JK Rowling is "fatphobic" too, fat writer wants her fat kids to change how they consume... her books

[Alben Barkley]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/books/harry-potter-has-a-problem-with-fat-characters-so-i-m-changing-how-my-kids-consume-the-series/ar-AAPYHzd?ocid=msedgntp

I wish I could ignore the blatant fat phobia in "Harry Potter." But as a fat millennial mom, I can't pass that harmful language to my kids.

"Harry Potter" is part of my identity, so I introduced the books to my children before they were even old enough to appreciate them.

But when J.K. Rowling, the series' controversial author, started spreading transphobic beliefs online in 2020, the magic bubble around "Harry Potter" popped.

As I figured out my own relationship with the series moving forward, I knew I had to change how I shared "Harry Potter" with my kids.

After being disillusioned by Rowling's transphobic remarks, I began noticing places where "Harry Potter" fell short - including the books' fat-shaming.

I have a history of an eating disorder that I'm dealing with in therapy as an adult, and I want my kids to be free of diet culture. It's hard to pass on that lesson when I'm reading them a book series where Rowling repeatedly puts down her fat characters.

Dudley and Vernon Dursley are vicious bullies. Rubeus Hagrid is overemotional and dumb. Molly Weasley is controlling and overprotective.

On the very first page of the first book, Vernon is introduced as a villainous, "beefy man."

Hagrid, one of the "good guys," is later described as "simply too big to be allowed" because he's a half-giant, not a normal wizard. He's also regularly put down for his perceived lack of intelligence.

Noticing these fat-phobic moments changed the series for me. I don't want my children to learn to see fat characters as evil or less than...

And it goes on like that. Anyway, I just find the headline hilarious because the obvious solution would be to tell her kids to change how they "consume" FOOD, but instead we have another piece jerking off about how evil JK Rowling is since everything she has ever done must now be "reassessed" and scrutinized under a microscopic lens in light of her supposed "transphobia."

I swear, I have never been more baffled by any cultural phenomenon than the hysterical, persistent rage from parts of the left I have seen directed against Ms. Rowling over what I thought were pretty innocuous and reasonable remarks. I also have never better understood how actual witch hunts worked. I imagine it was pretty much the same kind of hysteria, just they were more likely to actually kill the "witches" they were railing against incoherently.

Also, "fatphobia" is not a thing. People shouldn't be encouraged for unhealthy lifestyle choices which harm themselves and society. They shouldn't be treated badly and bullied either, but just because some bad guys in Rowling's books were fat does not mean she encourages that crap. Good characters like Hagrid and Slughorn were described as overweight as well after all. And the point of Dudley was that he was spoiled and more than well-fed while Harry was abused and left to starve. Stop overreading into everything so you can find an excuse to paint yourself as a victim, Christ.

[Donerail]

The Harry Potter books are likely very filling (they're mostly fiber), but their poor nutritional profile means children should probably not consume them.

[HisGrace]

Had to think about which part of this was most pathetic and ultimately I think it is the phrase "Harry Potter is part of my identity".

Still I guess kudos that she's not going to let her kids eat the books after all.

[beaver2.0]

As someone that is what JK Rowling would refer to as a "beefy man", fatphobia is one of those things I have mixed feelings on.  I don't think people should go around taunting fat people mercilessly, but joking about someone having a couple extra pounds is not the worst thing in the world.  Also, it's generally not a good thing to be overweight.  Not everyone needs to look like a famine victim but most Americans would be well served by losing some weight.  This doesn't even deal with the actual article.  If"beefy man" and "simply too big to be allowed"* are the worst examples the author could come up with, these books are not offensive at all.  I don't see an evil family being gluttons as an attack on all of the hefty people of our world.  Gluttony is universally (at least in the west) considered a bad thing, but I don't interpret gluttony as saying that all overweight people is evil.  



* - Wouldn't this have more to do with the fact this man is like eight feet tall, not his weight?

[afleitch]

but just because some bad guys in Rowling's books were fat does not mean she encourages that crap. Good characters like Hagrid and Slughorn were described as overweight as well after all. And the point of Dudley was that he was spoiled and more than well-fed while Harry was abused and left to starve. Stop overreading into everything so you can find an excuse to paint yourself as a victim, Christ.

