Harry Potter and the half-baked debate
Everyone and everything you love will eventually fall short of your expectations. That’s just how life works. Nobody’s perfect, and the longer a piece of art abides, the more likely it is that it’ll start to suck. Few constituencies understand this better than comedy and fantasy fandoms, like-minded crowds that tend to share an affinity for the written word. Some of my favorite comics are also experts on elves and superheroes. I don’t know where “Have I Got News for You” star Michael Ian Black falls on the nerd scale, though the comedian hosts a literature podcast called “Obscure.” Its current season dissects “An American Tragedy,” which I haven’t read. I’d bet I’m not alone there, and I’d further guess that far more people are familiar with J.K. Rowling than “Tragedy” author Theodore Dreiser. All that is to say, when Black moseyed into a Bluesky hornet’s nest about the upcoming HBO “Harry Potter” series, I honestly think he underestimated how much he’d get stung. What’s important is that Black is voicing a view silently held …

