As you might have heard, J.K. Rowling published a new novel last week...Harry Potter and the Goblet of Secrets!

No, sorry, that's not it.

It's Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Fiery Phoenix!

No, no...that's not it either.

Whatever. There's a new Harry Potter book, and they printed 8.5 million hardcover copies.

Eight-point-five million. That's enough to supply a hardcover copy to 1 out of 4 English-speaking children on the planet.

They'll already sold most of them, and you know they'll every one remaining.

Just as you know there will be, as July follows June, a new surge of objections filed with American libraries by parents -- parents with nothing better to do than complain that J.K. Rowling is proselytizing their children to become witches and sorcerers. Parents trying, in other words, to censor Harry Potter.

According to the American Library Association, for the last four years in a row Harry Potter has been more frequently "challenged" than any other books on their shelves-- and for there wasn't even a new one for two of those years.

Facts like that appall and depress me. Facts like that are a reminder that there are plenty of scared, censorious people in this country who aren't so different from the scared, censorious people in those pesky Islamic countries with authoritarian regimes.

Such as Egypt. In Egypt, there's a national film censorship board. And Egypt's censorship board just banned The Matrix Reloaded.

CLIP: Matrix Reloaded

The censors objected to the fact that the movie "explicitly handles the issue of existence and creation." Other critics in Egypt have objected to its "Zionist ideas."

Really? I'm not sure they saw the same movie I did.

CLIP: Matrix Reloaded

Now, I'll agree that The Matrix Reloaded sucked.

But will showing it in Egypt, as the government claims, "cause troubles and harm social peace"?

When will the Egyptian cultural bureaucrats realize that unfettered free expression in the long run promotes social peace?

Isn't that the American way we want the countries of the Middle East to emulate?

Yes -- although in Iraq, the American way so far is turning out to be something quite different.

I understand that things are horribly volatile in Iraq right now, and I'm loath to second-guess the Americans on the ground. But it appalls and depresses me when I read how our representatives are controlling that country's press.

Like ordering the new American-funded state broadcasting system to get rid of man-on-the-street interviews in its news programs, because they were turning out to be too anti-American.

And like the US Army taking control of the only TV station in the city of Mosul because of its "unbalanced" news coverage. And then relieving a US army major of her duties after she argued that the move violated American principles of free speech.

And by the way? After the in the Wall Street Journal broke this story last month and the Washington Post ran a brief follow-up the next day, why did this rather amazing story simply disappear from the American media conversation?

I hope that the answer is not that our own media are practicing what amounts to self-censorship.

That possibility is almost too appalling and depressing to contemplate.

About Kurt Andersen

Email Kurt Andersen

Commentary Archives