Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

The revolution will be supervised.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

No one could have predicted…

This really is a full service blog.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Everybody saw this coming.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

After roe, women are no longer free.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

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Expelliarmus

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RPV

An interesting study suggests that reading Harry Potter increases the probability and intensity of anti-Trump political sentiment:

Mutz polled a nationally representative sample of 1,142 Americans in 2014, and again in 2016, asking about their Harry Potter consumption, their attitudes on issues such as waterboarding, the death penalty, the treatment of Muslims and gays, and (in 2016 only) their feelings about Donald Trump on a 0-100 scale.

Party affiliation did not affect the likelihood that a person had read the Harry Potter books, the study found; Democrats, Republicans, and Independents have all read Rowling’s books in roughly equal numbers.

The study found that each Harry Potter book read lowered respondents’ evaluations of Donald Trump by roughly 2-3 points on a 100 point scale.

“This may seem small,” Mutz acknowledges, “but for someone who has read all seven books, the total impact could lower their estimation of Trump by 18 points out of 100. The size of this effect is on par with the impact of party identification on attitudes toward gays and Muslims.”

Time to read the third chapter of The Sorcerer’s Stone to my kids as inoculation against future fascism or at least one hell of a great world to play in at all ages.

Open thread

Reader Interactions

168Comments

  4. 4.

    cckids

    Hey, I’ve had this bumper sticker AND the T-shirt since 2003. I’ve been rationing my wear of the T-shirt because it’s getting pretty worn, and it needs to make it through this election season.

  5. 5.

    Mike E

    My daughter broke a leg right around when The Prisoner of Azkaban came out, just before she turned 7…I read to her that book over 4 straight days, it’s by far my favorite out of the bunch pretty much for that reason alone.

  6. 6.

    Mary G

    I should look for some kids to read Harry to. I splurged and bought the script for the Cursed Child and loved it, though now I want more.

  8. 8.

    Bill Butler

    A pity that the survey didn’t include those who have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. I’d bet a far more significant statistical correlation.

  10. 10.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    J.K. Rowling has mapped out all of society’s dysfunctions in her books. The darker she makes the stories, the more powerful the lessons in them are, teaching the overriding importance of adhering to your better nature of loyalty, studiousness, intelligence and love, in the face of cynicism, betrayal, greed and lust for power.

  14. 14.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @WereBear: I listened to most of them in my car as audiobooks from the library. They’re interesting enough to make a long trip fly by, but not so complex that you have to choose between driving and listening.

  15. 15.

    burnspbesq

    Anyone have a link to WI-1 results? Hoping against hope that ZEGS gets put through the wringer.

  16. 16.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    The study found that each Harry Potter book read lowered respondents’ evaluations of Donald Trump by roughly 2-3 points on a 100 point scale.

    “This may seem small,” Mutz acknowledges, “but for someone who has read all seven books, the total impact could lower their estimation of Trump.

    Probably holds true that way also.

    In other news, satire is still dead.

  18. 18.

    Hal

    @Mike E: This is the second time in two weeks I’ve read this assessment of Prisoner of Azkaban. I might have to reread because I’ve always thought of that book as my least favorite.

    But I also loved Order of the Phoenix, and know plenty of people have issues with that book. Order is also, for me, far more relevant to a potential Trump presidency than any other Harry Potter books.

  22. 22.

    Cheryl from Maryland

    Commenting about this to my spouse, he said maybe strike Harry Potter so it reads: Reading a Book makes it less likely to vote Republican.

  23. 23.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    Robert Costa Verified account
    ‏@costareports

    BREAKING: AP has called race for Ryan. With nearly half of the district’s precincts reporting, he’s at 77%, Nehlen 22%

    Ryan wins with his Trump boat anchor.

  24. 24.

    Miss Bianca

    @Hal: “Prisoner of Azkaban” is probably my favorite of the series, actually…but it’s been a while since I reread all of them. I may embark on the whole series as an audiobook adventure.

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    @WereBear:

    You’ll like them — it’s interesting how they become more morally complex as the main characters grow from pre-teens into young adults. I think Rowling re-thought a few things as the series went on but wasn’t able to go back to the earlier books, so there’s a little bit of retconning with mixed success.

