As Steve Martin said in The Jerk, all of us have a "special purpose." Stephen Colbert has found his. In Turkey, a doctor named Bilgin Ciftci lost his job and is facing jail time for posting online photos of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan alongside ones of the Lord of the Rings character Gollum (sort of — see the video), and the judge in the case admitted he hasn't seen the movies or read J.R.R. Tolkien's books. Colbert has — all of them, several times — and he wants to help, he said on Tuesday's Late Show.
"Folks, when I spent my entire teenage years reading all of Tolkien — not just The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings," Colbert said, getting a little proudly obscure, "I knew I was preparing myself for something important. Why else would I ignore all my classwork, abandon sports, and achieve a paleness I have yet to shake off, if not to arm myself for a moment of heroism?" Colbert is such an expert, in fact, that Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings movies, has crowned him lord of the Tolkien geeks, Colbert said with little mock humility.
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