{"id":36605,"date":"2016-12-23T03:00:42","date_gmt":"2016-12-23T08:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36605"},"modified":"2016-12-08T12:30:28","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T17:30:28","slug":"a-tribute-to-the-real-hero-of-its-a-wonderful-life-old-man-potter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/23\/a-tribute-to-the-real-hero-of-its-a-wonderful-life-old-man-potter\/","title":{"rendered":"A tribute to the real hero of <em>It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life<\/em> &#8211; Old Man Potter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fee.org\/articles\/old-man-potter-lived-a-wonderful-life\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Mullen<\/a> explains why Mr. Potter is the hero, rather than the villain, in the traditional Christmas-time movie, <em>It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>December is upon us and that means plentiful opportunities to watch the enduring classic, <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of viewers completely misinterpret Frank Capra\u2019s dystopian nightmare as a heartwarming Christmas tale.<\/p>\n<p>The emotional appeal of angels getting their wings is undeniable. Crying out for correction, however, are the vicious slanders regarding the film\u2019s real hero, Henry Potter.<\/p>\n<p>We first hear of Potter from George Bailey\u2019s father, Peter Bailey, who badmouths Potter with the usual falsehoods about businessmen. But during Bailey\u2019s envious rant, we learn something important: Henry Potter is a board member of the building and loan. We later learn Potter is, in fact, a stockholder.<\/p>\n<p>That puts a somewhat different light on his subsequent motion to liquidate the business upon Peter Bailey\u2019s death. Yes, we hear George Bailey repeating the familiar socialist tropes his father did: that Potter only wants to close the building and loan because he \u201ccan\u2019t get his hands on it\u201d and considers the little people cattle, etc.<\/p>\n<p>But Potter responds with some rather inconvenient facts: the building and loan has been making bad business decisions, providing what we\u2019d now call subprime loans to people who can\u2019t pay them back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tom Mullen explains why Mr. Potter is the hero, rather than the villain, in the traditional Christmas-time movie, It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life: December is upon us and that means plentiful opportunities to watch the enduring classic, It\u2019s a Wonderful Life. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of viewers completely misinterpret Frank Capra\u2019s dystopian nightmare as a heartwarming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,25,28],"tags":[345,122],"class_list":["post-36605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-economics","category-media","tag-christmas","tag-movies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9wp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36606,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36605\/revisions\/36606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}