    My favorite was probably “The Half-Blood Prince,” which is all about discovering that the adults around you have their own histories and stories that affect yours. And, of course, there’s That Scene that I’m absolutely convinced she wrote with Alan Rickman in mind. He’s the only actor who could have spoken that single word and made it work.

  30. 30.

    hilts

    List of things a President Trump could do to fuck up the country compiled by Mark Kleiman

    “With a stroke of the pen”

    1. Withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement on global warming.

    2. Abrogate the nuclear deal with Iran, setting the stage for either war with Iran or Iranian development of a nuclear weapon. (Or both.)

    3. Deny hostile, or even objective, journalists and media outlets access to information by refusing them admittance to press conferences, instructing appointed and public-affairs officials to refuse all interviews, and subjecting even routine data requests to FOIA delays. That will have three effects: disabling the effective capacity of the independent media to exercise oversight; giving professional and business advantages to complaisant reporters and their outlets; and creating incentives for reporters and outlets alike to stay in the Administration’s good graces.

    4. Institute criminal investigation and prosecution of political opponents. The Attorney General, the FBI Director, and the 94 United States Attorneys all serve at the pleasure of the President. (The 10-year term of the FBI Director is a maximum, not a minimum, and Bill Clinton fired Director William Sessions in 1993.) Now imagine FBI Director Chris Christie, reporting to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Those positions, and the U.S. Attorney slots, are all Senate-confirmable, but even if the Senate were to resist the President could appoint all of them on an acting basis.

    5. Use tax enforcement and the award or denial of tax-exempt status to punish enemies and rewards friends. The Director of the IRS is also a Presidential appointee. Civil-service protections would make it harder to replace IRS career staff with political loyalists, but the GWB Administration made substantial progress in filling the Justice Department with Republican apparatchiki, and the same could be done at the IRS.

    6. Attack “liberal-leaning” universities and not-for-profit research enterprises by either interfering with the grant process directly or by using financial or compliance audits to disqualify them.

    7. End enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. This is entirely at the discretion of USDoJ, and no doubt Assistant Attorney General Kris Kobach will have other priorities.

    8. Cease Department of Justice investigations into police misconduct.

    9. Mount a massive deportation process. Direct the Department of Homeland Security to target and remove persons who registered under DACA and DAPA.

    10. Investigate the “loyalty” of Muslims in the civil service and the military.

    11. Substantially reduce enforcement of anti-discrimination law, including revoking executive orders that require nondiscrimination by federal contractors.

    12. Block all entry of refugees.

    13. Wreck the Affordable Care Act in practical terms by reversing the administrative decisions that make it feasible, and destroy it legally by conceding its unconstitutionality the next time it is challenged in court.

    14. Loosen regulation and virtually eliminate enforcement of all environmental laws, workplace health and safety laws, and consumer protections. Early targets would be the Obama Administration’s aggressive attack on air pollution from coal-fired power plants and the newly-instituted fiduciary-standards rule for pension advisers.

    15. Reinstitute torture by replacing the Army Field Manual with Bush-era interrogation “standards.” I do not believe that most, or even many, senior officers would abide by such orders. But the President is, indeed, Commander-in-Chief, and only custom keeps him from firing those who disobey unlawful orders. (When President Lincoln was told that Confederate forces had captured forty mules and two major-generals, he replied, “Too bad about the mules. Major-generals I can make.” Ranks of O-4 [major or lieutenant commander] and above require Senate confirmation, but junior officers are created by Presidential fiat, and brevet promotions are unlimited.)

    16. Encourage Russian aggression in Europe by renouncing our NATO obligations. Start by recognizing Russian sovereignty over the Crimea.

    17. Withdraw the U.S. from other treaties and international organizations: WTO, NAFTA, the U.N., the Paris Treaty on international climate change.

    18. Encourage Japan and South Korea to develop nuclear weapons by raising questions about the validity of our security commitments.

    19. Unofficially encourage or sponsor the growth of armed far-right “militia” groups, and discourage enforcement of federal laws against them (e.g., vigilante border enforcement groups, takeovers of federal lands by “sovereign citizen” organizations).

