Believe he's making a case about the development of imagination (especially in the young.. if you miss it early-on, you're probably good to go as a CPA, MBA and ultimately a Repo - in a suit at home, even.) That is at the back of his mind (?) or at least it's a corollary which can't be entirely missed.

The explicit and *visual* nature of most meeja now renders a need for imagination.. optional.
Just how Much this 24/7 barrage of visual noise has altered the possibilities (of ever becoming an authentic, educated adult?) for millions of kids?? Well, [link|http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/24/DDLSSUCRE.DTL&hw=mark+morford&sn=001&sc=1000| here's] Mark Morford's take today [contrasted with a teacher friend's gloomier take.] I believe that this not very reassuring essay is ~ related to this brouhaha, though it deals with quite more than the stunted imagination as is apt to result from pre-digested visuals, the stuff of most Action Distraction during waking hours. You lose imagination? / you lose curiosity: and then.. you could end up precisely like The Presyudent. Can't recall author of, "I've never met a man so uncurious.." - may have been someone on Moyers' show, trying to say it 'gently' (the man's a zealot/fool.)

So then.. if that is the root of his complaint in this screed, I'm with him too - concur entirely about the insidious nature of The Author's, ex-post-facto embellishing/revealing EXACTLY the sorts of things which forever Ought to be supplied only by The Reader! / and which are indeed the reasons why a 'movie', however skillfully done - can \ufffdnever be a substitute for Reading the Book: you aren't fully engaged with any story if.. it neither evokes imaginations NOR {ugh} renders the use of your own imagination superfluous.

I have no idea why Rowling is doing this; surely she possesses now, not merely unlimited funds to live like some deranged multiple-yacht-buying insatiable egoist - ForEver: but she possesses a bully pulpit, which might be used to say even {horrors} some philosophical things to kids starved by the bleakness of the philosophy they find in homogenized textbooks [so as never to offend the average] ..and in some of the er, bleaker homes in which they reside.

Or she can do ~~ what Bush did with the goodwill towards Murica, following 9/11 -- squander it on what she seems to be squandering it on. Just as Bush cancelled it out / Reversed it! via ignorant arrogant swagger and the other obv effects of testosterone poisoning upon a mediocre mind. Believe her series indeed planted a Lot of what-ifs in minds, from the dull to the magnificent - these kids are hungry for a level of Actual Thought which potboilers rarely even brush up against.

Pity.. I hope this is just a brief aberrant phase - she could do some really useful things next, if she doesn't blow it.


Ashton
Anti- All formulaic plots constructed merely to sell more crap to the already overburdened.
Potter isn't in that category. Wasn't.. anyway..