Harry Potter is evil?!

Funny how many netizens can be very gullible that they easily believe and take as truth even satirical jokes on the Internet. In one of the forums that I regularly visit, I was alarmed after reading a post quoting an e-mail supposedly from an American Christian organization that warns parents of Harry Potter’s effect to children. Part of the e-mail reads:

And here is dear Ashley, a 9 year old, the typical average age reader of Harry Potter: “I used to believe in what they taught us at Sunday School,” said Ashley, conjuring up an ancient spell to summon Cerebus, the three-headed hound of hell. “But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but Boring lies.”

The e-mail also quoted J.K. Rowling as saying Jesus is “weak and idiotic”:

“I think it’s absolute rubbish to protest children’s books on the grounds that they are luring children to Satan,” Rowling told a London Times reporter in a July 17, 2000 interview. “People should be praising them for that! These books guide children to an understanding that the weak, idiotic Son Of God is a living hoax who will be humiliated when the rain of fire comes, while we, his faithful servants, laugh and cavort in victory.”

I searched Google using some of the exact phrases in the quotation and do you know what I found out? The e-mail used as a basis for its claims this article from The Onion, a satirical website. According The Onion site, it “uses invented names in all its stories, except in cases when public figures are being satirized. Any other use of real names is accidental and coincidental.”

For more “urban legends” like this Harry Potter thing, visit TruthOrFiction.com.

I have a new book!
This afternoon, I bought a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring,” the first book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Huli na ko sa balita, ano?