Trashing Dumbledore

It was bad enough when the stately Dumbledore of the first Harry Potter movie was replaced by the fussy, disheveled one of the later flicks. It was worse when J.K. Rowling’s later books became tedious, over-written lessons in how not to write fiction: full of crutch adverbs, confusing parenthetical phrases and always dependent on final-chapter explanations. Now the poor woman, who was recently photographed displaying her wares like a Hollywood tart, wants us to believe that Dumbledore was a closeted gay. Fortunately–unlike the completely unnecessary F-word she sullied the final book with–there’s no conclusive sign of the old wizard’s sexual preferences in the story. So who cares what she left out? The Harry Potter tales belong to everyone now. They aren’t hers to muddy anymore.