    By legislative action or with the advice and consent of the Senate, or the help of state governments

    1. Appoint at least one and perhaps three Supreme Court justices on the Alito model, locking in a right-wing majority for a generation.

    2. Reduce tax rates for the rich.

    3. Block grant food stamps and/or Medicaid.

    4. Appoint anti-worker and anti-union members to the National Labor Relations Board.

    5. End federal support for the full range of women’s health services, including ending the federal partnership with Planned Parenthood.

    6. Increase domestic production of coal and oil while ending public investment in renewable energy.

    7. Repeal of Dodd-Frank, Sarbanes-Oxley, consumer financial protection laws.

    8. Disenfranchise Democrats with a combination of voter-suppression tactics (shorter voting hours, fewer voting machines leading to longer waits, hard-to-meet “voter ID” rules) and gerrymandering. In the extreme, use electronic vote counting to simply miscount the votes.

    h/t Samefacts

  32. 32.

    redshirt

    @Bill Butler: Heh. Just today I started re-re-re-re-re-reading The Silmarillion. I love it so much. It’s been a while since I re-re-read LOTR. I’m afraid to start since I’m in a monthly book club that’s demanding and that would be a lot of extra reading.

  33. 33.

    Three-nineteen

    I think Chapter 9 of Goblet of Fire is more relevant, especially since the Olympics are going on.

  35. 35.

    redshirt

    So I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books for the usual reasons.

    Should I? Is it worth that commitment in pages? It’s a lot of pages.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: You can really see Rowling’s evolution as a writer by looking at the last book, and comparing the main text with the epilogue (which she wrote years earlier, near or at the beginning of the series).

  39. 39.

    Gwangung

    I have a lot of friends who are Harry Potter fans.

    These friends are theatres artists.

    You can IMAGINE how they felt about the Cursed Child….

  40. 40.

    dmsilev

    @redshirt: The first two or three books are pretty short and are fast reads. Give them a shot, and if they draw you in, go on to the rest of the series.

  41. 41.

    germy

    @the Conster, la Citoyenne:

    AP has called race for Ryan. With nearly half of the district’s precincts reporting, he’s at 77%, Nehlen 22%

    Okay, pardon my ignorance here, but does Ryan now face a Democratic challenger after winning his Republican primary? I haven’t been following this business closely and my head is stuffed (bad cold and/or flu)

  42. 42.

    Schlemazel

    @burnspbesq:
    IIRC his district is very red. While I would enjoy seeing him get his ass kicked I worry that if he loses the primary we will end up with yet another full-blown crazy in the house. while there are advantages it is a risky proposition.

    EDIT: @Omnes Omnibus: , OK, it does not matter any more he wins in a walk.

  43. 43.

    PigDog

    I’d like to see the (obviously inverse) correlation between people who were bullied as a child and support for Shitgibbon.

    He reminds me of so many of my childhood tormentors and watching him go down will be a symbolic justice of sorts.

  47. 47.

    Mary G

    @redshirt: They go fast and there are a lot of liberal themes, so you might. There is a newspaper reporter who is hilarious. They aren’t Tolkien IMO.

  49. 49.

    Mike E

    @redshirt: My reason for getting into the books is mentioned above, and then I had to complete the series because, reasons*

    *I had to see how it all turned out! btw that 7 year old turned 21 today :-)

  54. 54.

    germy

    @WereBear:

    Nobody understands the right wing brain. It’s a riddle wrapped in old gum wrappers and dug out of a landfill.

    Their brains are popcorn soaked in urine (quoting Alexander Woollcott)

    .

    EDIT: Welcome back!

  55. 55.

    gf120581

    @Schlemazel: Actually, no, Ryan’s district is marginally Republican. If he were gone and replaced by a lunatic, it could very easily be won by a Democrat.

  56. 56.

    Emma

    OK, totally OT but… I went to YouTube to try and see something of the Rio opening ceremony — the first three videos all proclaimed the biggest, BIGGEST, Illuminati ceremony ever. WTF?

  59. 59.

    dmsilev

    @redshirt: For the first few, maybe age 7 or 8. The later books, especially the last 2, are quite a bit darker, so you might want to give them a look over first before reading to a young kid. Reading the books as they came out, I almost got the sense that Rowling was writing for a particular cohort of kids, with the stories becoming both more complex and darker as that cohort aged and grew up.

