QUILLBLOG

Sizing up Rowling, part 1

In J.K. Rowling backlash news this week, some Harvard students are apparently upset at plans to have Harry Potter’s creator deliver the school’s commencement address next month, according to a Scotsman article.

Adam Goldenberg, a Canadian student who writes for the Harvard Crimson, the daily newspaper at the university, said: “Our commencement speaker tricked parents into letting their kids read books filled with sex, murder, and homosexual role models.

“Harvard seniors have every right to demand a Harvard-calibre speaker. Harry Potter – and JK Rowling – is just a flash in the pan. Writing bedtime stories is lame – just ask Tolkien and CS Lewis. The class of 2008 has been royally screwed by Harvard. A petty pop culture personality of questionable permanence will send us on our merry way, while figures of real substance wait in the wings.”

A real charmer, eh? Doing Canada proud and all that.

Hang on a second, though – that quote is actually from a blog entry in which Goldenberg satirizes the anti-Rowling brigade. That should be clear enough from the Tolkien and Lewis references, but it seems lost on Scotsman writer Tristan Stewart-Robertson.

Goldenberg’s blog post also notes, “Last year’s speaker, Bill Gates, waxed so poetic about ‘appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity,’ that hundreds of graduates quit the lucrative jobs awaiting them on Wall Street and set off to change the world.” An obvious bit of sarcasm that, again, wasn’t quite obvious enough for the Scotsman‘s Stewart-Robertson, who writes, “Last year’s words of wisdom to graduates, from Microsoft boss Bill Gates, reportedly inspired a large number of students to opt for charitable work rather than Wall Street firms.” Sheesh.