The honest truth is that her writing relies heavily on children's literary tropes. So what you've just mentioned; fatness, largeness equated with sloth and villainy is an old trope and not a very kind one. Mentioning that isn't some hysteria; there is a legit point to be made.

But we live in a world where people of a certain age made Harry Potter their entire identity and now are being retrospective about it. We're a good decade away from the last of the films. Some, who still identify with it deep down or at least their younger selves enjoying it, can be overly defensive of some of the nuances of her writing which was very much of it's time (and yes, the late 90's and early 2000's were not some progressive halcyon age.)

[Alben Barkley]

but just because some bad guys in Rowling's books were fat does not mean she encourages that crap. Good characters like Hagrid and Slughorn were described as overweight as well after all. And the point of Dudley was that he was spoiled and more than well-fed while Harry was abused and left to starve. Stop overreading into everything so you can find an excuse to paint yourself as a victim, Christ.

The honest truth is that her writing relies heavily on children's literary tropes. So what you've just mentioned; fatness, largeness equated with sloth and villainy is an old trope and not a very kind one. Mentioning that isn't some hysteria; there is a legit point to be made.

But we live in a world where people of a certain age made Harry Potter their entire identity and now are being retrospective about it. We're a good decade away from the last of the films. Some, who still identify with it deep down or at least their younger selves enjoying it, can be overly defensive of some of the nuances of her writing which was very much of it's time (and yes, the late 90's and early 2000's were not some progressive halcyon age.)

I mean, what physically happens when you are stuffed with all the junk food you want from a very young age is that you WILL get fat and are probably very spoiled. Meanwhile, if you are starved and abused from the same age, you naturally will be skinny as hell. Once again, JK Rowling has seemed to inadvertently open up the rift between cold, hard, biological reality and the social conditions certain bleeding heart leftists WISH were universally accepted DESPITE biological reality.

But really, even that is probably reading too much into it. AGAIN, multiple heroes in the series WERE presented as overweight, while most of the villains were NOT. Vernon and Dudley were really the only ones, and they were crude caricatures of a certain type of British Tory that you should know better than I do. And I think if we were both being honest, her presenting them as thin would have been far less realistic. Moreover, Dudley at least shows some surprising pathos and humanity by the end of the series, showing she clearly thought NONE of her characters were totally lacking in nuance or incapable of redemption. Hell, the climax of the whole series revolves around Harry offering said redemption to the man who literally killed his parents and divided his soul into seven parts. To say that this reading of her writing is extremely strained, uncharitable, and bad faith is a massive understatement. I just wish more people would focus less on this insane minutia they are concocting in their minds and more on the larger themes of her books, which are all very positive and empowering.

[Big Abraham]

The fat acceptance movement does far more harm than "fatphobia" ever could.

[Virginiá]

I'm never going to say that overweight people should be bullied, shamed or mocked relentlessly about their weight or diet, but I'm also never going to say that we should just pretend being fat is a completely normal and healthy thing and no one should ever bring up the negative aspects of being overweight. That's because it is objectively false. Being overweight and simply not wanting to be guilted by the constant commercials or other culture around healthy living, diets and exercise is certainly an opinion someone can have but they have no right to tell other people that they should cut out the diet talk just because it makes them feel bad for not watching what they eat. The last thing people should be doing is convincing themselves unhealthy lifestyles are in fact healthy.

I'm sure it sucks to see or hear things that occasionally remind you that you're doing certain things the wrong / unhealthy way, but people experience that all the time on a wide range of topics, and they have no right to make other people change their behavior to insulate them from it.

[parochial boy]

As far as Hagrid goes, a pretty major theme of the books was to portray quite how badly and unfairly he was treated and rejected by the rest of the wizard of world precisely because of who he was. It is precisely this sort of thing that sticks in the throats of trans activists, because such a big theme of the books was about the unfairness and cruelty directed towards people who didn’t fit in the right way - Hagrid the half giant; Hermione the muggle born; Lupin the werewolf - that when Rowling turned around and refused to extend this acceptance to trans people it seemed to undermine what lots of people had read as a very important message in the books

[Crane]

Obesity is a sign of a failing society and should be discouraged.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The honest truth is that her writing relies heavily on children's literary tropes. So what you've just mentioned; fatness, largeness equated with sloth and villainy is an old trope and not a very kind one. Mentioning that isn't some hysteria; there is a legit point to be made.