  61. 61.

    Iowa Old Lady

    Holy crap. Dan Rather lit into Trump on FB. Here are the first couple of paragraphs of Rather’s statement:

    No trying-to-be objective and fair journalist, no citizen who cares about the country and its future can ignore what Donald Trump said today. When he suggested that “The Second Amendment People” can stop Hillary Clinton he crossed a line with dangerous potential. By any objective analysis, this is a new low and unprecedented in the history of American presidential politics. This is no longer about policy, civility, decency or even temperament. This is a direct threat of violence against a political rival. It is not just against the norms of American politics, it raises a serious question of whether it is against the law. If any other citizen had said this about a Presidential candidate, would the Secret Service be investigating?

    Candidate Trump will undoubtably issue an explanation; some of his surrogates are already engaged in trying to gloss it over, but once the words are out there they cannot be taken back. That is what inciting violence means.

    Who knew the old guy still had it in him? He goes on the say he’s waiting to see how the press handles what he sees as a genuine crisis.

  63. 63.

    Iowa Old Lady

    @dmsilev: I think that’s right. A librarian friend of mine said they shelved the first four or five books in the children’s section and the last few in the young adult section. After events at the end of Goblet of Fire, the books get considerably darker.

  65. 65.

    cckids

    @Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):

    Well, I’ve been reading Harry Potter to our 9 year old. We’re up to the Goblet of Fire. Good to know it might help her be a better person.

    I read most of the Harry Potter books to and with my kids; they were close to the perfect ages for starting with Sorcerer’s Stone (5 & 6), as the books came out we started reading aloud in turns, by the time The Deathly Hallows came out my kids were in high school; I still got each of them a book on release day & we read it more or less together. The Harry Potter books are one of our dearest memories together.

    We even went to all the midnight movie first nights.

  66. 66.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @redshirt: For many years LOTR was a twice yearly read for me. I went so far as to grab the entire History of Middle Earth, which is a bit of a grind, but is fascinating reading; it really shows the evolution of Tolkien’s creation. I never could quite love Jackson’s interpretation; in many ways he treated characters as two dimensional at best.

    I enjoyed the Harry Potter series, but found it to be rather formulaic, and the characters kind of shallow. There was a lot of teen angst on display, but the moral issues addressed were for the most part pretty black and white. The series is fun to read (and to reread), but there really isn’t much to chew on for most of the series. HBP and DH offer some nuance, but that gets buried under relationship angst and clunky storytelling, especially in DH.

  67. 67.

    Emma

    @Iowa Old Lady: Not surprised at all. I think the books became so insanely popular among kids of a certain age because the characters grew up as they grew up. As their world became complex, so did the world in the books.

  68. 68.

    Just One More Canuck

    @redshirt: we started reading them to our daughter when she was around 6, but not the later stories until a bit later – she had watched all of the movies by the time she was 8 (she’s 11 now).

  69. 69.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    Do I make my 4th Grey Goose martini? I’m hammered. How could those Mad Men types function after lunches like this?

  72. 72.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: FWIW I think it is a somewhat unfair comparison. Tolkien was writing for highly educated adults. Rowling was writing for children and adolescents. There is a difference in the complexity and detail that the two could put in.

    I agree with you about Jackson’s movie adaptations. The treatments of Gimli, Pippen, and Faramir are particularly bad.

  73. 73.

    J R in WV

    @hilts:

    Man oh man, that’s a depressing but accurate assessment of Trump’s potential. Europe or Costa Rica? I’m thinking Spain, or perhaps Portugal.

    Portugal is the Colorado of Europe, after all. And not inclined to truckle to Trump, either.

  75. 75.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @Miss Bianca:

    They’re wicked. In the past, I’ve been a bourbon or dark rum guy, but I’ve been branching my wings into martinis and go sons. I keep good vodka and high grade gin, decent vermouth. Got a Lewis bag and wood mallet for ice crushing, metal picks for olives and cocktail onions (for gibbons, which are only decent with gin).

    Old timey cocktails rock.

  77. 77.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @redshirt:

    I think they were raging alcoholics. I’m going for it – number 4 on the way!

