I think that’s exactly what Drethelin meant when s/he said “semi-accurate”. The point is that all Skeeter did was make up gossip and at the end of the day that’s not that bad. If you can point to an actual instance of someone dying or coming to great harm that stemmed from a Skeeter article, then… you can think of ONE bad thing she did. And your proposed solution is to kill her?
Hermione solves the Skeeter problem in Canon without shedding any blood, and even she goes overboard on the justice by trapping the woman inside a glass jar for hours/days. I can think of plenty of ways to stifle Skeeter without even using teleportation or invisibility or time travel—imagine what a mighty wizard like Quirrel could do. Quirrel even says that he’s going to crush her (turns out he meant that literally) just for the sheer enjoyment of it, and not because it’s what she deserves.
I just think that the people who support killing Rita Skeeter probably decided that it was a good idea because they hated her, and then cast around for justifications that sounded better than that.
If you can point to an actual instance of someone dying or coming to great harm that stemmed from a Skeeter article, then… you can think of ONE bad thing she did.
If you dredged through canon, you would probably only come up with 20-30 deaths unequivocally and specifically at Voldemort’s hand as opposed to random Death Eaters, mysterious deaths, deaths inferred but not actually known to have been Voldemort’s doing, general carnage implied but not stated etc. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all!
Demanding specific incidents is like demanding specific incidents of lung cancer before you can discuss the moral guilt of tobacco executives. ‘Ah, but how do you know that lung cancer was thanks to their tobacco smoking? Lung cancer is pretty common, you know!’ Or power plants or...
(‘How do you know Skeeter’s articles helped kill this particular person during Voldemort’s ignored rise to power in canon, or helped him kill people during his first war? Can you prove that Skeeter’s article was either necessary or sufficient to keep the population apathetic and let people like Cedric Diggory die?’)
In the real world, we have the luxury of investigating propagandists like Anwar Al-Awlaki or Goebbels, and can even nail them all the way down to specific deaths—this Somali kid in Minneasota decided to become a jihadi, killing himself and 4 others, that sort of thing.
In the fictional world, alas, short of someone asking Rowling whether Skeeter’s articles contributed to any deaths, we cannot know. There’s no fact of the matter about it. It’s fake, it’s not real, it never happened.
In the real world, however, being the top reporter on a government propaganda rag… What sort of blood-guilt do you think a comparable North Korean reporter or news anchor (eg. Ri Chun Hee) bears?
If you dredged through canon, you would probably only come up with 20-30 deaths unequivocally and specifically at Voldemort’s hand as opposed to random Death Eaters, mysterious deaths, deaths inferred but not actually known to have been Voldemort’s doing, general carnage implied but not stated etc. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all!
But you’ve moved the goalposts. I didn’t ask for deaths that were unequivocally and specifically at Skeeter’s hand—there definitely aren’t ANY of those, so if that was our condition of guilt she’d be good and Voldemort would be bad. All I asked for were ones that could be traced back to one of her articles—perhaps there are one or two of those, but if we’re allowing that as our condition of guilt then Voldemort shares responsibility for just about every death we hear about in canon so he has hundreds if not thousands of deaths on his hands.
Either way, my point was that in order to argue that Skeeter’s death was justified on utilitarian grounds, one has to prove that killing her would save lives. Killing her definitely costs one life. Stopping her from publishing costs no lives. I’m not trying to argue that Skeeter is a good person, I’m just pointing out that in the grand scheme of things she’s not that bad, and that there are plenty of ways to eliminate her as a threat without getting blood on one’s hands.
Your example about the tobacco executives is misleading. We DO require evidence that tobacco kills in order to condemn tobacco executives as being morally bankrupt. Luckily, we have that evidence. I’m asking for evidence that Skeeter articles kill, because one of the main arguments of the Kill Skeeter camp seems to be that they do kill. If you can bring me that evidence I’ll continue to agree that Skeeter needs to be stopped but I still won’t agree that she should have been killed, any more than I want to kill tobacco executives.
I’m going to repeat that for the sake of clarity. My argument is not:
“Skeeter never hurt anyone so she should be spared.”
My argument is:
“Well, I don’t agree that Skeeter definitely did kill anyone—I want to hear more evidence. Even if she did, though, we don’t need to kill her to save lives, so we shouldn’t do that. Therefore, Quirrel did a bad thing.”