Which she has a habit of using without giving them much thought. This shows up particularly clearly in the infamous Goblins problem. Her Goblins are not conscious antisemitic archetypes and claims to the contrary are genuinely quite unfair. But antisemitic tropes and clichés are bound up in the stock creature that is the fairytale Goblin and she made no attempt to trim these aspects off before using them in her works, despite other writers (Tolkien, Garner and so on) having taken the care to do so in the past.* She has an incredibly fertile imagination and this is the source of her equally incredible commercial success, but her critical faculties are almost as underdeveloped as her sense of discipline.

_{*I.e. if the writer of a children's book published in 1937 (!) made sure that the Goblins who heavily featured were shorn of antisemitic cliches and allusions then a) we can hardly put complaints about Rowling's Goblins down to Political Correctness Gorn Mad and b) what excuse does a writer of children's books in the 1990s have for not making the same effort?}

[Alben Barkley]

As far as Hagrid goes, a pretty major theme of the books was to portray quite how badly and unfairly he was treated and rejected by the rest of the wizard of world precisely because of who he was. It is precisely this sort of thing that sticks in the throats of trans activists, because such a big theme of the books was about the unfairness and cruelty directed towards people who didn’t fit in the right way - Hagrid the half giant; Hermione the muggle born; Lupin the werewolf - that when Rowling turned around and refused to extend this acceptance to trans people it seemed to undermine what lots of people had read as a very important message in the books

...But she DIDN'T "refuse to extend this acceptance to trans people" though. That's complete nonsense. It in fact directly contradicts what she actually said, which was that she completely empathizes and accepts trans people and would march for their rights.

THAT is where the real disconnect lies, above all else I think. I am totally bewildered how anyone could actually read everything she wrote (or watch Chappelle's special all the way through for that matter) and come away with the conclusion that she is an unironic bigot. That leaves me with no choice but to conclude that most of the people raving against her have in fact NOT actually read what she wrote, and are just picking up their pitchforks and torches based on the distorted, nonsensical retelling of her words they heard from OTHER people without actually listening to what she said themselves with an open mind.

[Alben Barkley]

The honest truth is that her writing relies heavily on children's literary tropes. So what you've just mentioned; fatness, largeness equated with sloth and villainy is an old trope and not a very kind one. Mentioning that isn't some hysteria; there is a legit point to be made.

Which she has a habit of using without giving them much thought. This shows up particularly clearly in the infamous Goblins problem. Her Goblins are not conscious antisemitic archetypes and claims to the contrary are genuinely quite unfair. But antisemitic tropes and clichés are bound up in the stock creature that is the fairytale Goblin and she made no attempt to trim these aspects off before using them in her works, despite other writers (Tolkien, Garner and so on) having taken the care to do so in the past.* She has an incredibly fertile imagination and this is the source of her equally incredible commercial success, but her critical faculties are almost as underdeveloped as her sense of discipline.

_{*I.e. if the writer of a children's book published in 1937 (!) made sure that the Goblins who heavily featured were shorn of antisemitic cliches and allusions then a) we can hardly put complaints about Rowling's Goblins down to Political Correctness Gorn Mad and b) what excuse does a writer of children's books in the 1990s have for not making the same effort?}

I never thought I would see the day when someone would argue  that Tolkien was more progressive than Rowling.

I can only imagine what would happen if the arch-conservative Catholic Tolkien was still alive today and had a Twitter account. He would have been "canceled" thousands of times by now. He would if anything  attack Rowling for being far too accepting of trans people and far too open to the idea that gender is not necessarily something fixed by God before birth and intrinsically tied to biological sex.

As for the whole goblins nonsense, I really don't see how Tolkien's goblins are any more or less "anti-semitic" than Rowling's. If anything it's a far more offensive portrayal if you actually take the goblins to be representative of Jews; the "goblins" in Tolkien were really just especially mindless, bloodthirsty, and greedy Orcs.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I never thought I would see the day when someone would argue  that Tolkien was more progressive than Rowling.

I do not think that 'making a conscious effort to avoid racist tropes' has much to do with whether the writer in question is on the political Right or Left or if they are 'progressive' or not. I made no particular comment on the politics of either author.

