Commentary: Here’s an idea: Maybe if we all stop talking about J.K. Rowling, she’ll just go away

Novelist J.K. Rowling is back in the news where, apparently, she longs to be. Indeed, a teaser for the series includes Rowling saying that she “never set out to upset anyone,” but that fans who feel she has risked her legacy “could not have misunderstood me more profoundly.” Having listened to the first and second episode, I can tell you that the “misunderstanding” refers not to the things Rowling has written about transgender women, but to her fans’ belief that she is in the least worried about her legacy. New York Times columnist Pamela Paul loosely used the podcast’s debut to write a full-throated defense of the author in which she claims that “nothing Rowling has said qualifies as transphobic.” I don’t know how Paul defines transphobia, but Rowling’s stated belief that “when you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman … you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside” seems to have all the necessary ingredients. The first episode of “Witch Trials” is devoted to a detailed and rather breathy retelling of Rowling’s “origin story” — how she came to be, in Phelps-Roper’s words, the most successful writer in the history of publishing, and one whose work has been boycotted and banned, at different times and for different reasons, by people on opposite ends of the political spectrum. In the second episode, Phelps-Roper explores the zeitgeist of the ‘90s, pointing to factors as diverse as Bill Clinton’s impeachment and the Columbine school shooting as fuel for the rise of the religious right, many of whom saw “Harry Potter” as yet another example of society’s wanton endangerment of “family values.” Rowling herself still seems bewildered that the story of an oppressed young boy discovering that he was in fact someone very different than he had been led to believe — and finding power, love and friendship in that difference — could be seen as remotely dangerous children or families.