When did I ever propose killing her? Quirrell is evil, but just because Rita got herself killed by someone more evil than she was doesn’t mean she wasn’t a pretty terrible person.
Setting aside that incredibly weighted analogy…
I think that’s exactly what Drethelin meant when s/he said “semi-accurate”. The point is that all Skeeter did was make up gossip and at the end of the day that’s not that bad. If you can point to an actual instance of someone dying or coming to great harm that stemmed from a Skeeter article, then… you can think of ONE bad thing she did. And your proposed solution is to kill her?
Hermione solves the Skeeter problem in Canon without shedding any blood, and even she goes overboard on the justice by trapping the woman inside a glass jar for hours/days. I can think of plenty of ways to stifle Skeeter without even using teleportation or invisibility or time travel—imagine what a mighty wizard like Quirrel could do. Quirrel even says that he’s going to crush her (turns out he meant that literally) just for the sheer enjoyment of it, and not because it’s what she deserves.
I just think that the people who support killing Rita Skeeter probably decided that it was a good idea because they hated her, and then cast around for justifications that sounded better than that.
If you dredged through canon, you would probably only come up with 20-30 deaths unequivocally and specifically at Voldemort’s hand as opposed to random Death Eaters, mysterious deaths, deaths inferred but not actually known to have been Voldemort’s doing, general carnage implied but not stated etc. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all!
Demanding specific incidents is like demanding specific incidents of lung cancer before you can discuss the moral guilt of tobacco executives. ‘Ah, but how do you know that lung cancer was thanks to their tobacco smoking? Lung cancer is pretty common, you know!’ Or power plants or...
(‘How do you know Skeeter’s articles helped kill this particular person during Voldemort’s ignored rise to power in canon, or helped him kill people during his first war? Can you prove that Skeeter’s article was either necessary or sufficient to keep the population apathetic and let people like Cedric Diggory die?’)
In the real world, we have the luxury of investigating propagandists like Anwar Al-Awlaki or Goebbels, and can even nail them all the way down to specific deaths—this Somali kid in Minneasota decided to become a jihadi, killing himself and 4 others, that sort of thing.
In the fictional world, alas, short of someone asking Rowling whether Skeeter’s articles contributed to any deaths, we cannot know. There’s no fact of the matter about it. It’s fake, it’s not real, it never happened.
In the real world, however, being the top reporter on a government propaganda rag… What sort of blood-guilt do you think a comparable North Korean reporter or news anchor (eg. Ri Chun Hee) bears?
But you’ve moved the goalposts. I didn’t ask for deaths that were unequivocally and specifically at Skeeter’s hand—there definitely aren’t ANY of those, so if that was our condition of guilt she’d be good and Voldemort would be bad. All I asked for were ones that could be traced back to one of her articles—perhaps there are one or two of those, but if we’re allowing that as our condition of guilt then Voldemort shares responsibility for just about every death we hear about in canon so he has hundreds if not thousands of deaths on his hands.
Either way, my point was that in order to argue that Skeeter’s death was justified on utilitarian grounds, one has to prove that killing her would save lives. Killing her definitely costs one life. Stopping her from publishing costs no lives. I’m not trying to argue that Skeeter is a good person, I’m just pointing out that in the grand scheme of things she’s not that bad, and that there are plenty of ways to eliminate her as a threat without getting blood on one’s hands.
Your example about the tobacco executives is misleading. We DO require evidence that tobacco kills in order to condemn tobacco executives as being morally bankrupt. Luckily, we have that evidence. I’m asking for evidence that Skeeter articles kill, because one of the main arguments of the Kill Skeeter camp seems to be that they do kill. If you can bring me that evidence I’ll continue to agree that Skeeter needs to be stopped but I still won’t agree that she should have been killed, any more than I want to kill tobacco executives.
I’m going to repeat that for the sake of clarity. My argument is not:
My argument is:
When did I ever propose killing her? Quirrell is evil, but just because Rita got herself killed by someone more evil than she was doesn’t mean she wasn’t a pretty terrible person.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to point the finger at you specifically. I should more correctly have written, “the proposed solution,” or something.