Swiftboating Harry

Slate Magazine has managed to escape my wrath of late by sheer inconsequential irrelevance. No longer. By reposting this vicious slander by Chris Sullentrop, they have crossed the line. Sullentroll, who has now been promoted to the New York Times cabal of known deatheaters posted an article titled Harry Potter: Pampered jock, patsy, fraud.

Let's look at a few of the specific slanders:

Like most heroes, Harry Potter possesses the requisite Boy Scout virtues: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.

What crap! Harry is indeed brave and loyal, indispensable qualities in a hero. He is as disobedient as Tom Sawyer, rather irreverent, and unremarkable in all the other BS virtues.

Why isn't the movie that comes out next week titled Ron Weasley and the Chamber of Secrets? Why isn't its sequel dubbed Hermione Granger and the Prisoner of Azkaban? Why Harry? What makes him so special?

Simple: He's a glory hog who unfairly receives credit for the accomplishments of others and who skates through school by taking advantage of his inherited wealth and his establishment connections.

Another vicious and unmotivated slander. Like Frodo Baggins, Harry is not one who seeks greatness, but one who finds it thrust upon him. His courage and charisma do indeed attract others to him, others who prove very helpful to him, but in the most critical moments, he is the one whose courage and character are most directly on the line.

"Inherited wealth and establishment connections?" The kid is an orphan who grew up in the most demeaning circumstances. He is repeatedly persecuted by powerful forces of government. At least three of his teachers attempt to kill him, and two others single him out for special abuse.

Harry Potter is a fraud, and the cult that has risen around him is based on a lie. Potter's claim to fame, his central accomplishment in life, is surviving a curse placed on him as an infant by the evil wizard Voldemort. As a result, the wizarding world celebrates the young Harry as "The Boy Who Lived." It's a curiously passive accomplishment, akin to "The Boy Who Showed Up," or "The Boy Who Never Took a Sick Day."

By now this jerk is beginning to annoy me. Heroism is a matter of fate as well as character. If Harry had been what he is accused of being, he would have always taken the easy way, chosen Malfoy for friend and ally, and coasted through school until Voldemort got around to killing him. Harry is a winning character because he bravely undertakes difficult and dangerous deeds, faces his fate and battles relentlessly, despite suffering most of the other faults, weaknesses, and misjudgements of a typical adolescent.

Even Harry's greatest moment—his climactic face-off with Voldemort in Goblet of Fire—isn't much to crow about. Pure happenstance is the only reason Voldemort is unable to kill Harry: Both their magic wands were made with feathers from the same bird.

Another typically slimy slander. The linking of the wands did not save Harry, it gave him a chance to save himself. Sword stabbed, broken limbed, and tortured, Harry nevertheless found the courage and strength to fight and overcome the greatest and most terrible wizard of the age in the battle of wills for control of the linked wands.

Harry's one undisputed talent is his skill with a broom, which makes him one of the most successful Quidditch players in Hogwarts history. As Rowling puts it the first time Harry takes off on a broom, "in a rush of fierce joy he realized he'd found something he could do without being taught." Harry's talent is so natural as to be virtually involuntary. Admiring Harry for his flying skill is like admiring a cheetah for running fast. It's beautiful, but it's not an accomplishment.

Of course it is, though. Talent and beauty are admired. Shakespeare, Lance Armstrong, and Einstein are noted for their talent - and what they did with it. So it is with Harry. The books would indeed be boring if they resembled the story Sullentrop tells.

I might be tempted to turn him into a toad, but, quite obviously, he already is one.