[HPforGrownups] Rita (was: On Children and the "Other" (was:Re: On the perfection of moral virtues)

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 169551

Alla:

Rita Skeeter IMO while obviously not a Voldemort supporter was 
printing deliberate lies for nothing else except profit. I think it 
is very bad, unless any sort of noble purpose existed there.

I think JKR herself enjoyed punished her, but sure she is not a 
Voldemort supporter.

Now,whether it would be okay if somebody blackmailed Hagrid to quit 
his job. Um, no, it would not be IMO, but if the reason for that 
would be Hagrid spreading out deliberate lies about somebody else, in 
other words, committing something that bad, I would totally 
understand the blackmailer.

Magpie:
Many people who take actions against others are probably angered for some
reason. No one can really fault them for *wanting* to do these things
things.

But just to be clear on what Rita does, exactly (since I think there are
plenty of people who actually do what she does in our world), if printing
lies is terrible, it's Luna's family Hermione should be blackmailing. Their
paper seems to print complete rubbish (when they're not printing the one
interview with Harry), much of which includes conspiracy theories about
real people, accusing them of bad things. (Hermione considers it rubbish,
certainly.) Heck, the Prophet prints lies that are approved by Harry and
his friends. (I sort of love the little aside on how they might be covering
up the events of CoS.) How come Hermione doesn't want to blackmail Luna's
father into bankruptcy for claiming that Fudge is making deals with aliens
or whatever they say he's doing? 

Printing lies for money doesn't exactly describe Rita's job entirely (Mr.
Lovegood probably does far more of it than she does). She makes Harry and
his friends far angrier not for printing lies but for printing slants they
don't like, like saying Arthur and the Ministry aren't doing a good job
(kind of like having Zach writing the article instead of Lee), or true
things like that Hagrid is a half-giant or iirc that Hermione's been
invited to Bulgaria. She sometimes misquotes to get a better story, and
sometimes prints true quotes if they go along with her slant. She gets the
Harry/Hermione story from Colin Creevey talking about Harry, and lets
people draw their own conclusions with a few opinions from people like
Pansy. 

And Hermione doesn't even *care* that Rita did that. She knows perfectly
well how tabloid reporting works and she thinks it's just silly. She knows
she's not dating Harry and cheating on him with Viktor. She gets upset when
Molly thinks less of her, and some crazy people pass judgment on her
and--hmmm, may sound familiar--send her stuff that irritates her skin.
(Though in her case she can cure it; she doesn't get WHORE written across
her face for two years.) Then she decides she deserves to get revenge iirc.
Hermione's showing her power against Rita personally, threatening to tell
about her being an animagus, though I doubt she'd tell anyone if Ron turned
out to be a secret animagus. She would probably scold him to register
legally, but not blackmail him--which would be more fair.

So however Hermione wanted to blackmail Rita for doing her job, I don't
really see any reason why she should have except for the pleasure of it.
(It's ironic that it's the *following* year that the press goes after
Harry.) Somebody else could decide Hagrid had personally irritated them to
the point they wanted to blackmail him to resign--but if I understand and
even share the blackmailer's sentiment to a certain extent depending on the
circumstances, how far does emphatizing with the anger justify the action? 

-