A Catholic Homeschool Father Won't Bother to Review the Rest of the Harry Potters

Gloria Romanorum blog ^ | 10/25/07 | Florentius

[Antoninus]

Good that Rowling said it. Ironically however, it probably was not at all obvious from the book and one gets the impression that this is just a stunt thought up after the fact, for whatever reason. Of all the books' criticisms, nobody seems to have picked up on this.

It wasn't at all obvious from the book. Apparently one had to be an "astute reader" to put it together. I'm forced to assume that they mean the kind of astute that assumes that two men eating dinner together in a restaurant will later go home and sodomize each other. That kind of mindset is far from astute--it's poisonous. And I know plenty of people who are infected with it. It's the fad, you see.

The reaction to Rowling's statement seemed rather low key to me....more like a stunned silence.... and I get the distinct impression that the Potter fad is on the wane.

Yep. And notice that Rowling only brought it out after she made her fortune. Now she can alienate the good people who bought her books for their kids and not suffer from it financially. That money is already in the bank. In fact, the Potter books will now have a new core audience--and one that will happily promote it alongside the Rocky Horror Show and other such wholesome family entertainment.

You did heroically well to wade through it all.

Thanks, but I don't feel particularly heroic at the moment. Nauseated is more like it.

[Antoninus]

And if memory serves, while you weren't praising him to the rafters you didn't seem all that upset with Rowling's books...until her recent comments.

That's what's known as giving a work the benefit of the doubt or keeping an open mind, capiche?

So that one comment changed everything in your opinion and turned the entire series from so-so to pure evil?

It's not just one comment--it's a media cause celebre and Rowling knew it would be. I feel like I've been had and that the whole thing was a set-up for a "teachable moment."

Is it wrong to be upset when someone deceives you?

[humblegunner]

As is clear from the article above, I've already read them.

Good for you, so have I.

I thought they were great books.

Dumbledore wasn't gay in the books, only after the fact
did this emerge, perhaps as an afterthought. Plus, he's dead.

And fictitious.

[Antoninus]

Where's the simple acknowledgement that having a cultural atmosphere less like debauched Corinth, and more like Mayberry, would make the world a pretty darn decent place to live?

For the gaystapo and their sycophants, Mayberry is every bit as bad as the Third Reich. Heck, they think what we have right here and now is as bad as the Third Reich. Until they have unfettered access to all the Oppies in the world, they'll think society is Nazi-like. There can be no compromise with such people.

[HKMk23]

So that one comment changed everything in your opinion and turned the entire series from so-so to pure evil?

So, if you have a 100 tank of drinking water, and I put in 1cc of ricin, I guess you'll still drink it, then?

[Antoninus]

Dumbledore wasn't gay in the books, only after the fact did this emerge, perhaps as an afterthought.

That's not what Rowling said. She said she envisioned him as a homosexual from the beginning.

As she is his creator, that means he is a homosexual in the books. And this subject will be brought up with kids who have read the books. It was mentioned on the local news around here. I find it revolting that an author would purposely introduce other people's children to such a disgusting topic as homosexuality on the sneak like this. But hey, it's done every day in the public schools.

[Non-Sequitur]

So, if you have a 100 tank of drinking water, and I put in 1cc of ricin, I guess you'll still drink it, then?

If the subject is that toxic then I suggest you avoid everything in literature. Just in case.

[Antoninus]

If the subject is that toxic then I suggest you avoid everything in literature. Just in case.

Tell you what. I'll just avoid those works where the author comes out and says: "This particular heroic character of mine is a homosexual."

Deal?

[trisham]

I thought it was kind of dull and was pretty disappointed with the whole thing.

***************

Nothing worse than a boring pro-homosexual movie, I agree.

[Non-Sequitur]

Nothing worse than a boring pro-homosexual movie, I agree.

Nothing worse than a boring movie, period.

[Claud]

So, if you have a 100 tank of drinking water, and I put in 1cc of ricin, I guess you'll still drink it, then?

ROFTL!!! And this is exactly how the Enemy furthers his ends.....mixes 1 cc of poison with 100 gallons of sweetness and then gradually ups the dose.

[Non-Sequitur]

Tell you what. I'll just avoid those works where the author comes out and says: "This particular heroic character of mine is a homosexual."

Ah, but what if you read one by mistake?

[Claud]

If the subject is that toxic then I suggest you avoid everything in literature. Just in case.

I think you make a fatal mistake here...in that you can't separate the treatment of a subject with the glorification of it.

Aristophanes's Lysistrata is supposedly all about sex, it's rife with sexual innuendo and jokes that college kids just love to twitter about--ha ha, wink wink, nudge nudge. And yet, what is the play about....in the end it is about the sanctity of the *family*. There's a profound moral in it.

A movie like Brokeback is a piece of slick propaganda, designed to teach a "moral" that is in reality a massive lie. I didn't see it and never will, but even if it were *far* more restrained in its obscenities than Lysistrata, it still wouldn't be as moral.

[trisham]

Nothing worse than a boring movie, period.

************

I see.

[Antoninus]

Ah, but what if you read one by mistake?

So what if I do? I can warn others about it. If I read it by mistake, the fault is not mine.

[HKMk23]

Why would I avoid steak and eggs over ricin being somewhere else?

You’re foundering in the middle of your all-or-nothing mentality. Furthermore, this discussion isn’t about a work shot through with images of debauchery, which I’d naturally avoid, but about a work that was just fair, on it’s own being tarnished after completion by its own author; her dropping the ricin into the tank, if you will.

So, what once I’d have consumed unhesitatingly has now been rendered non-potable.

Tewnty thousand Leagues Under the Sea was pretty good writing, and I don’t recall any subsequent discussion by the author about Nemo’s sexuality.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been a lasting favorite, despite the fact that Twain never explored the sexual relations between Tom and Huck, Tom and Becky, or Huck and Jim.

Only in a modern University could you even remotely hope to find the kind of twisted minds that would go back and do such things all these years down the road; there’d be some class like “Hidden Homosexuality In World Literature: Coming Out of the Library”.

Who needs it? Why take a completed work and go back to try and sully it with repulsive suppositions?

Yet, here we have, not some voyeur of a Lit prof, but the author, herself, introducing the poison into her own inkwell, or, perhaps as she more likely intends, revealing that it was there, all along; at least in her mind.

So, you’re there with the half-empty glass at yourlips, and I come around the corner and tell you, “Oh, by the way, there’s Ricin in that water.”

Now what do you do; keep drinking?? Invite others to imbibe with you?? Malign the one who hangs the “NON-POTABLE” sign at the spigot??

I’d think you would do the first, yet you are here, on this thread, doing the last.

[Non-Sequitur]

I see.

Do you?

[Non-Sequitur]

Where does it end? You say you read the entire series. So obviously there is nothing in the books themselves that triggered any sort of warning. Nothing Dumbledore did or said gave any indication. But suddenly the whole series is vile and evil, not because of what is in it, but because something said outside of the books.

Where does it end? First Rowling and then Capote and Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal? Do you ban your children from listening to Elton John? How about Tchaikovsky and Copeland? No "Nutcracker" or "Rodeo"? Do Disney's "Lion King" and "Fantasia" become prohibited? At what point does it become a danger?

[trisham]

Yes.

[Non-Sequitur]

Yes.

I doubt it.