I can only imagine what would happen if the arch-conservative Catholic Tolkien was still alive today and had a Twitter account. He would have been "canceled" thousands of times by now. He would if anything  attack Rowling for being far too accepting of trans people and far too open to the idea that gender is not necessarily something fixed by God before birth and intrinsically tied to biological sex.

Strange, conjectural fantasies about a man who died in 1973 in order to justify the behaviour of a woman who was born in 1965 are neither relevant nor useful.

As for the whole goblins nonsense, I really don't see how Tolkien's goblins are any more or less "anti-semitic" than Rowling's. If anything it's a far more offensive portrayal if you actually take the goblins to be representative of Jews; the "goblins" in Tolkien were really just especially mindless, bloodthirsty, and greedy Orcs.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of for the above drivel is that you must struggle greatly with basic reading comprehension. Therefore, I will be extremely clear so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation. The conflation of the fairytale Goblin with Jewish people was (and is) inherently antisemitic. To disentangle the fairytale Goblin from its antisemitic associations is to disentangle the fairytale Goblin from any hint of being an allegory or allusion to Jewish people; to remove any trace of antisemitic stereotype, to remove any suggestion of clichéd Jewishness in general. Tolkien's Goblins in The Hobbit are a good example of this being done successfully: Alan Garner's Svart alfar are as well. Rowling's Goblins (infamously) are not. Again, the issue is not that she deliberately set out to write antisemitic archetypes: she did not! But she made no attempt to address the matter, and this lack of thought is typical of her less than cerebral handling of the stock tropes of fairytale and fantasy.

[If my soul was made of stone]

I can only imagine what would happen if the arch-conservative Catholic Tolkien was still alive today and had a Twitter account. He would have been "canceled" thousands of times by now. He would if anything  attack Rowling for being far too accepting of trans people and far too open to the idea that gender is not necessarily something fixed by God before birth and intrinsically tied to biological sex.

[John Dule]

As far as Hagrid goes, a pretty major theme of the books was to portray quite how badly and unfairly he was treated and rejected by the rest of the wizard of world precisely because of who he was. It is precisely this sort of thing that sticks in the throats of trans activists, because such a big theme of the books was about the unfairness and cruelty directed towards people who didn’t fit in the right way - Hagrid the half giant; Hermione the muggle born; Lupin the werewolf - that when Rowling turned around and refused to extend this acceptance to trans people it seemed to undermine what lots of people had read as a very important message in the books

The theme of the books is to accept people for who they are, which is not at odds with Rowling's views on trans issues.

[Alben Barkley]

I can only imagine what would happen if the arch-conservative Catholic Tolkien was still alive today and had a Twitter account. He would have been "canceled" thousands of times by now. He would if anything  attack Rowling for being far too accepting of trans people and far too open to the idea that gender is not necessarily something fixed by God before birth and intrinsically tied to biological sex.

He's not arch-conservative or Catholic.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

I can only imagine what would happen if the arch-conservative Catholic Tolkien was still alive today and had a Twitter account. He would have been "canceled" thousands of times by now. He would if anything  attack Rowling for being far too accepting of trans people and far too open to the idea that gender is not necessarily something fixed by God before birth and intrinsically tied to biological sex.

He's not arch-conservative or Catholic.

She's not saying that BRTD is either of those things, she's saying that you're talking like he would.

[Alben Barkley]

I do not think that 'making a conscious effort to avoid racist tropes' has much to do with whether the writer in question is on the political Right or Left or if they are 'progressive' or not. I made no particular comment on the politics of either author.

WHO made a "conscious effort to avoid racist tropes?" Tolkien? PROVE it! Put up or shut up! Hell, the "Orcs" of the "East" could easily be perceived as (and have extensively been argued to be) racist stereotypes of Asians and "Orientals" far more offensive than anything Rowling has ever written.

And WHERE is Rowling's apparent unconscious invoking of racist tropes? The Goblins are bankers, therefore they must be Jews??? If that's it, it says FAR more about YOU than HER!!!

Strange, conjectural fantasies about a man who died in 1973 in order to justify the behaviour of a woman who was born in 1965 are neither relevant nor useful.

