Hogwarts in 2020 looks much the same as it did in the early aughts. The castle is unchanged, most of the professors are still there (Kristen Wiig played Professor MacGonagall and Bill Hader sported a vampiric black wig as Professor Snape), and Harry Potter is still hanging out on campus! Yes, the Boy Who Lived is in his twenties and desperate to relive his glory days, drinking beer and razzing the new students to the chagrin of everyone who knows him.

In a breakthrough study whose results will shock absolutely no one following the Congressional budget wars, campaign finance research group Open Secrets has found that He Who Must Not Be Named is a far more influential donor to candidates in federal elections than his nemesis, Harry Potter. The group found the amount of money “Harry Potter” and “Tom Riddle” have been pouring into campaigns, and found the latter outspending the former on the federal level.

Call it a case of bad timing.

Sarah Palin‘s new documentary feature The Undefeated was released in select cities today, but its release has been completely overshadowed by the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, the final installment in the popular film series.

It’s wonderful when a tale of bikini waxing gone awry can bring you to a moment of blissed-out geekery, and that’s exactly what happened to me earlier this week when I clicked on Styleite for their Rihanna’s Waxing Tale From Hell story, as told to British television presenter Graham Norton on his eponymous show. While that’s certainly worth an excruciating look, for me the real gem was the next video in the YouTube chain from that program, featuring Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter — aka a ginormous geek. Because the thing he wanted to do, so badly that he studied and practiced and shushed the audience for breaking his concentration, was sing Tom Lehrer’s famous — and famously difficult — “The Elements Song.”

How huge is Harry Potter right now? Huge enough that video of the stars faking American accents was one of the most popular stories yesterday. Huge enough that so many people I know went to see the midnight screening last night that I could make my own Rotten Tomatoes aggregation from their Twitter reviews alone. And huge enough that Conan O’Brien couldn’t get through a Potter joke in his monologue without being completely derailed by a fan in full costume in the audience.

MTV sat down with the cast of the four young stars of the upcoming Harry Potter movie (and all the past Harry Potter movies) for a funny segment teaching the British actors about America.

What did they learn? Everything from “Glenn Beck” to “mozzarella sticks.”

With the end of the year, the end of the decade, and the end of President Obama’s first year in office all fast approaching there is likely to be a bit of a battle of the listicle coming our way. The Washington Post is putting its own spin on Obama’s many, many presidential speeches and has created a searchable online database, which allows readers to search by issue to get available transcripts and video. It also boasts a tag cloud of words used the most. Any guesses?

On this Thanksgiving, Mediaite turns 143 days old. We’ll be checking in today between turkey courses, and throughout the rest of the long weekend, but we also wanted to look back on the 143 days since we were first born on that early July morning.

And what better way to look at our history than to break down some of the things we’re thankful for.

After Harry Potter’s worldwide record-breaking weekend, we got to talking about certain parallels between the magical land of Hogwarts and the equally magical land of headlines, bylines, cutlines, chyrons, blog pickup and declining ad pages. Turns out, the two have a lot in common!

On that note, for your edification and enjoyment, we present our own version – let’s call it “Harry Potter and the Media Muggles.”

Harry Potter fans may roll their eyes, but a Mormon housewife’s vampire romance rivals the popularity of the wizard world. Ever since publishing house Little, Brown took a chance on Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, America has been bitten by vamp-lust.

Here at Mediaite we have had a disproportionate number of horror-filled posts, about monsters and vampires and zombies and Glenn Beck. And no, this isn’t just an excuse to post a picture of Megan Fox, how dare you imply such a thing!

It’s surprising to many that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay has a library, but it does — and an extensive one at that.

When pan-Arab newspaper Dar Al-Hayat asked the librarian at Guantanamo Bay what the most-requested books were, this is what they found:

Maybe it’s all that medium is the message stuff, but Mediaite has been popping up in the television world a lot lately. Prior to all that scruffy-faced interrupting, Mediaite made a cameo on Anderson Cooper 360‘s “The Shot.” Apparently Anderson Cooper is a bit of a moody muggle.

Like vampire or zombie bites, geekdom is infectious. But this year it really seems like something has changed. Everyone seems to be talking about Comic-Con. With an entertainment industry that is interested in sequels, franchises and the already-proven value of any new investment in an entertainment property, Comic-Con has become the center of both the entertainment-industrial complex as well as the countless fan-universes that each franchise has created.

•Now, realtors are backing out of newspaper advertising. Curse you, Craig Newmark! (RQ)

•Just want to mention the brilliance of the category tag for this post – “Scott La-Rocked” (CH)

•Mad magazine’s grotesque cartoonist and illustrator Basil Wolverton moves from magazine cover to gallery this august: “The images in pen and ink — Wolverton worked almost exclusively in this medium — were a virtuoso exercise in bad taste, made all the weirder for being so meticulously executed.” (ZT)

It’s not often that some fake character becoming really famous makes me feel old. But the popularity of Harry Potter has consumed me with an overwhelming feeling of being old-fashioned. You see, I really know next to nothing about Harry Potter. He means nothing at all to me.

Women’s fashion magazine covers typically fall somewhere between sexy and sophisticated. But finding the sweet spot is much trickier when your cover girl is still a teen. This month, women’s fashion mags across the globe plucked their covergirls from the young, supple crop of up-and-comers. Does putting teens on the cover help attract younger readers? (Or any readers at all?)

The real Hurt Locker, Glenn Beck opines on health care, and the Vatican gives Harry Potter two thumbs up…Plus! Other fun things we’ve come across during our day reaping the fruits of the Internet.