JK Rowling denied top US honour

[DanDeFool]

I personally wouldn't bestow a pop fiction writer with any kind of national honor. John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath', for instance, did a lot to call attention to the plight of poor farmers affected by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. As for JK, I think the billions of dollars she got by selling a copy of her books to everyone and their dog and licensing her works into an extremely lucrative movie series and whole range of novelty products is reward enough.

Still, to say that Rowling's books "promoted sorcery" is sheer foolishness, and this story goes to show how ignorant Christians will freak out about anything as long as their 2000 year-old anthology of cave scribblings tells them they should (and George W. Bush's administration represents nothing if not ignorance and Christianity).

 

[Bored Tomatoe]

Oh wow, I'm scared that these people are in high authority...

 

[Megawizard]

"The award acknowledges contributions to US national interest, world peace or cultural endeavours."

I fail to see how she did any of those. She wrote a frickin' fantasy story.

 

[DemonI81]

This is one of the MANY problems with the US and why I hate living in the US.
Church and State are supposed to be separate, yet our money mentions God, there's religious things in every court, the Presidents speak about religious beliefs constantly, etc...
What's next? Deny a director an award because he "encouraged fighting giant, evil robots"?

 

[Davey Woo]

Encouraging Witchcraft, and getting kids to run around with sticks shouting made up latin sounding phrases at each other are two completely different things in my opinion.

 

[ratchet573]

How the fuck does that make sense? Giving the honor to a war hero sure, but somebody who wrote a series of mediocre children's novels? Next thing we know Stephenie Meyer will be given the honor and Bush will stand up and say "They turned girls into little emos" and everything will be settled.

Fuck you JK Rowling. If we were to give our highest award to an author, why not someone with some form of talent?

 

[Milenkov]

this thread had me "J.K. Rofling."
seriously though, I don't think a medal should be such a problem when you're fucking rich, just buy one off ebay or something.

 

[Dudemeister]

I really wanted to go on a rant here but I'm actually speechless that such a group of complete retards were chosen to lead the US FUCKING TWICE!
While wer're at it, why don't we BURN THE WITCH, she's a threat to our children!
God, Republicans must really love Al Qaeda because they sure are going out of their way to make Terrorism look like a good idea.

 

[akmarksman]

What did J.K. Rowling do that was worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom? She wrote some books that got kids reading, whoopdee doo. Were their alleged reasons for denying it stupid? Yes. Did she deserve it? No. Next you'll be wanting to give one to the lady who wrote the Twilight books.

And Ted Kennedy? Seriously? Yeah, he totally deserved one for crashing his car and leaving a woman to die. The man was hardly the saint that everyone is remembering him as.

I'd like to quote this poster for friggin' TRUTH..

 

[Shynobee]

It seems that a lot of you have focused on the issue that she was up for an award in the first place. Well honestly, if you have managed to overlook the "encouraged witchcraft" part then I may have to spell out the main issue here:

a) Do you think the people responsible in taking away her honour had a valid claim by saying "she encouraged witchcraft" in her books.

b) Even if she was encouraging witchcraft (by some stretch) is it justifiable to deny someone of an honour/award because of their beliefs.

Or you know, you all can continue discussing the fact that she was not worthy of the award in the first place.

Or, we could, you know, discuss whether or not this guy even is telling the truth. It wouldn't be the first time someone's "embellished" an auto biography for sensational reasons.

 

[lizards]

What did J.K. Rowling do that was worthy of the Presidential Medal of Freedom? She wrote some books that got kids reading, whoopdee doo. Were their alleged reasons for denying it stupid? Yes. Did she deserve it? No. Next you'll be wanting to give one to the lady who wrote the Twilight books.

And Ted Kennedy? Seriously? Yeah, he totally deserved one for crashing his car and leaving a woman to die. The man was hardly the saint that everyone is remembering him as.

Exactly. She got kids reading. Seeing how most of our kids are dumbasses, that's good. And Ted was pro-healthcare. So, he's good too.

Please, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter got kids reading too, you want to give those people a medal?

Ted didn't really seem to 'care' about the health of Mary Jo Kopechne did he? The man may as well have been a murderer.

im not even going to start on this so i wont

THIS is why democracy sucks

we get fucking retarded ass people running the government

 

[Kaboose the Moose]

It seems that a lot of you have focused on the issue that she was up for an award in the first place. Well honestly, if you have managed to overlook the "encouraged witchcraft" part then I may have to spell out the main issue here:

a) Do you think the people responsible in taking away her honour had a valid claim by saying "she encouraged witchcraft" in her books.

b) Even if she was encouraging witchcraft (by some stretch) is it justifiable to deny someone of an honour/award because of their beliefs.

