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Even long before anchorman David Brinkley was comparing American political conventions to the rites of primitive tribes, before reporter John Chancellor, being carried off the convention floor by the police, was "reporting from somewhere in custody," presidential politics has always been a big show.

Now one major political party has nominated someone who became famous as the star of a reality TV series, and the other party has chosen someone who has been living out the role of the heroine (or anti-heroine) of a long-running soap opera before our eyes for a quarter of a century. So it is hard to tell where the fantasy ends and real life begins.

The other day The Salt Lake Tribune's Public Forum published a letter comparing the Republican and Democratic conventions to Comic Con. Or to the new fad of people wandering about using their smart phones to track down cartoon characters called Pokémon.

All of those, wrote friend of the The Tribune James Oshust of Salt Lake City, involve people dressing up funny and pretending to believe in things that don't really exist, to admire actors who pretend to be super-powered heroes, because it gives them momentary hope.

That was about the time we learned that Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has a small but heroic part in a very small movie called "Sharknado: The 4th Awakens." The clip available on YouTube shows the governor barking out orders to his staff about what measures to take to protect the state in general, and Salt Lake City Comic Con in particular, from the phenomenon of sharks being carried all over the place in a tornado. Then he is seen defending his office from flying sharks by swatting them away with his trusty tennis racket.

(I've never been present at a Herbert staff meeting, but he doesn't strike me as a barking-out-orders kind of guy. But, hey, it's a movie. We're all being attacked by flying sharks. And Herbert does have a reputation as a pretty good tennis player.)

All of this politics and fantasy stuff acquired a scientific sheen the other day when an academic named Diana Mutz, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, published research that suggests that the more Harry Potter books a person has read, the less likely they are to support the candidacy of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

It boils down to the notion that Potter fans have been inculcated with — or brought with them into that universe — a deep sense of right and wrong. That includes an acceptance of all kinds of beings. That includes goblins, elves, giants, dragons and centaurs, not to mention wizards and witches. And, oh, yes, muggles. Non-magic people, from whom some of our favorite magical characters are descended.

The war between good and evil that carries across all those books and movies is rooted in the determination by the villain of the piece, Lord Voldemort, to enforce a sort of anti-muggle racial purity in the wizarding world. You know, like deporting all the elves or building a wall to keep out centaurs. Sound familiar?

There's also some important lore, involving something that may or may not have really been said by a person who was unquestionably real, that applies.

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter was supposed to have been debating a much younger know-it-all who did not share the great jurist's optimism for the future of humanity.

"And how," the young man is supposed to have asked, "do you know that the human race is worth saving?"

Replied the judge, "I have read Anne Frank's diary."

Not to put J.K. Rowling at the same heroic level as Anne Frank, who memorialized the experience of a few people hiding from Nazi tyranny before they were carried away to concentration camps where many of them, including Anne, died.

But many more people have read Rowling's Harry Potter series. It has a happier ending. A lot more merchandising possibilities. And, apparently, has been a good influence on a generation's political thinking.

Mario Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Or maybe we do both with stories.

George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, has a movie line quote for just about any situation. gpyle@sltrib.com