OK, WHAT HAD SHE DONE NOW?

Part 1

At a certain point in my life I have discovered political non-fiction. Now, one of my friends declared that to him it is a waste of time, because he either reads something at which he feels like spitting, and that is a total, well, waste of time, or reads something with which he agrees anyway, and he does not need that. I look at it a little differently. First of all, it is always advisable to have at least a general idea of what the enemy is up to, and the modern left is definitely the worst inside enemy of this country today; so, as much as I feel like spitting at or burning the despicable trash they call books, I always find it advisable to at least skim through them.

On the other hand we have all the books that are labeled "conservative" or "far right", even though a lot of them are neither. The people who write them come from very different backgrounds, political camps, or schools of thought. What unites them is one thing and one thing only: they refuse to toe the general party line set up by parteigenossen of what is ironically called "intellectual elite" (or, as Ann Coulter aptly called "the treason lobby").

One phenomenon I observed is that for every "right" book that comes out, there are on average at least two or three books from the "other" side shrieking denunciations (Ann Coulter usually garners at least five books calling her a bitch, but that's Ann). So, it came at no particular surprise to me that a little while after Bernard Goldberg's "100 People Who Are Screwing up America" came about I accidentally stumbled on the one called "101 People Who are Really Screwing America" by Jack Huberman. Yep, another observation is that the Shriekers do not usually bother much with creativity, but that's another story.

The blurb on the back of that literary masterpiece calls Goldberg's book "unforgivably successful" and attributes to the current author such wonderful works of courageous, almost life-threatening political dissent as "Bush-Haters Handbook" and 'Bushit!" The general format of the book also follows Goldberg's book: listing the offenders in descending numerical order, from bad to "badder" to "baddest". Yours truly was duly curious. If this book was a "shriek" response to Goldberg, who is actually more centrist than right, who are the offenders now?

I opened the book to satisfy my curiosity. Of course, I have found the "usual suspects": AIPAC, Linda Chavez, Regnery Publishing, Halliburton, SUV Buyers, The Wall Street Journal, The Discovery Institute and The Kansas State Board of Education (may G-d give them strength, but that is a different story), James Inhofe, Ann Coulter, David Horowitz, Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, The Federalist Society, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the current President and the Vice President of the United States, and even "GOD" (coming up at #77). Again, that list was not surprising. What really floored me was # 96 on this hit list. Can you guess who it was? Three tries? You are wrong. It was ... Ready? J.K. Rowling!!

Now, just for fun, I have read a lot of anti-Rowling tripe, ranging from "fundamentalist" Christians to self-proclaimed book critics. But this was the absolute corker. What had she done that was terrible enough to put her on that list? So, yours truly decided to find out, and here we are. ( to be continued)