protests against Potter

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Mike Goat wrote in
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/4189>:

<< Are conservative* Christians the only people who are really worried
that HP could promote interest in the occult? >>

>From my limited attention to newspaper, there's at least one Roman
Catholic woman (IIRC in Germany) who made noise and wrote a letter to
then-Cardinal Ratzinger urging that all Catholics be warned agains the
occult danger of Harry Potter.

Some of the complaints against Potter, such as depicting children who
disobey adults, are lazy about schoolwork, and sometimes lie, aren't
*inherently* linked to a specific religion. 

My own evidence-less theory is that protests against Potter big enough
to get media coverage (without a gimmick like the letter recipient
having recently become Pope) contain mostly people who never read the
books and merely repeat what they heard from some trusted source. That
isn't *inherently* linked to a specific religion either.

La Gatta Lucianese wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/the_old_crowd/message/4191 :

<< Dear one, these are the same folks who are staging hate rallies at
the funerals of Iraqi veterans (see in the latest Time) and
periodically have a go at getting Huckleberry Finn banned in the
schools. >>

But those are two different groups. The hate rallies at funerals are
staged by one congregation, consisting of the extended family of their
minister Fred Phelps according to one article I read, whose only
agenda is to be anti-gay. The efforts to ban Huckleberry Finn come
from occasional African-Americans so disturbed by the sight of 'the
N-word' that they don't even reach the other mockery of Jim.

And neither of those groups pays much attention to Potter.

<< One of my friends was, until she very gratefully retired a year
ago, a middle-school teacher in eastern Washington state, and had had
regular run-ins with this mind (?) set.  >>

I recall a radio article on a conflict in some little town there where
the parents suspected the teachers of secretly believing in evolution.
There was a sound bite of one mother accusing her child's teacher of
unbearable arrogance: "She acts like her education certificate means
she knows more than me with my six birth certificates."