Why didn't DD reveal Voldemort's identity?

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 186906

> Magpie wrote:
> > <snip> LV being a Half-blood is not the thing that's supposed to be funny, since there's nothing particular funny about it. It's Voldemort himself that needs to be made into a figure of ridicule, just like Hitler. Hitler was laughed at loudly and often while he was trying to take over the world. Especially by the people defying him. It was part of resistance. You can fear something and still laugh at the person causing it. 
> > 
> Carol:
> What's funny about Tom Riddle, the brilliant and handsome orphan who distinguished him at school by becoming first a Prefect and then Head Boy, and by winning an award for services to the school, being Voldemort? 

Magpie:
Because it's mundane. It's human. Before he was the Lord of All Evil he was...dum dum DUMMMM! A school prefect! 

Carol:
It's not remotely funny that he charmed so many people into thinking that he had to potential to be Minister for Magic or that he got away with unprovable murders (had Dumbledore been able to convince the MoM that Hagrid was innocent and Tom Riddle guilty of Moaning Myrtle's murder, he would have done so. Ha, ha, Voldemort's a Half-Blood raised in a Muggle orphanage? I'm not laughing. I see nothing to laugh about. 

Magpie:
Do you see nothing to laugh about at Hitler either? Because his career was actually a lot worse than Voldemort's and yet people laughed at him. As they should have. The devil doesn't like to be mocked. It takes away his power. There's plenty to laugh about for Tom Riddle and anyone else. People laugh at horrible people who commit acts of evil all the time.


Carol:
In fact, his story might even make people feel sorry for him--except for those whom he's already threatened, harmed, or recruited, and knowing his story--the parts that DD can reveal without also revealing that he's investigating Voldemort's past--would, IMO, make no difference.

Magpie:
The guy's terrorizing them, and they learn he was once a schoolboy (totally human and not invincible at all!) and before that he was in a Muggle orphanage. You can't imagine anybody wanting to find anything to laugh about in that past, but you think they'll feel sorry for him even though he's terrorizing them? 

Here's a reason to find something to laugh at instead: it takes away his power. And it's not just his background they're supposed to be laughing at, it's everything. The prissy voice? The tantrums? The transparent fact that not only was he once a schoolboy but he's still obsessed with being a schoolboy? These are all things to be attacked with humor as much as possible. He's a bit of a riot in the graveyard.

Carol: 
> And his being a Half-Blood *is* the part that people are arguing would make a difference. I'm pretty sure, however, that Lucius Malfoy and others like him know that there are no Riddles in "Nature's Aristocracy," and it makes no difference to them. Why not? Because Voldemort's power gives them power as his followers, and his agenda, insofar as it concerns torturing Muggles and putting Muggle-borns in their place, is his agenda.

Magpie:
Yes, people are, but I'm not particularly arguing it. I did say that if there are people following him because they think he's a Pureblood (since he's pushing that agenda) there might be people who change their minds about him when he lets them down there. Maybe many of them wouldn't care at all, but I don't see why the idea should be dismissed like the two things aren't related.

Carol:
> So, yes, of course, JKR does it for plot reasons. And, yes, of course, Dumbledore is secretive. But if we think of Dumbledore as a character capable of independent thinking, who is not merely JKR's puppet, he must have had reasons for not revealing Tom Riddle's identity.

Magpie:
Of course he would have. He would have created any number of reasons for concealing his identity. He wouldn't actually admit to himself he just wanted to hold onto the secret. He'd come up with elaborate reasons why it was cleverer to do it this way and people needed to be protected. She made him a character of independent thinking and then gave him certain obsessions so that his thinking would lead where it did.

-m