From the Propaganda Analysis Desk

In this week's New Yorker, Hendrick Hertzberg takes aim at President Bush's State of the Union address, noting:

Maybe it was just another Bush SOTU puzzler, like last year’s warning against “human-animal hybrids.” (To be fair, America remains proudly centaur-free.)

Touché, Mr. Remnick, but THE NEW LIBERTINE asks: For how long?

It hasn't escaped the attention of those who keep track of such things—and we count ourselves among them—that President Bush's omission seems less a matter of political triangulation than capitulation to a propaganda putsch that has reached, in recent years, a seeming fever-pitch, as advocates for the so-called "freaks of science" have pulled out all the stops to achieve their dastardly ends.

From the anthropomorphic animated critters littering cable networks like Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, to Tim Burton's remake of the classic Planet of the Apes, the war on non-hybrid humans has begun in earnest.

Some may dismiss such criticism of a film like Burton's as not just fear-mongering and paranoid conspiracy theorizing, but gross misinterpretation: Surely, they argue, Planet of the Apes is an allegory of race in contemporary society. Well, we say: Yes, back in Charlton Heston's day! But Burton's remake turned the tables. Whereas Heston's film humanized the apes—thus to draw parallels between them and the human astronauts and thereby calling into question the logic of segregationary or racist practices—Burton accentuates the animalistic qualities of the apes, drawing what at first seems to be a stark contrast between them and the "normies" only to, in a ham-handed twist of logic familiar to those misfortunate enough the regularly visit their local multiplex, suggest that it is we who are the animal.

Et tu, Brute?

It becomes crystal clear that Burton, too, has joined the secretive cabal bent on generating human-animal hybrids to perform menial jobs Americans won't take once anti-immigrant legislation—or the efforts of human rights activists to grant them even basic rights—makes the costs of migrant labor too substantial. Not to mention the obvious military applications of human-hybrid soldiers, thus relieving the Administration of the awkward need to ever have to reinstate the draft to continue feeding soldiers into the meat-grinder which is Iraq.

And let us not spare the most brazen propagandist herself, a woman whose plucky characters have warmed the hearts of millions globally, allowing her insidious propaganda to be welcomed into countless homes around the world: We speak, of course, of J.K. Rowling.

It did not fail to come to our attention that with the 2003 publication of the fifth installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Rowling went after critics of hybrid creatures directly.

Lovable, gruff Hagrid—the wizarding world's own mad scientist, splicing and dicing the genetic composition of God's great creation left and right—is a half-breed himself, whereas opponents (duly critical) of such unnatural abominations, are regularly portrayed as "evil," "wicked," and "child abusers," whose ideological zeal causes them to cross any line in their relentless efforts to suppress such genetic freaks.

The case in point would be Rowling's depiction of the character of Dolores Umbridge; we are encouraged to believe she is a closed-minded, prejudiced person deserving of scorn in such passages as:

"I do not wish to criticize the way things have been run in this school," she said, an unconvincing smile stretching her wide mouth, "but you have been exposed to some very irresponsible wizards in this class, very irresponsible indeed - not to mention," she gave a nasty little laugh, "extremely dangerous half-breeds."

And today, we have reports that the release date of the final installation in this abominable woman's perverse series is announced, ensuring that this July will be an orgy of pro-mutant rhetoric.