I wasn't the one who brought him up as an absurd whataboutism but OK. Really nothing strange about it either, considering the clear implication of your claim (and the only way it even is relevant at all) was that Tolkien was and/or would be somehow more "woke" than Rowling, which is blatantly nonsense. If he wasn't or wouldn't be, there is ZERO reason to even bring him up! But if you're gonna point to him as an example of a righteous fantasy writer in contrast to the evil bigoted Rowling, you have a STEEP hill to climb to PROVE your claims! The fact that he died when she was eight years old shouldn't be relevant if you are going to compare them on the same level. You can't have it both ways by giving Tolkien the benefit of the doubt because he was from a different era or something (as if Catholics with his exact same views aren't widespread today, or there is any reason at all to think he would think any differently today) but roasting Rowling for not conforming to all your woke orthodoxy today. Her views are in any case FAR less removed from that orthodoxy now than Tolkien's were from the liberal/progressive orthodoxy even of his own day!

And also, I'm not doing anything to justify her behavior. I don't think she did anything that NEEDS to be justified. She did nothing wrong at all.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of for the above drivel is that you must struggle greatly with basic reading comprehension. Therefore, I will be extremely clear so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation. The conflation of the fairytale Goblin with Jewish people was (and is) inherently antisemitic. To disentangle the fairytale Goblin from its antisemitic associations is to disentangle the fairytale Goblin from any hint of being an allegory or allusion to Jewish people; to remove any trace of antisemitic stereotype, to remove any suggestion of clichéd Jewishness in general. Tolkien's Goblins in The Hobbit are a good example of this being done successfully: Alan Garner's Svart alfar are as well. Rowling's Goblins (infamously) are not. Again, the issue is not that she deliberately set out to write antisemitic archetypes: she did not! But she made no attempt to address the matter, and this lack of thought is typical of her less than cerebral handling of the stock tropes of fairytale and fantasy.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of for the above drivel is that you must struggle greatly with basic reading comprehension, AND you really love to jerk yourself off over using a lot of big words that amount to nothing of substance! Therefore, I will be extremely clear so that there is no possibility of misinterpretation: You have FAILED to even PROVE your basic assumption that there even IS an inherent "conflation of the fairytale Goblin with the Jewish people," let ALONE one that was adopted by Rowling, consciously or unconsciously. You have also FAILED to PROVE your assertion that Tolkien was so great at "disentangling" this; do you REALLY want to stand by the claim that his portrayal of "goblins" as bloodthirsty, mindless, greedy Orcs was so much more enlightened than Rowling's portrayal of them as much more intelligent and nuanced beings?

The only way this conversation even makes sense in the first place is if we assume that any time a fantasy writer references "goblins," a Jewish association is unavoidable. In that case, the evidence shows that if anything, Tolkien's portrayal of them was far worse. If the idea is supposed to be that ackshually, no he wasn't trying to reference Jews at all with his goblins BUT somehow Rowling was with hers, that's a massive reach that you have utterly FAILED to PROVE in the slightest. It's obvious that you are just taking the opportunity to smugly wax poetic about how this old far right son of British imperialism was OBVIOUSLY far SMARTER than and SUPERIOR to this self-made liberal billionaire woman. Because that's not classist or sexist at all!

Clearly, you are just reading her works in the most uncharitable light possible and his in the most charitable light possible. Utter hypocrisy and idiocy, a hell of a lot of mental gymnastics, and a complete waste of time. All that really matters is that the evidence for Rowling's "anti-semitism" is exactly as strong as the evidence for her "transphobia" or "fatphobia:" Nonexistent. (Indeed, her boldly standing up against the anti-semitic Corbynites in her party proved she was the farthest thing from an anti-semite, even long before the trans nonsense.)

And if even you concede that she didn't INTEND any sort of anti-semitism, it really just undermines the whole argument. So the conflation of Jews and goblins is anti-semitic, BUT you don't even think Rowling intended any such conflation??? How then is it even relevant??? How can one be UNINTENTIONALLY anti-semitic, and even if they were, how is that at all relevant to any other claims of any other forms of bigotry you are asserting against them???

And do you honestly expect me or anyone else to believe that Tolkien was aware of these tropes and was so sensitive and progressive that he consciously made effort to remove them back in the f--king 30s and before (even though his "goblins" could easily be read as at least as stereotypical and far nastier), but Rowling was clueless and/or insensitive enough to not bother with them? Your entire "argument," such as it is, is utterly illogical nonsense from beginning to end. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response did you come even close to anything resembling a rational thought. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

[Alben Barkley]

I can only imagine what would happen if the arch-conservative Catholic Tolkien was still alive today and had a Twitter account. He would have been "canceled" thousands of times by now. He would if anything  attack Rowling for being far too accepting of trans people and far too open to the idea that gender is not necessarily something fixed by God before birth and intrinsically tied to biological sex.