    Plus, I’m watching Hot Fuzz…

  78. 78.

    germy

    @one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer:

    Do I make my 4th Grey Goose martini? I’m hammered. How could those Mad Men types function after lunches like this?

    Because the unfortunate thing about alcohol is that the more you regularly consume, the more you can tolerate. A heavy, serious drinker can drink a bottle of vodka for breakfast and function normally throughout the workday. Of course, take away the bottle and he will go into severe withdrawal.

    Edible marijuana is a thousand times safer…

  80. 80.

    hilts

    David Gergen, Jeffrey Toobin, and Don Lemon are schooling dumbass former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino for defending Trump’s 2nd Amendment comments.

  83. 83.

    Miss Bianca

    @redshirt: Short answer: yes.

    My God, you’ve managed to make it thru’ “The Silmarillion”? The whole HP saga will be a piece of cake for you!

  85. 85.

    Joel

    @germy: During my year abroad — fifteen years ago, unbelievably enough — we would go out drinking every night from tuesday through sunday, with only a handful of exceptions. I recoil at the thought now.

  88. 88.

    Emma

    I can never understand the Tolkien worship. I’ve read LotR and The Hobbit several times and admire them as amazing examples of world building, probably the best ever. But basically it’s the most Nordic fantasy outside of the Eddas. My absolutely favorite part is the encounter with Tom Bombadil and the River’s Daughter, and that is because it’s a lovely paean to the deities of nature.

    ETA and in passing: has anyone seen the Inspector Lewis episode about the fantasy writer? A the end, when Hathaway tells Lewis that one of Tolkien’s colleagues had blurted out “Not another flipping elf!” Pause. “He didn’t say flipping.” Beautiful.

  90. 90.

    Eric U.

    I read the first Harry Potter book to my son when he was 5 and he re-read it to himself again the same year. Don’t remember how old he was when I read him the Hobbit and LOTR, but about that same time. Doesn’t seem to have adversely affected him, he’s going into his second year of college.

    After we were done with LOTR, he tried to get me to read Silmarillion to him, but we both agreed that I’m not a good enough reader and gave up before the end of the first chapter. Mind-numbing.

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @germy:

    I was in the ladies’ room in one of the older buildings at work (built in the 60s or 70s) and realized that the weird hole in the shelf next to the toilet used to hold an ashtray.

  93. 93.

    nutella

    I enjoyed the earlier Harry Potter books but got stuck and stopped at the same point (in both English and Spanish) when I couldn’t stand everyone saying to Hermione “Jeez, they’re only house elves. Give it a rest.”

  95. 95.

    ET

    Haven’t read the books or seen the movies but did see the London play. But I am already anti Trump.

  96. 96.

    Bobby Thomson

    As I said the last time someone posted this, the direction of causation is questionable. I suggest that those disinclined to authoritarianism are more likely to read and enjoy Harry Potter.

  97. 97.

    germy

    @Mnemosyne: I’m 58. I have a clear memory of being about seven or eight years old and being walked to the doctor by my mom for my yearly checkup, and there were ashtrays in the doctor’s waiting room.

  98. 98.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Could not. Stalled. Loved LOTR, but couldn’t even pretend to be interested in “The Silmarillion”.

    Philistine, I is one. Despise me if you dare.

    @Emma: I’m with you. I’m one of the few I know who loved Tom Bombadil – mostly because the Ring had no power over him, which I thought was stone.cold.groovy.

  101. 101.

    nutella

    @gf120581:

    Ryan’s district is marginally Republican.

    I read an article a few years ago where they interviewed his constituents, including Democrats, and they voted for him because he’s such a nice boy from a nice family.

    Way more important than that he’s coming for their Social Security and Medicare.

  102. 102.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @germy:

    Never smoked at my desk, stopped smoking sometime around 2008.

    Kind of miss it.

  103. 103.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Omnes Omnibus: My comments on Harry Potter shouldn’t be taken as hating on the series; I don’t. I enjoy rereading it for entertainment. I just don’t find it to be substantive, if that makes sense. I like fluff, I just don’t expect much from it.

