Admonishing Snape

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 129564

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at q...> 

> Pippin:

<snip>

> It's true we've never seen her gratuitously insult a student, but
> then we've never seen her with a student who gets on her nerves 
> the way, oh, Sybil Trelawney does. Tripe, anyone? 

Subtle insults are rather different than the gratuitous; unlike 
Snape, we also learn from McG that she has professional standards 
about talking about her colleagues.  Yes, it's obvious to the kids 
that she doesn't like Trelawney, but she makes a point *that she 
won't come out and say it*.  Unlike Snape insulting Lupin to Lupin's 
own class.  Ohhh, professionalism.

> All you can say is that McGonagall is fairer (and that's saying a
> lot) but that has come with the years. She's still sniffling over 
> the way she treated Peter Pettigrew, and she let the Marauders get 
> away with stuff that Draco and his gang haven't contemplated in 
> their wildest dreams.

<snip>

> And she'd have to have a helluva lot of brass to admonish Snape for 
> the way he treats his students, after the way she let him be 
> treated when he was one.

I think you give McG way too much responsibility for controlling the 
actions of her students--Dumbledore didn't exactly step in either and 
stop Snape from being bullied, from what we've seen.  It's likely 
that his extent of knowledge of what was happening, given how much he 
knows about what goes on in the school, was considerably larger, as 
well.  Hmmm...Dumbledore practices tolerance and doesn't step in 
where it's not his place, right?  If that applies to present-day 
Snape in the classroom, it could very well to the past as well (and 
let's be fair and consistent, no?).  No one actively steps in unless 
it seems about ready to come to blows, such as the end of OotP.

But what really confuses me here is your casual conflation of agency 
and responsibility.  McG's sins are those of omission if at all, 
failing to control students who she doesn't keep tabs on 24 hours a 
day.  Snape's sins are those of his own commission: he's not being 
considered here for what would be the matching crime to McG's, 
failing to keep Draco and crew from nasty activities.  He's being 
considered for his very own bullying ways inside the classroom and 
out of it.

I didn't answer this some time ago, but I come down *at present* in 
partial agreement with phoenixgod: Snape's sarcasm is really funny 
much of the time, and there are times I find myself cheering him on.  
But verbally and emotionally beating up on kids with the complete 
imbalance of power and authority behind it...not so admirable.  
Saying that he's good when he doesn't do that, when he restrains his 
nastiness, is a little like saying "Look!  That man *isn't* kicking 
at the pigeons!"

-Nora notes that we'll all have to rethink Snape in a month and a 
half, and wonders how many people's images of the character will 
survive (including her own)