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We all have our bad days, but Jon Stewart- usually nimble on his feet with a fun yet incisive quip -may have set an all-time low not just for a lousy news cycle, but also for ill-thought out comments this past Tuesday.
After the media picked up and ran with some eyebrow raising comments yesterday from Daily Show alum Jon Stewart about Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, the star of such films as The Faculty,
Half Baked and Big Daddy issued a retraction of sorts denying that he had meant to infer that Rowling was anti-Semitic, according to our courting controversy cousins over at The Hollywood Reporter.
This whole can of worms was opened when Stewart – who is usually used to winding up on the right side of an argument – made a head-scratching claim that entities like Twitter and Instagram truly revel in: To wit, the Mixed Nuts star commented that he felt the goblin banker characters in the Harry Potter books and films were nothing short of Jewish stereotypes. Not content with stopping there, Stewart then went on to make it sound as if he truly believed the beloved children’s author deliberately created these minor characters based off of what The Hollywood Reporter calls “anti-Semitic tropes.” Like I said, these are the type of “news” items that sends social media into an apoplectic frenzy and – in the cancel culture we currently exist in – sends the really extreme factions into banning and burning mode.
Perhaps caught off-guard with the quick backlash his words set off, Stewart attempted to clarify his position in a statement today:
“I do not think J.K. Rowling is anti-Semitic. I did not accuse her of being anti-Semitic. I do not think the Harry Potter movies are anti-Semitic. I really love the Harry Potter movies, probably too much for a gentleman of my considerable age…I cannot stress this enough. I am not accusing J.K. Rowling of being anti-Semitic. She need not answer to any of it. I don’t want the Harry Potter movies censored in any way. It was a lighthearted conversation. Get a fucking grip!”
The lesson learned from all of this – Sometimes a goblin is just a goblin. And, to quote the late, great Sean Connery: “Here endeth the lesson.”
