Sex-hating weirdoRoss Douthat, like most Christian nerds, found the perfect mix of Dungeons and Dragons and Jesus Monster in C.S. Lewis' boring Christian allegorical rip-offs of Harry Potter. So in his exciting new NYT column, Douthat naturally wastes space in the Paper of Record wondering why Jews can't have a magical Middle Earth "Narnia" full of talking animals and pixie dust just like Jesus gave the Christians. Are Jews just bad people?

No, it's just that they don't have a Christian Cartoon Devil:

Part and parcel of Judaism’s resistance to explorations in the realm of faerie, he goes on, is a discomfort with the semi-dualism that’s necessary to classic fantasy — the idea of a Devil figure, in other words, who seems capable of actually conquering the mortal world (be it Narnia or Middle-Earth, Fionavar or Osten Ard) and binding it permanently in darkness. As Weingrad notes, correctly I think: “Christianity offers a far more developed tradition of evil as a supernatural, external, autonomous force than does Judaism, whose Satan (or Samael or Lilith or Ashmedai) are limited in their power and usually rather obedient to God’s wishes.” Tolkien’s Sauron makes sense in a Christian universe; he makes less sense in a Jewish one.

Yep, let's bring it back to the motherfucking hobbits, call it a day, login to online banking and see if the paycheck came through direct deposit. Wonderful. And now to eBay, to order some more life-size Real Dolls of Frodo. [New York Times]