UnNews:Harry Potter to blame for school shootings

This article is part of UnNews, your source for up-to-the-picosecond misinformation.

7 October 2006

Emma Watson working for the North Koreans on a new nuclear bomb. Not related to the story though.

LONDON, England -- Everyone is shocked and outraged over the recent series of school shootings, all of which appear to have targeted girls in particular (though the media seems to be trying hard to avoid acknowledging or investigating this fact). Some, though, are unashamed to be using these tragedies for their own political demagoguery. One case in point is Laura Mallory in the Atlanta suburb of Loganville.

Laura Mallory has been trying to argue to the Georgia Board of Education that the presence of books like the Harry Potter series is to blame for the school shootings — not directly, of course, but because they indoctrinate kids into witchcraft and this creates and atmosphere where violence is possible. Make sense? Of course not.

Referring to the recent rash of deadly assaults at schools, Mallory said books that promote evil - as she claims the Potter ones do - help foster the kind of culture where school shootings happen.

"That would not happen if students instead read the Bible", Mallory said. She added that the "books were harmful to children who are unable to differentiate between reality and fantasy". The children, she said, "try to imitate Harry Potter and cast spells on classmates."

"They're not educationally suitable and have been shown to be harmful to some kids," Mallory said. She argued that teachers do not assign other religious books like the Bible as student reading."

Source: Daily Mail

As Victoria Sweeny, an attorney representing the Gwinnett County Board of Education points out, removing all books that include references to witchcraft or characters that are witches would extend far beyond just the Harry Potter books. The two examples she cites are Macbeth and Cinderella, but that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Then there is the fact that the Harry Potter books simply aren't about Wicca as it is currently practiced. J.K Rowling researched Wiccan practices and incorporated a few elements in order to give her books a bit more of an air of reality, but she and Wicca are drawing upon the same corpus ancient traditions and stories so similarities are inevitable. They certainly aren't a sign that the books work to "indoctrinate" people into Wicca as a religion.

Even if it were, though, what would this have to do with school shootings? Did any of these people have anything to do with Wicca or witchcraft? What possible connection could there be between Harry Potter and the murders of the Amish girls in Pennsylvania? There's no connection whatsoever and that's why I say that Laura Mallory is engaging in a very unethical misuse of these tragedies for her own political purposes. She should be ashamed of herself.

Sources

• UnNews Staff "Fundamentalist Christians have been right all along about those Harry Potter books" UnNews, October 7, 2006