If this Graeme Whiting had just stuck with being generally dismissive of Game of Thrones, he’d have been fine. I mean: the statement “I’m not going to let my nine year old watch GoT” is an absolutely uncontroversial opinion. Virtually nobody reading this is going to go Oh, sure, it’d be a fun bonding experience for the family. And I figure that not letting my kids read the GoT books until puberty teaches them how to successfully hide things from me is likewise a perfectly valid parenting choice. So this Whiting guy was actually not in a bad rhetorical place, if he had just been smart enough to realize it.
But nooooo. Dude had to go after JRR Tolkien and Terry Pratchett. Because that’s smart to do, on the Internet.
this person is upset that the “deeply insensitive” lord of the rings can be bought “without a special license” lol https://t.co/3PbTAAEEK5
— Sarah McLaughlin (@sarahemclaugh) May 9, 2016
I need hardly say this, but I’ll say it anyway: if there is evil in a Terry Pratchett novel, it’s because you brought it in with you. And that… OK, look, that Whiting guy clearly never read any Tolkien, all right? Which is bizarre, because he’s British and I assumed that they make you read those books over there, but that may just be me ugly-Americaning it.
There are days when you have to wonder whether some people have allergies to fun.
This is a very scary time. I had friends on FB lamenting how transphobic the Life of Brian “I want to be a woman” scene was. They found it funny, but couldn’t allow themselves to laugh without guilt.
Repent, SINNER, and be baptized, for the end is near!
Your fun is wrong.
Wrongfans having wrongfun! 😉
Stop puppy related sadness!
Deeply insensitive LotR?
To whom? Disembodied spirits of pure malice? Wraiths? Orcs? Horses broken to the service of evil who get drowned?
.
.
Okay that one…look, those were bad horses, they joined a street gang and would go around tagging innocent country roads. Not good horsies at all.
I presume it has something to do with being openly theist. I’m sure he’d say much the same about The Chronicles of Narnia.
I’m also sure that he’s a fool.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” — Albert Einstein
“… contain deeply insensitive and addictive material which I am certain encourages difficult behaviour in children; yet they can be bought without a special licence …”
Fortunately, like all totalitarian censors, he is immune to the degrading influences of these “un-sensitive” books while he reads them to determine which other people should be granted licenses to read them. Oh, he hasn’t actually read those books? Well, that demonstrates how superior he is – he just knows!!
“Children are innocent and pure at the same time …”
And because they are innocent and lack the ability to recognize evil, children are capable of great cruelty and harm. Better they should learn to recognize evil by reading a book than by picking it up on the street.
Mr Whiting says he stands for the ‘old-fashioned values of traditional literature’ rather than the modern ‘dark, demonic literature’ which could warp children’s subconscious minds.
Thus spake someone who apparently is unfamiliar with the ‘traditional literature’ of the Brothers Grimm. Or the Old Testament, the works of Shakespeare, Dante’s Inferno, and The Iliad, for that matter. And for other reading material that could warp children’s subconscious minds, how about the “World News” section of The Telegraph?