Republican Presidential Frontrunners Are All Muggles
In about 29 hours from now, eager readers in the Eastern Time Zone in the United States at parties in thousand of bookstores and libraries will get their copies of the very last Harry Potter book - Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows. It’s an unprecedented cultural phenomenon. Not the iPhone, not Windows95, not the Segway had this kind of pent up release.
The completion of the Harry Potter book series comes at a time when another tale of a battle between the forces of darkness and the forces of light is just getting started: The epic tale that will be the 2008 presidential election.
It ought to come as no surprise, then, that the emerging story of the 2008 presidential contest should be cast in terms native to the Harry Potter books. Underneath the wizardly surface of the Harry Potter world, the issues are ones that we’re all dealing with, a struggle between wicked, cruel and bigoted right wing authoritarians, and those who seek to use their power for more positive aims.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney certainly have been in league with their own band of dementors, in the Azkabans of Homeland Security, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. The Republican frontrunners for 2008 have had no direct hand in those affairs, of course, not having been part of the Bush Administration itself.
So, a different Harry Potter metaphor is being used for those Republican presidential candidates - one of denial of a powerful reality. When it comes to global warming, the shoe certainly fits. The Republican presidential candidates won’t see what’s right in front of their noses. They’re muggles.
Thus, the following bumper stickers: Mitt Romney is a muggle. Fred Thompson is a muggle. Giuliani is a muggle.
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