He's not arch-conservative or Catholic.

She's not saying that BRTD is either of those things, she's saying that you're talking like he would.

And? I don't care who I'm talking like as long as I'm right (which I am). Sometimes BRTD is right, pretty often in fact. So I'll take it as a compliment.

[Хahar 🤔]

The same post:

WHO made a "conscious effort to avoid racist tropes?" Tolkien? PROVE it! Put up or shut up!

The only way this conversation even makes sense in the first place is if we assume that any time a fantasy writer references "goblins," a Jewish association is unavoidable. In that case, the evidence shows that if anything, Tolkien's portrayal of them was far worse.

I wonder where the need for PROOF went.

[Devout Centrist]

At no point in your rambling, incoherent response did you come even close to anything resembling a rational thought. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

You know, there's some special irony in putting this quote at the end of five long, borderline psychotic paragraphs.

[Alben Barkley]

The same post:

WHO made a "conscious effort to avoid racist tropes?" Tolkien? PROVE it! Put up or shut up!

The only way this conversation even makes sense in the first place is if we assume that any time a fantasy writer references "goblins," a Jewish association is unavoidable. In that case, the evidence shows that if anything, Tolkien's portrayal of them was far worse.

I wonder where the need for PROOF went.

Here it is:

Tolkien described [goblins] as big, ugly creatures, "cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted." (The Hobbit Ch. 4, Pg. 73)

And anyone who has ever read The Hobbit in full knows that it goes far beyond that; Tolkien treated them like disposable, disgusting creatures of subzero worth. Ultimately, for LOTR he decided to just retcon it so that all the goblins were just Orcs -- who again, have been frequently argued to be crude racist stereotypes of "Orientals" and "the other" (i.e. anyone not a white Westerner) in general.

Note I'm not saying I AGREE with these arguments. I am just saying that any notion that JK Rowling is "problematic" in any way in comparison to Tolkien is utterly absurd.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The honest truth is that her writing relies heavily on children's literary tropes. So what you've just mentioned; fatness, largeness equated with sloth and villainy is an old trope and not a very kind one. Mentioning that isn't some hysteria; there is a legit point to be made.

Which she has a habit of using without giving them much thought. This shows up particularly clearly in the infamous Goblins problem. Her Goblins are not conscious antisemitic archetypes and claims to the contrary are genuinely quite unfair. But antisemitic tropes and clichés are bound up in the stock creature that is the fairytale Goblin and she made no attempt to trim these aspects off before using them in her works, despite other writers (Tolkien, Garner and so on) having taken the care to do so in the past.* She has an incredibly fertile imagination and this is the source of her equally incredible commercial success, but her critical faculties are almost as underdeveloped as her sense of discipline.

_{*I.e. if the writer of a children's book published in 1937 (!) made sure that the Goblins who heavily featured were shorn of antisemitic cliches and allusions then a) we can hardly put complaints about Rowling's Goblins down to Political Correctness Gorn Mad and b) what excuse does a writer of children's books in the 1990s have for not making the same effort?}

Xahar had a great comment about how while it's unlikely either one is consciously and maliciously anti-Semitic, it is kind of interesting how J. K. Rowling and George Lucas had to invent magic Jews and space Jews to fulfill stereotypical roles in their universes.

[Alben Barkley]

At no point in your rambling, incoherent response did you come even close to anything resembling a rational thought. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

You know, there's some special irony in putting this quote at the end of five long, borderline psychotic paragraphs.

"Psychotic" implies there was no coherent logic connecting my ideas together. There clearly was, whether you like it or not and whether you agree with it or not. I must admit, I did NOT like the whole condescending, smug dig that started with "The most charitable interpretation I can think of for the above drivel is that you must struggle greatly with basic reading comprehension..." Got under my skin more than it should have. So maybe I went a LITTLE overboard in knocking that bulls--t down as a result. But I really, truly wanted to utterly bury this nonsense. I notice you, for one, don't actually have even a single argument against anything I said, so you're just calling me crazy as an ad hominem because you know goddamn well I am right.