Dumbledore calls a spade a spade

[horridporrid03]

No: HPFGUIDX 142941

> >>Namarie:
> As did many others, I quite enjoyed reading Prof Dumbledore telling 
> the Dursleys precisely what he thought of their actions.  They have 
> failed Dudley, creating a flawed human being, and the Headmaster is 
> the only person who ever said so in such  unambiguous words.  Notes 
> from the elementary school and from Smeltings were read through the 
> lens of denial.  That the Headmaster cast his actions in the mold of 
> politeness, while being insufferably impolite, is a quintessentially 
> Victorian way of doing things. (My grandmother was born in 1894.  If 
> she didn't like you, she was cooly {coldly} formal with you.)
> So, to all of you who castigate the Head for bullying, I say, "Tosh.'

Betsy Hp:
Just out of curiosity, would your grandmother have shown up, uninvited 
and unannounced at the house of someone she's never met?  Would she 
pull a weapon and bodily force them into a seat?  Would she beat them 
over the head because they refused to drink what she placed before 
them?

Again, I thought Dumbledore's speech was fine.  But his bullying 
actions before his speech (and I'm genuinely flummoxed by folks 
insisting that hitting someone on the head is somehow polite and not 
bullying at all) weaken any argument he puts forth, IMO.

I can understand that some people see Dumbledore's actions as funny 
and only too owed to the Dursleys, that the Dursleys are being served 
their just desserts as it were.  But to try and couch his actions as 
only proper and the hight of civility, to try and deny that Dumbledore 
was using his position as a wizard to overwhelm and overpower the 
Dursleys is to ignore the text, IMO.

Betsy Hp