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15 thoughts on If Bill O’Reilly didn’t exist, we’d have to make him up.

  1. As I said over at TP, I love how O’Reilly says “I don’t know anything about this Harry Potter stuff”–then proceeds to run his mouth.

    Sums him up, totally.

  3. The cynic in me does not see this announcement as progressive so much as capitalist, which suits me fine. Here’s how I see it:

    1. Rowland makes announcement, gets internet newsburst.
    2. Fan fic goes FUBAR, replete with Dumbledore listening to the Village People, Pet Shop Boys, etc.
    3. Wingnuts do their part to promote the marketing effort, calling down fire on Rowland and all of Britain, fires miss, hit Southern California wingnut heartland instead.
    4. James Dobson organizes meaningless boycott of Dumbledore, redundant to current wingnut boycott of all things Rowling. Makes sure to spell Dumbledore correctly in press releases.
    5. Blowback causes sale of millions of Dumbledore tchotchkes.
    6. Rowling cashes mother of all royalty checks, pays 55% of check to Inland Revenue in London and buys Albania with the rest.

    All’s well.

  4. good gods. if i hear one more mention by BO of ‘the gay agenda’ ~ i’m gonna send him one. it basically involves my heel to his head. *grr*

  5. Wait, ha ha, there’s a transcript on the page. I should have actually clicked the link.

    Pet Shop Boys are gay somehow? (I don’t know. I’m out of touch on the things, it seems. I remember the day I found out how gay the Village People were and suddenly it all made SO MUCH SENSE.)

  7. “The cynic in me does not see this announcement as progressive so much as capitalist, which suits me fine.”

    She’s apparently been telling the folks making the movies that he was gay for a while. Making an official announcement doesn’t seem like such a huge honking deal if she’s been scribbling it on screenplay drafts for years. Any excuse to freak out about any hint of gay-positivity in popular media, though.

  8. I have the very unpopular opinion that all she did was admit to a long-standing form of literary bias. Portraying queer characters and relationships by muting them under literary ambiguity and subtext is a grand old tradition of English literature. I’m willing to give Rowling a pat on the back for pissing of O’Reilly, but not for closeting a character in the text, (no matter how much one might choose to rationalize it as an artistic choice.)

  10. zuzu: Well, I’m not really talking about a “sex life.” It’s just that it seems that a central theme of the novels is Potter and Co. are paying for the relationship problems of the previous generation. As an example, she clearly establishes the mutual relationship of Hagrid’s parents, in order to set up Hagrid’s romantic downfall. The sexuality of young Snape becomes a critical clue to adult Snape’s character. So here we have a relationship that is detailed in the novel that, at least in Rowling’s view involved considerable same-sex attraction, but is portrayed to minimize that attraction.

    Of course, it can be argued reasonably from the logic of the novels that Dumbledore as a very secretive individual was so circumspect and careful that even when that relationship is investigated after his death, no clue existed as to his feelings. But that argument misses the fact that Rowling designed the logic of the novels. And just as we know about Turing and G.H. Hardy, it doesn’t seem outrageous that a critical obituary might discuss this.

  11. O’REILLY: Of any of them. Although those wizards, I’m very very suspicious about what they’re doing in their spare time.

    Hehehe. Ya know what they are doing in their spare time?

    It’s called fanfiction. 😀

  12. Sexists like O’Reilly should know by now. Women can’t be “provocateurs.”

    They’re “provocateuses.”

    And I thought I had trouble with gender in French.

  13. O’REILLY: Of any of them. Although those wizards, I’m very very suspicious about what they’re doing in their spare time.

    Umm, Bill — these are *fictional characters.*

    They don’t *have* “spare time.”

    Marroon…

  14. I cannot listen to Bill O’Dumbass, I’m sorry. I’m glad there was a partial transcript…I only get furious when I read him…when I watch him I am liable to start screaming.

    I also don’t read the Potter books, but I’m pretty sure I won’t catch TEH GHEY from any books.

    “Clustering gays” around kids? Wha? There are gay splinter cells circling our little boys, just awaiting the GaySignal (undoubtedly a pink searchlight with a triangle painted on it) to pounce on the kiddies with hair product and fantastic shoes, thus ruining their parade-watching experience?

    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I HATE Bill O’Reilly.

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