Bad Harry Potter! Bad!

This in today's news:

Georgia Mother Seeks Harry Potter Ban
A suburban county that sparked a public outcry when its libraries temporarily eliminated funding for Spanish-language fiction is now being asked to ban Harry Potter books from its schools.
Laura Mallory, a mother of four, told a hearing officer for the Gwinnett County Board of Education on Tuesday that the popular fiction series are an "evil" attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion.
Board of Education attorney Victoria Sweeny said that if schools were to remove all books containing reference to witches, they would have to ban "Macbeth" and "Cinderella."
"There's a mountain of evidence for keeping Harry Potter," she said, adding that the books don't support any particular religion but present instead universal themes of friendship and overcoming adversity.
In June, the county's library board eliminated the $3,000 that had been set aside to buy Spanish-language fiction in the coming fiscal year. One board member said the move came after some residents objected to using taxpayer dollars to entertain readers who might be illegal immigrants.
Days later, the board reversed its decision amid accusations that the move was anti-Hispanic.

My first reaction was a simple, "Doesn't this twat have anything better to do with her time?" I mean, if she's reading to her kids, helping with their homework, doing whatever level of work around the house she's worked out within her family, volunteering as a soccer/basketball/baseball/other sports coach, volunteering as a leader in the girl scout/cub scout group, volunteering at the school in her kids' classes, taking part in the PTA, volunteering with any number of local religious and service organizations that are no doubt suffering from a lack of manpower, and maybe giving what I assume is some desparately needed personal attention to her (poor, poor, wretched) husband, then when and how does she find the time and energy to go public with an accusation against a work of fantasy fiction?

And what a gloriously enlightened and common-sensical response from the local board of education. Huzzah to them, especially the ones who actively and directly contradict this idiot woman, having the fortitude to go on the record.

I challenge Laura Busybody to find any mention whatsoever of the terms "Wicca" or "Wiccan" in any of the Potter books. Simple answer: it won't be there. If obscenely billionaire-ily rich Rowling had included Wicca in the books it would have grounded and quite clearly limited where the books and the stories could have gone. A link to Wicca in the books would have necessitated keeping the stories within Wiccan structures and strictures. How does that allow for things like that insane broomstick airborne murder-lacrosse-soccer game (quidditch)? This series, after all, is fantasy, stories of the fantastical and impossible, not of fact and the concrete. Get real, Laura. I mean, seriously.

Both my kids read these books, and I think they're great at teaching lessons. They teach the importance of considering options and making choices, and how you have to live with the choices you have made. They teach the value of friendship, and the pitfalls and true evil of judgmentalism, elitism, and racism. They teach the value of knowledge, and demonstrate how the application of knowledge can have immediately positive effect.

Yes, there's evil and danger in these books, but then again look at the Bible. (I have to make the assumption that Mrs. Mallory is a devout evangelical Christian. After all, I don't remember any instances in which a Hindu or a Rastafarian has jumped up and down and complained about reading choices available to American schoolchildren.) The Bible is packed full of good and evil, spirits, angels, the Holy Ghost himself, the netherworld, etc. The very cosmology of all religions, Christianity included, is packed with a huge and complex panoply of levels of existence, the real and the spiritual, the interaction between the two, and of course, the battle between Good and Evil. Is this what her problem is? She says it's veiled indoctrination into Wicca, but then again, there's nothing in these books that can be construed as an effort to make children anti-Christian--pagan!--spiritualists. Do kids sometimes wish they live in the Harry Potter world so they could partake of its wonder and majesty, the adventure and the danger? Sure they do. I read every single James Bond novel I could get my hands on by the time I was 13, and I wished with all of my might that I could be him and do what he does/did. But here I am at 43, and I'm not a British secret service agent, something that is an awful lot more likely to happen than me becoming a wand-slinging warlock. Reality tends to intrude on these kinds of things, after all.

I also had my share of Bible indoctrination when I was a kid, until I started to make up my own mind, and come to my own conclusions about things. And many were the times when I wished I could live in the fantasy world of the Bible. I wanted to see the Garden of Eden, see the tree, hear the snake make its devilish pitch. I wish I could be there to see a sea part for straggling former slaves, and to see it smash down on the pursuing enemy. I'd love to see the entire world flooded, with nothing but a ragtag family and the million-billion species of the Earth crowded inside a big ol' wodden ship. I'd love to see the walls come down, the food from the skies, the plagues of all shapes and sizes, the darkness at noon, all of the miracles and fantastical events of the Bible with my own eyes, for the adventure, the majesty, the wonder, and especially to make real to me what is clear now is pure myth enlarged by the primal human fear/denial of death.

So, Laura Mallory, go back to doing something that actually directly benefits your kids and your family. I'm sure there are at least a couple of things you could be doing that aren't being done. Then, if absolutely everything else is done and taken care of that could help them out, then you have my permission to just poop all over Harry Potter and that fantasy-world. But then again, how is this helping out your family, the ones who have to live in public with the ramifications of your outspoken, everyone-must-have-the-same-ideology-and-religion-as-me idiocy?