    Yes, Jackson assassinated Faramir’s character, almost as badly as he did Theoden. Merry, Pippin and Gimli were unrecognizable.

  111. 111.

    redshirt

    @Miss Bianca: It’s like the Tolkien Bible. Lot’s of Begatings. Many, many, many names. You reach for appendices, and there they lay! Family trees. Pronunciation guidelines. Maps. A nerd’s dream.

  113. 113.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: I didn’t think yu were hating on the series. I just thought you were sort of comparing apples to mangoes.

    ETA: Also, for the children’s and YA writers in the commentariat, I am not slagging on your field by any means.

  116. 116.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @germy:

    I like my ports and dessert wines to remind me of a box of raisins when I have them with cheese. To me, a great salty, tangy cheese is glorious with that kind of port.

  119. 119.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Emma: Saw the episode (loved Inspector Lewis!). It was based on a real comment from Hugo Dyson when he was listening to yet another reading of early drafts of LOTR.

  120. 120.

    Anoniminous

    @Emma:

    Well, yeah. Tolkien basically invented the High Fantasy genre as a deliberate effort to give England a mythology comparable to the Norse Eddas inspired by Germanic and Germanic literature of the Migration, Viking, and post-Viking periods. Shippey’s (himself a philologist) two books “The Road to Middle Earth” and “J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century” go in depth exploring this.

  123. 123.

    one_particular_harbour, fka Botsplainer

    @Mnemosyne:

    I can’t remember the last car I bought that still had the lighter attachment that fit in the socket.

  125. 125.

    germy

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Aussie Port? No such thing

    I swear to Ceiling Cat. I wandered into my local wine shop and told the nice gentleman I was looking for a port with a screw top, because we were on our way to a picnic and had no corkscrews. He recommended the Whisker Blake and I was pleasantly surprised.

  126. 126.

    Emma

    @Anoniminous: I learned that later when I did a little research out of curiosity (being a librarian wasn’t so much a career choice as wanting to learn how to find out things!). But it puts the books at once-remove for me. I have no character that I can identify with. I love them intellectually but not emotionally. Except for Sam, who I consider the true hero of the tale.

  128. 128.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: Port is definationally not Aussie. They may make a very good fortified wine, but it’s not port. California may produce excellent cab-merlot mixes, but not one is a Bordeaux.

  129. 129.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Anoniminous: I don’t think you can credit Tolkien with inventing the high fantasy genre. I’d argue that goes to Lord Dunsany and The King of Elfland’s Daughter, which predated The Hobbit and LOTR by some years.

    edited because of fucking autocorrect

  132. 132.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Emma: Well, that’s because Samwise pretty obviously was the hero of the piece, at least as far as the destruction of the Ring. There were others, though.

  133. 133.

    Miss Bianca

    @germy: yes, he will. And that that Alsatian “champagne”, tho’ French, is NOT champagne, because duh, Alsace =/= Champagne! The man is a purist, evidently. : )

  134. 134.

    Bobby D

    I’ve read 3 or 4 of the Potter books and I’m a GenXer with no kids. They are fun books, not just childrens’ books. I know lots of adults who’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed them who don’t have kids (that’s how I got turned onto them, recommendation of a coworker).

    There is a lot of diversity/inclusiveness/anti-bigotry in the books. The “mudblood” stuff being a good example.

  135. 135.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @germy: That is quite likely. I also am not knocking the wines. I had wonderful wines from unlikely places and absolute cat piss from brand name locations.

    @Miss Bianca:

    The man is a purist, evidently.

    Just noticing?

  137. 137.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Dude, do you really labor under the misapprehension that just because it’s the first time I’ve *remarked* a trait of yours, that that means it must be the first time I’ve *noticed* it?

  138. 138.

    Emma

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: Nope. For me, Samwise is the hero because, of all the Ring-Bearers, he is the only one who gives it up freely. Nothing the Ring can offer is more valuable to him than his friends and his Shire. He is, if you will, the best of humanity.

  139. 139.

    Anoniminous

    @Emma:

    I can’t stand most Tolkien criticism. The typical LitCrit superciliousness gives me hairballs. But they do have a point when they say it’s a Boy’s Own story. Elizabeth Moon’s Pak’s World books and Bujold’s Four Gods books point a better path forward and not just because its 2016 not 1936.

