The Da Vinci Code is not dangerous. It's not even that good!

I already wrote about the fundamentalist freakshows having kittens over Harry Potter books in (public) school libraries. Now the evil narrative du jour is the criminally overrated Da Vinci Code, and I so do not get it.

For one thing, the threat of Harry Potter lies in its pure, unapologetic awesomeness. Those books kick so much imaginative ass they can set even a freeze dried old English professor like me aglow. That power presents serious temptation; it's one of the most succulent fruits in the garden, especially of course for kids.

But The Da Vinci Code? Scares you why?

I read it, and it was fine for a Saturday afternoon, but it's hardly Shakespeare. It's better than Deception Point--but so is a punch in the nose, if we're keeping score, because man that book sucks. Point being, I absolutely believe The Da Vinci Code's hype wrote checks the book can't cash, but it doesn't matter since the people who fear its influence so insanely will never read it (or see the film). Why would they? There's nothing there for them. The book and film are marketed to an adult audience, and the adult cuckoo birds who flap around in a frenzy over hack fiction will never get close enough to catch the anti-church cooties, and every other adult in the world has enough sense to deal with fiction as fiction, even when it's excellent fiction, which this is not. So relax already.