Harry Potter Experiment Deemed A Failure! Books Fail To Turn Kids Into Readers, Magicians Or Accent-Affecting Anglophiles.

J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series has been, by all accounts, a failure. Billions of dollars that could have been spent on a rowing team for the Oprah school have been wasted, and for what? Not only did Rowling's books fail to turn bandwagonesque tots into Tolstoy readers, it also reaped nary a single child wizard, witch or broomstick fetishist from the lot of them. I remember when another fey, British lad first came across these waters, and what effect he had on the youth. Morissey's first tour of America had straight kids pretending to be gay, reading Keats and Yeats instead of Kirby and Lee, and dropping their 'r's like Galileo dropped the orange. And who among us can forget the first time witchcraft was explored en masse in the States? Our Salem neighbors to the north drowned, burned and lynched twenty alleged fans of the dark side in an effort to curb that craze. But what effect has the Potter series had on our current culture? The phrase 'bloody hell' has never been more popular among the pre-pubescent, nor has an interest in scarves. Oh, and who hasn't bitten into a robin's egg colored jellybean, only to taste vomit? But in the larger scheme of things, is this any more impressive than the Where's Waldo book boom of the 90's, the 60's hippie peace movement or the taking of thalidomide off of the market whenever the hell it was that they finally did that? Until kids can fly and owls are delivering our mail and the hordes of female Harry fans are burning their scarves and starting chick lit book clubs, the Harry Potter phenomenon remains -- societally, educationally and mystically -- an anti-climactic dud.