    @Comrade Scrutinizer:

    Or Morris’ “Well at World’s End” Or Homer’s “Odyssey” for that matter. :-)

    I grant it is a fair cop … how about: Tolkien defined the High Fantasy genre for most of the 20th and early 21st centuries”

  140. 140.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Miss Bianca: A fair cop.

    @Emma: There are other heroes because there are multiple stories being told at one time. For example: Merry and Pippin are a coming of age story. Their part in the destruction of the ring saga is what prepares them to be the hobbit sized heroes of the Scouring of the Shire. Etc.

  141. 141.

    Amir Khalid

    Just curious: How many American Harry Potter readers here have read the original, un-Americanised Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stpne?

  147. 147.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    @Amir Khalid: Me. And listened to the audiobooks narrated by Stephen Fry, which are a bit more to my taste than the ones narrated by Jim Dale.

  148. 148.

    Emma

    @Amir Khalid: Me. I think. Bought a copy at Heathrow airport. Loaned it to some bastard who never gave it back. Replaced it with an American version later. Though now I wonder if the Heathrow copy wasn’t “for export” so to speak.

  151. 151.

    Emma

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’m not arguing there are other heroes. I’m just saying that for me, the hero that stands out is Sam. The sensible, simple (man) with the rock-solid moral center.

  153. 153.

    Emma

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: I bought mine at my (now deceased) Borders. Well, I placed orders for them and waited a couple of days to pick them up. Did go to pick up DH on THE day. I never laughed so hard in my whole life. Kids grabbed the books before the parent could sign the credit card slip and plonked themselves wherever they could find a space and started to read.

  154. 154.

    Amir Khalid

    @Miss Bianca:
    The vocabulary’s a lot more British, and so of course is the spelling. (With the later books, JKR had enough clout to forestall some of the more enthusiastic such editing.) As a reader, I’ve found that when editors Americanise a British writer’s prose, it can wind up reading awkwardly, as though it had lost some of its essential character on the way across the Atlantic. And the same goes for an American writer’s Britishised prose.

  155. 155.

    Emma

    @Comrade Scrutinizer: Don’t worry, I cursed him.

    For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.”

  157. 157.

    Anoniminous

    @Comrade Scrutinizer:

    Éowyn is almost ‘stage furniture.’ She doesn’t have agency in the story, her heroic deed springs up out of the blue, and then she gets a standard “meets Prince & lives happily ever after.” Which is too bad as her story is for me the most interesting of all.

  160. 160.

    jonas

    Having school-age kids who are HUGE Harry Potter fans has basically made explaining the Trump phenomenon a no-brainer. They simply *get* how there are revanchist assholes who want to purge the world of muggles and mudbloods and that those people must be stopped.

  162. 162.

    Suzanne

    @Mnemosyne: “Half-Blood Prince” is my favorite, as well. I love how it explores the shiftiness and permanence of memory, and really gets to how those family wounds never really heal. I was disappointed that the movie cut out the scene in which we finally meet Tom Riddle’s mother, and shortened the scene in the cave, which was just so creepy and sad.

  163. 163.

    Amir Khalid

    @Suzanne:
    I too always considered it a tragedy that Merope Gaunt — probably the saddest, most isolated character in the Potter canon — never made it to the movie. She and Krystal Weedon in The Casual Vacancy, JKR’s first post-Potter novel, have a lot in common, it seems to me: girls left out on the edge, trying to find their way into the world any way they could, and failing bravely but tragically.

  165. 165.

    Calming Influence

    @hilts:

    “Imagine FBI director Chris Christie…”

    Now imagine FBI director Chris Christie in a tutu…

  167. 167.

    sherparick

    @redshirt: Another useful inoculation non-fiction read is Eric Hoffer’s “The True Believer.”

    Also, running second on the ticket is “Dr. Moriarty.”

  168. 168.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Hal: OotP had more than its share of problems, but it also introduced the most genuinely, realistically frightening character in the Potterverse – Dolores Umbridge. She is “the banality of evil” writ large. Voldemort just wants to take over the world – Umbridge wants order. That makes her far, far more dangerous.

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