Or you know, you all can continue discussing the fact that she was not worthy of the award in the first place.

Or, we could, you know, discuss whether or not this guy even is telling the truth. It wouldn't be the first time someone's "embellished" an auto biography for sensational reasons.

Sure!. Do you have anything to prove your point though or are you just saying?.

 

[Cakes]

These are the people that argue that the bible should be in public schools, because religion is already there via Harry Potter, which is apparently Wicca I guess? Fuck god damn I hate these people.

 

[Fbuh]

I honestly don't think she deserves the award becasue she's only an author. People deserve medals for acts of bravery or for saving the nation, not because they write mediocre children's fantasy.

As to the promoting witchcraft thing, what do you expect from remnants of the Bush administration?

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

So there's people who wer conected to the bush admin who can't differentiate fact from fiction? That actually explains a lot.

 

[bushwhacker2k]

Why would she have been offered this medal in the first place? That's my big question...

Anyways, it's pretty damn clear there are some retarded chimpanzees in charge of many of the big corporations in the world... when are we going to solve this problem? I'll get started. *Heads to the batman store for anti-monkey repellant*

 

[Sightless Wisdom]

If it wasn't J.K Rowling, I might care about the witch-craft issue. But seeing as it is and like many of said, she doesn't deserve the award anyway, I don't.

 

[bilkobob]

[Source: BBC News [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8282356.stm]]

Harry Potter author JK Rowling missed out on a top honour because some US politicians believed she "encouraged witchcraft", it has been claimed.

Matt Latimer, former speech writer for President George W Bush, said that some members of his administration believed her books promoted sorcery.

As a result, she was never presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The claims appear in Latimer's new book called Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor.

He wrote that "narrow thinking" led White House officials to object to giving Rowling the civilian honour.

The award acknowledges contributions to US national interest, world peace or cultural endeavours.

Past literary recipients of the award include John Steinbeck and Harper Lee.

Others denied the privilege under the Bush administration included Senator Edward Kennedy, who died in August this year.

Latimer claimed, in his book, that the veteran politician and health care activist was excluded because he was deemed to be too liberal.

Looking back at the Bush era, I can't believe that all this happened only a few years ago. To accuse someone of "sorcery/witchcraft" is really keeping with the times, assuming of course we are in the middle ages.

I cannot believe that this was actually a valid concern amongst US politicians. How on earth did they manage to get elected?

Edit:

It seems that a lot of you have focused on the issue that she was up for an award in the first place. Well honestly, if you have managed to overlook the "encouraged witchcraft" part then I may have to spell out the main issue here:

a) Do you think the people responsible in taking away her honour had a valid claim by saying "she encouraged witchcraft" in her books.

b) Even if she was encouraging witchcraft (by some stretch) is it justifiable to deny someone of an honour/award because of their beliefs.

Or you know, you all can continue discussing the fact that she was not worthy of the award in the first place.

I think the issue is that just because someone wrote it in some sort of expose' doesn't mean it's true. I think it's entirely possible that Mr. Latimer is a liar. He did work in Washington, after all.

As far as her having her award "taken away", did she really? She didn't meet the criteria for the award anyway. You listed a description of the qualifications for the award, and she doesn't meet a single one of them.

I'm not a Rowling hater. I've read all the Potter books at least twice each and I've seen all the movies. That being said, this guy is clearly saying this to sell books. There's absolutely no reason to believe this happened, and even if it did the only result was that someone who didn't deserve a particular award failed to receive it.

Bush sucked, but some of the things that are being "revealed" about him lately are hyperbole. Someone could write that he sacrificed babies to Jesus, then ate their hearts to gain their strenght so he could fight against "abortioners", and a lot of people would believe it. Most importantly, though, even more people would buy the book.

A lot of people in here are too willing to believe everything they hear or see without doing any sort of research. Now, I don't care about Bush one way or the other but when these tell-all books come out, well, I just have trouble believing their veracity. Oftentimes they stretch the truth or flat out lie to improve book sales or get a bit of comeuppance as former disgruntled employees; or it's just the author's way to make a name for themselves. Perhaps there are other reasons, but usually those reasons for writing them are for less than savory purposes.

Here is a picture of Mrs. Bush reading Harry Potter and she is even quoted on her website for promoting the book for children literacy programs. Sorry, but I am of the opinion that many Excapists practice schadenfreude with their knee-jerk reactions and wishful thinking.