George Will on JKR & HP

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at y..., "Caius Marcius" <coriolan at w...> wrote:

> Very clever, Meril.  Classic disinformation. Anyone who hasn't read 
> Will's column is going to assume that the "childishness" of which 
> he  is critical refers to Harry Potter and JKR. (snip) Surely on 
> HP4GU one is preaching to the choir to denounce Microsoft's attempt 
> to seduce the non-PDD population to the barren joys of autistic 
> self-stimulation. You don't play Mega-mutilation "with" somebody. 
> (By contrast, both HP and professional sports are social events, 
> which are better when shared).

There are many people, of course not on our mlists, who love HP as 
a solitary activity.

The George will column irritated me by condemning it as childishness 
for grown-ups to wear sneakers and sweats for anything other than 
exercising and jeans for anything other than manual labor. I hate the 
clothes-ism that condemns people for wearing what they find 
comfortable as much as the clothes-ism that condemns people for 
wearing what they find show-off-y . He can wear his suit with the bow 
tie to football games for all I care, so will he please shut up about 
me wearing Ren Fair garb to the supermarket.   

> And here's another right-wing reactionary Zionist colonialist 
> speaking out on the HP pheenom
http://www.nationalreview.com/weekend/books/books-ponnuru111701.shtml

It's always nice to hear humorless academics being zinged, but 
humorless academics on the right as well as on the left have written 
Stupid criticism of HP. Zipes is example of stupid academic on the 
left, Ponnoru takes him apart much more thoroughly than was 
previously done on list, and quite enjoyably.

I LOL at Ponnoru's statement of Zipes's objection: "They encourage 
conformity: Harry and his friends "do not drink, smoke, or take 
drugs."" , mostly because of (was it two years ago? my, how time 
flies) the mass e-mail campaign that parents should prevent their 
children from reading HP because HP encouraged them to take drugs 
{"Well, there are those potions.") Ponnoru very accurately wrote "J. 
K.Rowling's books, in addition to being good reads, harness these 
feelings to a common-sense moral framework in which it is necessary 
for everyone to choose good over evil." and there was that annoying 
person who came on the list last year to tell us that HP promotes 
evil because Harry sometimes breaks rules. 

As for stupid academics on the right, I offer Harold Bloom. In a 
discussion on electronic books on KCRW, he asserted that electronic 
books are a big step back to primitivism BECAUSE 'they are a return 
to the scroll'. His statement that the scroll was replaced by codex 
books by Gutenberg was quite simply factually wrong, and I believe 
his assumption that the only way to read an electronic text is by 
scrolling down (like with these emails) instead of clicking Next Page 
is also factually wrong. 

Slightly before that, on the specific subject of HP, he said it is 
terrible that children are reading HP because it is Such Terrible 
Writing. He explained that JKR 'never says someone walked, she always 
says they stretched their legs'. I looked in the books and found no 
example of anyone saying anyone stretched their legs, but I might 
have gotten distracted by the content, as usual.

Years before that, for the sake of all elementary school children in 
the USA having the same curriculum, he published his suggestions for 
what should be in that curriculum. I think it was in first grade that 
children were to be taught that the way the jazz solo was invented was 
that Louis Armstrong was such a great musician that whenever he 
played, his band members stopped playing so they could just listen to 
him.

I have NEVER understood why anyone considers Bloom to be a genius.