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Do pedophiles like Harry Potter or Ron Weasley better?
8/10/05
by Clay

Less than a month ago after an initial print run of roughly six billion the entire world purchased the sixth volume of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Halfblood Prince. Many of these Potter adherents spent the witching hour rushing around in quidditch jerseys with awkward lightning scars on their foreheads to be among the first to purchase the new book. Among these losers was none other than the deadlyhippos own Shaw¹. (In the interests of full disclosure, I purchased my copy of the fifth Harry Potter at midnight.) Basically the entire world loves Harry Potter. Lost amidst the communal joy, fifteen thousand and fifty-one associated press articles covering the attendant joy, and J.K. Rowling's turn as Scrooge McDuck swimming amid her newly minted millions, was this question: Isn't the Harry Potter release night the equivalent of the Super Bowl for pedophiles?

Where else could they go to see more kids at once?² This is the heterosexual male equivalent of the spring break wet t-shirt contests³. Has anyone even thought about the danger? And if there isn't any legitimate danger, how many emails would it take being sent on behalf of a fictional group called Pedophiles who love Harry Potter ("PWLHP") to turn Harry Potter book night into the Salem witch trials? As if grown men like Shaw and myself didn't feel bad enough showing up at midnight without a kid to purchase our copies of the book, imagine the suspicious gazes we'd receive in the wake of PWLHP. At the very least Shaw would definitely have to stop wearing his trenchcoat. And this doesn't even consider what might happen if the terrorists formed a reading group called Terrorists who love Harry Potter ("TWLHP"). Then there would have to be metal detectors and x-ray machines at the entrance to bookstores. If the pedophiles played this right maybe they could become the screeners. The end result would be mothers everywhere tearing out their hair and instead of taking their kids to buy the new Harry Potter the parents would keep them safe at home and suggest they buy the book at Amazon. The kids would then go online and spend the night looking at porn. Right now astute readers everywhere are thinking, "Clay is engaging in hyperbole now." But this is no hyperbole because even terrorists love Harry Potter. In fact, many of them are reading the books in our terrorist base on Guantanamo in Cuba. (See article here).

And a few terrorists have even requested whether or not they can see the movie. I'm going out on a limb and saying they won't like Severus Snape or Draco Malfoy either.

Taking everything a step further, would most pedophiles prefer Harry Potter or Ron Weasley? My feeling is that Ron Weasley has to be the pick here because he has red hair and he does a better surprised face than Harry Potter. On the other hand Harry Potter might be the pick because as the star of the series he has more cachet and presumably could engender more street cred among other pedophiles. Plus he has a lightning bolt scar which would make a challenging bullseye. This is such a tough call, I'm going to leave it up to the readership. If everyone puts on their pedophile caps I feel like we can come up with the solution. Until then keep counting down the days until Volume 7 comes out. Or as the pedophiles call it, Super Bowl VII.

1. Shaw would like to make it clear that, as webmaster, and the only one that is even QUALIFIED to be webmaster (Clay once called Shaw in college--this is no joke--to ask Shaw how he could, "move a whole bunch of text from one Word file to another," to which Shaw responded, "just 'cut and paste' it," and Clay actually asked Shaw to come over and help him do this after Shaw's instructions to "highlight the text and then press [ctrl] + C" proved too demanding for Clay's menial cotton-picking upbringing), it is generally unappreciated when columnists insult him in the text of his column. Thus Shaw must dutifully correct Clay's (false) assertion that Shaw was "one of the losers" waiting for the new Harry Potter book at midnight. This is not the case. As it happens, Harry Potter day fell this year on Shaw's birthday, so Shaw was otherwise occupied the night before at midnight, and did not purchase the book until the next afternoon. Note that this does not imply Shaw is not a loser; in fact perhaps Shaw should also mention in the interest of full disclosure that while he was occupied the evening before the book came out, he did stay up all night after buying the book on his birthday to read it, fell asleep in the middle and, undaunted by his failure to finish it the same night, awoke early the next morning to finish it by noon the next day. And he may or may not actually own a Quidditch Jersey that may or may not be so small that it makes him look like Tony Siragusa raided Calista Flockhart's closet.

2. If you immediately thought of either the zoo or Disneyworld this means you are a pedophile, And that you sicken me.

3 . Minus, of course, the wet t-shirts and adolesence.

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