Witchcraft

ThinkProgress hits us with another except from former speechwriter Matt Latimer's book on the White House, which may or may not be titled I'm Not Shitting You: This Is Really What Was Going On For Eight Years. This go around he looks into the practice of awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom. You know, the award that was designed back in 1945 by Truman in order to award those who had toadied longest and hardest for his most unpopular policies and make it look like some level of success had been achieved. At least that's what I think it was for. Anyway, this bit is about why Harry Potter author JK Rowling didn't get one.

This was the same sort of narrow thinking that led people in the White House to actually object to giving the author J.K. Rowling a presidential medal because the Harry Potter books encouraged witchcraft.

This in addition to the fact that she had ladyparts, she's a foreigner, and Dick Cheney felt her novels unfairly slandered snake faced, demonic warlocks. That's right, in an office populated with hundreds of adults, the question over whether to award an intensely politicized award hinged on a serious discussion about witchcraft. And the person they were debating over wasn't Aleister Crowley. It's a shame that waterboarding, rendition, or illegal wiretaps didn't involve mystical incantations, lightning scars, or wands, otherwise we might have been able to avoid that whole bit of unpleasantness.