Harper Lee has turned lovers of 20th Century American literary classics on their ears by revealing that era’s most iconic fictional hero -- Atticus Finch -- is a racist. How? Well, it seems Finch, the cornerstone of her universally praised bestselling novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the man who stood against a mob, and then against the policies and bigotry of a segregated South when defending a black man against trumped up raped charges (of a white woman) grew into a Ku Klux Klan-loving white supremacist. This revelation comes in Harper’s just published“Go Set a Watchman.”
The author’s second-ever novel, written before “Mockingbird,” but published 55 years afterward, has hit all those who set their moral internal compasses after the required reading about Scout, Jem, Boo, Tom Robinson and, alas, Atticus hard. Very hard. Who could read the book and come away unmoved? Seeing the movie, well that only sealed the deal, for who could not fall in love with Atticus, as played by Gregory Peck, all over, again? I still rise every time when he passes from the courtroom, having lost a case but won one for humanity. Now I am to believe that man became a racist? I cannot believe I am the only one who is reeling, and anxious to read.
Even without picking up “Watchman” (been waiting so long, Ms. Lee!), it is so perfect that you have somehow perfectly used the mid-20th Century to capture the discontent of 21st Century America. St. Louis. Selma. South Carolina. The burning of black churches throughout the South. The tears of black mothers who cry into pillows as they wonder why the lives of their children seem not to ever matter as much as those of other races.
Yes, fiction meets reality, and it stings.
Then, in the case of Bill Cosby, fiction covered an ugly reality and, as it peels away, that hideous nature of a harmful predator who was protected by fame, fortune and hubris takes your breath away. And reminds me, as an African American, of a time when we, when I was so hungry for a hero, for someone on a big screen or little screen, who looked like me, that fiction was better than nothing.
Can anyone who did not come of age in the 1960s as an African American child possibly know the impact that “I Spy” had as Alexander Scott, aka Scotty, aka Bill Cosby, played equal partner to Kelly Robinson, aka Robert Culp, the first universally accepted black-white buddy pairing that did not require the African American to play a buffoon? Scotty was the trainer, Kelly was the internationally ranked tennis pro. Both were American spies of the first order, again, equals, partners, best friends. A first. Early television technology may not have been ready -- to watch on color TV, you had to choose who you wanted to be green, Cosby or Culp; they couldn’t maintain their natural colors at first, because TV producers could not figure it out! America was ready, however, warming to the comedic give-and-take that helped launch Cosby’s record and movie career, and eventually a gargantuan television career unequalled to this day.Cosby was my hero, a fellow product of Philadelphia, the city where I was born, and Temple U., where I would eventually matriculate. Cosby put my school on the map, once a seemingly impossible task in an area that boasted the laudable University of Pennsylvania, Villanova and St. Joseph's.
What a thrill it was to see him at any sporting event in Philadelphia, to hear his wit and wisdom at any graduation as he spurred generation after generation of Philadelphians to go forth and represent, just as he had.
Now this. Cosby as serial seducer and likely rapist, by his own warped admission in a deposition in which he blithely hangs himself on his own words. Today, the New York Times detailed the deposition Cosby gave in fending off one of many civil suits. He did not fend off, though, but rather admitted an M.O. which detailed his acquiring drugs, including Quaaludes, to knock down women’s defenses so that he could have sex with them. [NY Times, http://nyti.ms/1Lj8qfe]
How did President Obama -- father of two teenage daughters -- firmly put it at his news conference the other day? "“If you give a woman or a man, for that matter, without his or her knowledge, a drug, and then have sex with that person without consent, that’s rape. And this country, any civilized country, should have no tolerance for rape.”
What he did hurt who knows how many women. And what he did hurt how many followers who literally saw in him a second father, a hero, a cultural barrier breaker who would not take no for an answer. Who knew that that last characteristic could mean such ugly things on low, disgusting levels.
