occupying the country but unable to establish order or security, and by "order and security" I mean a country free from daily bombings and other acts of terror. What it has instead of liberation is a civil war.

Certainly these young men should take action, which is precisely what they're doing here, by documenting their opinions and showing them to the world. With these on file, it is possible that some of the Americans still drinking the stale "greeted as liberators" Kool-aid might realized that our current administration is not helping the situation and it would be useful to get a different one in that might help to fix things.

It's not hard to have dark theories about the deaths of two of the seven who wrote the editorial. Of course, one of the old razors for dark theories is "Do not ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence." Given the wilfull incompetence on behalf of the folk in charge of this war (and this is of course just another sort of malice), the chances that two of any given seven soldiers would die and a third get shot in the head? Reasonable odds. Ascribing it to outright malice, even to the minor extent of asigning soldiers to more hazardous duty, detracts from the point of the editorial, which is that due to the situation, all duty is hazardous there, and the chances of getting killed are high.

The dark reality is that even if certain parties wanted people killed for failing to cheerlead this misbegotten war, no particular effort is needed. After all, one of the seven was shot even before the editorial was finished.

I find it pretty offensive to find that I'm pigeonholed as not white enough or male enough to be a "white male" because I'm not a blue-collar NASCAR fan from the south. And I bet the guys who fall into this pigeonhole find the definition pretty annoying too.

Appealing to the guys in this demographic who are not already voting Democrat is pretty simple: Show them the ugly results of voting purely on the "Have a beer with him" nonsense. Of course that's probably the main reason Bush doesn't want to bring the troops home, because they're the people who are going to bring the unpleasant news directly to the guys who voted for Bush.

In fact, given the results of the "beer buddy" bullshit, I think it can be argued that the Republicans aren't going to run a candidate like that either. "Bush Lite" is not going to sell, which is I think why we don't see anyone like that out.

About the only "beer buddy" candidate with any credibility in either party would be Bill Clinton, who of course can't run for office, but he can of course stump for Hilary, which I think we can guarantee he will do at the appropriate juncture. Meaning, after Hilary's won the democratic primary.