Tea-Party favorite Christine O'Donnell's qualifications for public office have drawn fire in the hours since her upset victory in the Delaware GOP senate primary. But there's one point even her fiercest critics must concede: the woman knows her Tolkien. Just look at this video C-SPAN unearthed from her 2003 participation in a "Women of Middle-Earth" panel at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. Politico's Patrick Gavin transcribed some of O'Donnell's more compelling observations.

You see Tolkien's wisdom applied to just about everything: Tolkien and communism, Tolkien and industrialization. In researching this topic I even found a book on Tolkien and sexual fetishes.
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It's so surprising, then, especially in today's very hyper-sensitive, post-Gloria Steinem world, that there's such a lack of commentary on Tolkien and women. ... Is it that people assume that women don't have an interest in Tolkien? ... Whatever the reason that this topic hasn't been explored, it's an excellent topic.
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Each of these women — through drastically different in personality, at the very corp of their identity possess a very true womanly virtue of feminitiy...There's the gentful and hopeful Arwen, in whose presence everything becomes peaceful and calm. There's the tumultous and restless Eowyn, whose free spirit leads her to triumph over her greatest foe. There's the regal matriarch Galadriel, whose strength provides a timeless haven for her people. And finally there's the overlooked Belladonna Baggins and it is from her blood line that Bilbo Baggins inherits his adventurous spirit.

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Ray Gustini