Will JK Rowling register as a potential pedophile to promote Harry Potter? Doubtful

Would Twain have registered to visit Brit schools?

Carnalnation.com ran a story yesterday with J.K. Rowling in the headline. That’s why I clicked on it. I have loathed her since she and her publisher launched that juggernaut last fall in which a gormless ninny of a judge in New York City declared that she could prevent her biggest fan from publishing a concordance to her works. He didn’t plagiarize, he didn’t claim to have invented anything; he simply wanted to write a sort of roadmap to her imaginary world for all the other fans to use. If anything, it would enhance her following and her already magnificent fortune. Rowling displayed enormous greed and even larger personal hubris during the trial, and I vowed never to enrich her again by seeing a Harry Potter movie or buying anything she ever writes. So, needless to say, I was attracted by the headline “J.K. Rowling Must Register as a Potential Pedophile” when it popped up.

The headline is not misleading, because the information to which it refers is every bit as horrific as Ms. Rowling’s dip into the dark side to destroy a penniless fan; it concerns a new British law under which any author (or musician or artist, or anyone) who gives speeches or seminars or master classes in schools must register as a “potential pedophile.” This is all part of the oh-so-quaintly British Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), and the authors -- who generally donate their appearances to introduce children to literature -- must register as of October 12, 2009.

Excuse me!?! This idiotic pandering to a public full of terror that any of their children may be harmed by an outsider (with not a scintilla of fear that any might be harmed in the home, where most children are, in fact, harmed) is mindless at best, and madness most certainly. It might very well spell the death knell of English jurisprudence, where a presumption of innocence rather than guilt (the opposite of the French system) was first developed; this concept has served as the underpinning for legal systems, including that of the United States and other civilized nations, for centuries.

In addition, the mere semantics of agreeing that one is a "potential pedophile" is frightful. Why not ask everyone who has ever used credit if they are a "potential bankrupt" or even a "potential thief"? After all, they may get overextended and lord knows what they might do about it.

Fortunately, many British writers of children’s literature have already decided to boycott schools. According to the carnalnation report, “Anne Fine, the former Children's Laureate for the U.K. and author of over 50 children's books, labeled the requirement ‘government idiocy.’ Further, she said that on the day it becomes mandatory to declare herself a “potential pedophile,” she will simply work only in foreign schools, carnalnation reported. Britain’s loss may well be France’s gain, or even ours if Fine likes to travel.

Carnalnation quoted popular children's author Phillip Pullman concerning the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS): "This reinforces the culture of suspicion, fear and mistrust that underlies a great deal of present-day society. It teaches children that they should regard every adult as a potential murderer or rapist." What a rotten thing to teach the innocent. It’s fine to watch out for them, even to tell them to beware of strangers. But making authors of children’s literature into pariahs? If this doesn’t hasten the children’s loss of innocence (which they have for a short enough time these days), I can’t imagine what will.

Maybe the British public could organize an action group on the order of MADD. They could call it Mothers Against Potential Pedophiles, or MAPP. Maybe they could arrest anyone whose literary value rises above a ridiculously low limit, just as MADD had convinced police to do with drivers. Maybe authors of comic books could be excepted, but if a person had written a pop-up story book, it could be a first offense. For a young adult book, possibly a potential pedophile would earn so many demerits that he or she could be carted off to jail right away.

It is apparent that the "sky is falling" folks have finally convinced saner people to be so fearful that they cannot invite even beloved children’s authors to a school, where teachers, parents, staff members and in some cases, security guards or police are present, without raising the bogeyman of child molestation. Hint: Most child molestation occurs at home, and certainly not in front of dozens of responsible adults.

The Brits are acting a bit like bona fide whack jobs, in fact, and not just the lovable bumblers of Monty Python and Fawlty Towers and such things. Still, I can envision a Monty Python segment in which citizens are invited to choose their “potential.” If they have no stomach for being a “potential pedophile,” perhaps they could choose to be a “potential crosswalk violator” or a “potential drunk driver” or a potential “inland revenue cheat’? (Inland Revenue is like our IRS.)

Maybe Ms. Rowling could register as a “potential legal system abuser.” Oh, right. It wasn’t the British legal system she abused; it was ours.

Late news: During the New York trial, it was suggested Ms. Rowling might have modeled the character, Harry Potter on a similar character named Larry Potter, invented by a relatively little-known U.S. author several years earlier. Rowling claimed not to have read the Larry Potter book. Now, in a reaction to a suit filed in England by the estate of a British author claiming plagiarism, Rowling once again denies knowledge of an earlier, but amazingly similar, work. Interesting, an author who doesn't read. One has to wonder, though; the literary agent for the earlier book was also Ms. Rowling's literary agent. And there's no such thing in the universe, if you ask metaphysicians, as coincidence.