Stephen Colbert corrects David Day

I watched that totally by chance last night (not watching it as a Tolkien thing) and laughed out loud when he held up David Day;'s book and talked about correcting it. Couldn't decide whether it was a deliberate diss to Day or just coincidental.

I'd like to think that he has read Shippey, Hammond & Scull, Carpenter, Garth, Flieger, etc. as well as some of Tolkien's books but it is possible that his secondary reading is just David Day.

Someone on the TS facebook page the other day called Colbert 'a bonafide (sic) Tolkien scholar'. This is on the Tolkien Society page, where there are actual Tolkien scholars.

If I could have been bothered, I might have asked what Colbert has written on the subject or, failing that, what he has read. But Colbert fans seem to have a fanatical gleam in their eyes - in the same thread, another of his fans said 'he can out-Tolkien any of us'.
Again - Tolkien Society.

I suspect Colbert fans believe him to be a bona fide scholar because he knows more than they do.

Life really is too short - I've found by observing threads elsewhere on the net that questioning this sort of thing is like trying to knit fog.

garm wrote:

Someone on the TS facebook page the other day called Colbert 'a bonafide (sic) Tolkien scholar'. This is on the Tolkien Society page, where there are actual Tolkien scholars.

If I could have been bothered, I might have asked what Colbert has written on the subject or, failing that, what he has read. But Colbert fans seem to have a fanatical gleam in their eyes - in the same thread, another of his fans said 'he can out-Tolkien any of us'.
Again - Tolkien Society.

I suspect Colbert fans believe him to be a bona fide scholar because he knows more than they do.

Life really is too short - I've found by observing threads elsewhere on the net that questioning this sort of thing is like trying to knit fog.

Absolutely. A friend of mine is one of them and he claimed to me that Colbert was the most knowledgable 'scholar' on Tolkien he knows of. I pointed to my bookshelf as evidence of what a Tolkien scholar is. But he is like the army of Redditors who never stop asking for the best 'lore' YouTube videos.

I don't know who Colbert is & I haven't actually listened to any of this. But one thing I do know, once you start talking about canon and lore you're lost to me.

I still think I know way more about Tolkien than Stephen Colbert, although I'm not nearly as funny or famous :)

I have no idea what knowledge Colbert does or does not have, but the suggestion that one needs to have published material on a subject to be a scholar is completely wrong.

[I personally enjoy Tolkien, but am quite happy to leave the level of interest in him and his work that would make for being a scholar to others -- it just doesn't interest me *that* much]

Stu wrote:

I have no idea what knowledge Colbert does or does not have, but the suggestion that one needs to have published material on a subject to be a scholar is completely wrong.

In general I agree but in the case of Colbert the word scholar is bandied around too easily.

Stu wrote:

I have no idea what knowledge Colbert does or does not have, but the suggestion that one needs to have published material on a subject to be a scholar is completely wrong.

[I personally enjoy Tolkien, but am quite happy to leave the level of interest in him and his work that would make for being a scholar to others -- it just doesn't interest me *that* much]

I generally think of a scholar as someone who is published in their field of study. If Colbert isn't published (which I'm sure he's not) then he's not a scholar.