Umbridge / Blaise's mother / evil author / Snape

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Alla "dumbledore11214" wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/34353>:
>
> Heeee, me too Mike, but without reading Catlady's mind ;) I would 
> like to venture a guess ( and I could be wrong) that she may  have 
> wanted us to find holes indeed in this hypothetical justification 
> for calling JKR's evil.
(snip)
> Something put in the story on purpose does not equal deliberately 
> spreading it. 
> I think it still requires a mind reading to figure out for WHAT 
> purpose message was put in the story :)

I'm sorry, Alla, you're not very successful at reading my mind
(long-distance anyway).

You *did* get that it was the hypothetical person, not me, who thought
that that message (choosing goodness over obedience) was an evil
message. I thought everyone one this list would agree so hard that it
is not an evil message (altho' I have heard of people in the outside
world who said that the Potter books are bad, bad, bad for children
because they glorify disobedience) that the list could avoid arguing
whether it an evil, good, or neutral message. And I could avoid
confessing that even tho' I believe that following one's conscience's
idea of good is better than not following one's conscience's idea of
good, nonetheless it occasionally results in very bad things being
done by sincere people who have deranged (deranged = disagrees with
me) consciences.

And I also thought, more accurately, that no one on list would argue
too hard that Rowling did not put that particular message into the
books on purpose. If I had chosen the already-used example of
interracial dating, people would be listing counter possibilities:
that she put it into the book as a message in favor of racial equality
and interaction via 'colorblindness', that she put it into the book
because interracial dating is so normal to her that she didn't even
think whether some people could perceive it as a message, that she
didn't even realize she was putting interracial dating into the books
because she doesn't even see Dean and Angelina as black, Ginny and
Fred as white.

And you *did* put your finger on the Real Point I was trying to
display, except you disagree with it. << I think it still requires a
mind reading to figure out for WHAT purpose message was put in the
story >>. I am pushing that in many cases it takes only reading the
*text* (NOT the writer's mind) with an ear for connotations to figure
out for what purpose the message was put into the text.