[HPforGrownups] Re: Sportsmanship/legitimacy

[Magpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 151956

Jen:
You know, as a mother myself I can quite honestly say that rewarding
my child for showing such strength of character would be FAR more
important to me than rewarding him for following the rules at the risk
of discarding any sense of humanitarianism and care for other human
beings...why should that be ANY different in this situation?

Magpie:
No one has disagreed that good character is more important and more 
difficult than following the rules in a sporting event.  People noting the 
lack of fair rules in this event should not be subject to implied lack of 
character any more than the other contestants should be.  It is possible to 
value good character over the rules of a game while still thinking that 
games should be played with some kind of rules.  In fact, many of the people 
who didn't like this plot twist much feel that rewarding it undercuts that 
very message of games not mattering as much as character.

If this were my kid I, as his mother, could certainly reward him for holding 
humanitarian principles above the rules of a game--I could praise him in the 
car on the way home.  If my son missed a fly ball in his little league game 
because he was off helping another kid I wouldn't demand he be given credit 
for catching the ball because he would surely have caught it had he been 
standing there and he showed better character by not caring about the game 
enough to put it over another player's feelings anyway.  That's not building 
character, that's making the game meaningless and being an interfering, 
biased mother.

In the original Bad News Bears there's a great scene where a boy pulls a 
stunt to stand up to his bully of a father.  It costs his team the lead, and 
it's generally considered a great moment of a kid showing character.  It 
seems like even the kids in the game understand that on some level.  But 
there's no do-over, the runs still count.  The judges don't decide that 
since the Yankees' pitcher chose to hold on to the ball while the other team 
scored, and blatantly interfered with his team's ability to stop them 
scoring, and did so because he was fighting a much more important battle 
than the game, he deserves credit within the game for that.  His credit 
comes off the field, not on.

Pippin:
I have a feeling this is one of JKR's Inkling moments -- we're being asked 
to consider whether miracles are really God bending the rules, or is it just 
that we have a very imperfect, limited understanding of what the rules are.

Magpie:
The "we have imperfect, limited understanding of what the rules are" doesn't 
work for me in religion either, so that analogy seems to invite criticism of 
religion, not shed a good light on what's going on in the story.  I think 
it's still just the author prefering to end this task this way because she 
feels it's more satisfying.  Maybe she thinks this needs to happen so that 
there's a message that holding something else more important than a game is 
the right thing to do, like if Harry "suffered" for it by being behind in 
points it wouldn't come through or something.

Catherine Higgins:
It was either one of the other racers or all of the other racers, stopped 
and helped the fallen racer up and helped them to finish the race. Again, 
this is blurry, but I think that everyone crossed the line at the same time 
as the fallen racer, so that everyone was a winner.

Magpie:
Except the TWT isn't the Special Olympics and everyone is definitely not a 
winner. Harry is the winner.

-m