I just flat-out don't believe that this quote is real:
“Hermione is my favourite, because she’s smart and has a kitty. Jesus died because he was weak and stupid.”
- 6-yr-old Jessica Lehman
Of course, my skepticism didn't prevent me from laughing like a freak.
I think this has less to do with Harry Potter than with some really scary trend occuring in India.
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/19/india.beheading.reut/index.html
Posted by: bingsy | 03 April 2006 at 12:59 PM
GAH. That's horrible.
Posted by: Leila | 03 April 2006 at 01:03 PM
Oh, sweet Jesus.
Posted by: Jordan | 03 April 2006 at 01:16 PM
That quote is directly from "the Onion," years ago.
Posted by: | 03 April 2006 at 08:36 PM
AWESOME. See how smart I am? I KNEW it couldn't be real.
So that news article was unknowingly quoting The Onion? Oh, joyous day. That just made my morning. Thanks.
Looks like the site took the article down, so the must've realized that they screwed up. Ha.
Posted by: Leila | 04 April 2006 at 06:36 AM
The Onion article link:
http://web.archive.org/web/20000815214418/http://www.theonion.com/onion3625/harry_potter.html
Posted by: Chrissy | 04 April 2006 at 08:33 AM
As far as I can tell, there has been no retraction or explanation -- they just took the article down. From what I remember (God, it was just yesterday, which is horrifying -- what has happened to my brain?), there were three quotes -- all of them are posted either at Snopes or at Truth or Fiction -- used as a lead-in to a news article about the Catholic Church having issues with Harry Potter. In India. It was all very strange.
I suspect it may have been a case of "Reporter Does Research on the Internet and Doesn't Do Any Factchecking". Like, Googling "Harry Potter Satanism" and cut/pasting the first available quotes. Yeesh.
(Thanks, Chrissy, for the links.)
You can still read a tiny snippet of the article at Google.
Posted by: Leila | 04 April 2006 at 08:50 AM