Harry Potter and the Fruits of Denial
J.K. Rowling Writes a Scathing Socio-Political Commentary, Cleverly Disguising It As "Escapist Children's Fiction"
by Tamara Baker

June 30, 2003 -- SAINT PAUL, MINNESOTA (apj.us) -- Denial is everywhere these days, it seems.

To list but one recent example:

Strom Thurmond dies, and not only does the man currently occupying the White House praise the old race-baiting mountebank as "extraordinary", not a single one of the media euologies I've seen or heard -- in print, on the radio, or on TV -- dares mention the words "Southern Strategy." The closest the US' GOP/Media whitewashers come to it is when they disingenuously state that Thurmond left the Democratic Party in 1964 "to support Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign against Lyndon Baines Johnson."

The US media, however, won't mention why Thurmond preferred Goldwater to LBJ. I however, will: It was because LBJ was the strongest president on civil rights since Abraham Lincoln himself.

LBJ gave us both the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, even though he knew that the Republicans like Barry Goldwater -- and George Herbert Walker Bush, the father of the current White House occupant -- were already road-testing the "Southern Strategy" that they would use with success in 1968. This meant the total abandonment of Lincoln's civil rights legacy, in order to wrest the South from the Democrats.

No major American corporate media source had the guts or the decency to state this basic, and very well documented, political truth. They would rather stay in -- and try to keep the rest of us in -- a state of denial with regard to Strom Thurmond, as well as with regard to George Bushes Elder and Younger.

This is why it was such a pleasant surprise to open the latest offering from Jo Rowling and find her skewering this widespread head-in-the-sand attitude.

There are two main morals to be derived from _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_: 1) Actions have consequences, and 2) You can't wish away something by denying its existence.

With respect to Moral #1, we find that Harry loses someone close to him as a result of the thoughtless actions of several people, Harry and the victim included. (Harry's going through a very difficult teen stage, made even more difficult by the horrific pressure he always has to shoulder.)

As for Moral #2, we see it not just in the refusal of the Ministry of Magic -- the wizarding world's Powers That Be -- to acknowledge that Voldemort has returned, we also see it in such things as the Dursleys' refusal to acknowlege Harry's magical powers -- or much of anything else, for that matter. (Vernon Dursley, a head-in-the-sand Tory if ever there was one, takes a perverse pride in the likelihood that his son Dudley probably doesn't know who the
Prime Minister of the UK is.)

Even Harry himself plays the Denial Game, at least with respect to his loved ones. Harry desperately wants to have a morally-stainless figure in his pantheon of heroes, and he can't bear the fact that his late father and his friends weren't exactly sweetness and light when they were Harry's age. And when one of his loved ones dies, partly because of unresolved growing-up issues, but partly because Harry should have looked before he leaped, Harry finds himself looking to unload all the blame for it on one person, who in fact really wasn't to blame at all.

Right now, a number of Americans, afraid to openly admit that the White House's current occupant is leading us all down the road to death and ruin, are acting very much like the Dursleys, Fudge, and Harry. How long will it be before they realize that in the end, denial is more painful than recognizing and addressing the issues head-on?

PS: For the record!

First, a "Meet The Press/Tim Russert" minute from the June 22 edition. (Thanks to Alma Evans of Salon's Table Talk message forums for finding this.)

Russert: But how many troops -- how many men and women do we now have on active duty?

Dean: I can't tell you the answer to that either. It's...

Russert: But as commander in chief, you should now that.

Dean: As someone who's running in the Democratic Party primary, I know that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million people, but I don't know the exact number, and I don't think I need to know that to run in the Democratic Party primary.

Russert: How many troops would have in Iraq?

Dean: More than we have now. My understanding is we have in the neighborhood of 135,000 troops.

Now, let's go to a June 18, 2003 House Armed Services Hearing with Paul Wolfowitz:

Chairman DUNCAN HUNTER, Full Committee Hearing on Worldwide U.S. Military Commitments: "Approximately 180,000 troops are in Iraq and 9,000 remain in Afghanistan. While our military did remarkable work in defeating two terrorist regimes in short order, events in Afghanistan and Iraq make it clear that we have a ways to go in both countries. The terrorist elements have been defeated, but they haven't been destroyed."

STATEMENT BY DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE PAUL WOLFOWITZ
BEFORE THE HOUSE ARMED SERVICE COMMITTEE: "We currently have approximately 146,000 U.S. military personnel operating in Iraq and additional personnel in other countries in the region (e.g., the Gulf states) supporting those operations."

STATEMENT BY VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF GENERAL PETER PACE JUNE 18, 2003 TROOP LEVEL IN IRAQ:

"Meeting the needs of the current situation drives the mix and number of our military forces required for service in Iraq. We have approximately 150,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq and an additional 120,000 in Central Command's area of responsibility."

So, if Bush's own Pentagon appointees and the Joint Chiefs are giving us wildly different numbers on troop strength in Iraq, why in the world should Tim Russert expect Governor Dean to give us an exact number?

Once again, Russert reminds us forcibly that RNC chair Roger Ailes used to run NBC's news division, and that NBC's former owner Jack Welch was as Republican as they come.