Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this
is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,
episode number 109
with our book today, a southern gothic novel
and, build on. I love saying that word. It's
Jesan, that stands alongside Uncle Tom's
Cabin as one of the rare books in the United States of America
and cultural and literary history that has grown larger in the
American social conscience over the long course of time.
The author wrote of what she saw and experienced directly
during her childhood and during a time when people weren't necessarily
bleeding all over themselves in public because there was no Internet
and there was no social media. Reactions
to the novel varied widely upon publication.
Despite the number of copies sold and its widespread use in education
litter literary analysis of this book is actually
shockingly sparse. In speaking about
the novel, the author once said, I know and I quote,
I never expected any sort of success with this book. I
was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers,
but at the same time, I sort of hope someone would like it enough to
give me encouragement, public encouragement. I
hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot.
And in some ways this was just about as frightening as the
quick merciful death I'd expected.
Close quote. This book,
which garnered its first time author
and unheard of Pulitzer Prize win, has not
endured a quote, unquote quick merciful death in the public conscience.
Instead, just the opposite has happened with
this book. Today, we will
be focusing on some of the very many
ins and outs of whatever
re one in high school, at least believes is one of the
important novels by a female author of the
late 20th century, the 19
sixties Tom Kill a Mockingbird by
Harper Lee. Leaders know the
difference between positions and principles and choose
very carefully where you will stand.
And, of course, today, as usual, we will be joined
by our regular co host, Tom Libby. This
is Tom's favorite book, and he was very excited to do this episode once
he saw it on the list last year. So how are you doing, Tom?
I am doing great. And you're right. It was it is definitely one of
my I put it in probably the top five of my all time favorites. Like,
when you think of books, you know, that you have read throughout your life Mhmm.
Number 1 and 2 kinda bounce back and forth between this and bury my
heart at wounded knee and a couple of others. But but this is definitely definitely
at certain points has been my one of my all time favorite books. And as
we get deeper into the book itself, I I'm sure
why will come out as during this episode fourth at least I hope the why
comes out. Yeah. It's I def I
so I had read this book, not in high not
early in high school, which is most people are usually assigned in, like, 8th, 9th
grade, somewhere in that weird, like middle school, early high school kind
of period. I got the book when I
was probably 16 or
17 was my first interaction with, to kill a mockingbird.
And I vaguely remember reading probably
about half of it and then just
kinda wandering away slowly from it. Not because it was a bad
book, but because at that time in my life, I was kinda distracted by
a whole bunch of other nonsense. You know, I was into movies, and I was
into comic books, and it just seemed, you know, it had
the, had the cover, by the way, the copy of the book that I have
here, I'll show it on the video. Those of you who are listening to the
audio can't see it, but this is the original,
Harper perennial modern classics cover from the
19 sixties for Tom Kill and Mockingbird. This is the cover of the book that
I had back in the day when I checked it out from the library, because
the library by the way, for those of you who don't know, the library was
this giant sampling thing before the Internet where you went and got books. You know?
Although I hear gen z is actually going there
because it's quiet and it's a no phone zone, and they can actually, like,
talk to people. Imagine that.
It's the new bar anyway. But this is the version that I
have. And, and the version that I had when I was a kid did not
have winner of the Pulitzer Prize on it. I I think they put that on,
like, after she, after she died, in 2016. And we'll
talk about, of course, fourth literary life of Harper Lee and get into a little
bit of her background, which is a little bit Tom be more fascinating than a
book, but to close my thought, I had read it when I was
like I said, 16 or 17. And I kind of just wandered away from it
and I never went back and picked it back up again. And then as a
result of this podcast, went back and looked at it again. And of course I've
seen the Gregory Peck movie, you know, who
hasn't? But I don't think I've revisited that either. I might go
back and watch that after we get done with this recording. Maybe I'll watch that
this weekend. I would suggest that knowing you as a movie
buff as you are because there are some nuances to that
movie that you just don't see today. Right. Right?
Like facial expressions and the the way that the cinematography
works on the Zooms and things like that because you don't need to do that
today with all the technology we have. And, I
would essays, you know, I mean, Gregory Peck is Gregory Peck. And
and, you know, people can argue how
great he was and one of the better actors of all time, blah blah blah,
so so forth. But I gotta honestly, in this movie, he was
even from my standard, like, he was really good. And then even more
a real weird thing that I realized
that that not a lot of people know, just a very small, you
know, kinda footnote turning, is this was Robert
Duvall's first movie.
Okay. That's interesting. Fun fact. Robert Robert Duvall
plays the, the role of Boo Radley in the in the movie.
Yeah. Yeah. And, it was his it was his first movie role. So I thought
that was interesting too. Just so for those two things alone, I would suggest you
watch the movie because it was interesting to to, to watch the movie
knowing that. Yeah. Well and I who's the last thing I saw
Gregory Peckin? The last movie I oh,
Roman holiday. Well, my because my daughter who
doesn't like other things, certain books, she
she really she really enjoys Roman holiday because she likes the idea of,
like, essays and riding around Europe. And, of course, Gregory Peck is in
that with, oh, what's her name? Audrey Audrey
Hepburn. And then of course, I've seen Gregory Peck
in guns of Navarone. And as an actor, he always
impressed me as being a guy who was he
was sort of he wasn't Cary Grant or Cary Grant always, like, sort of smirked
at the camera. He's a smirking kind of gentleman. That's why he could do comedy.
Gregory Peck took himself, at least least as an actor, I always thought
he did, and the roles that he played. He always played morally
serious roles, like, with moral weight. He sort of reminds me
a little bit of, George Clooney in
that way a little bit, except, you know,
Clooney came along at a different time and has different parameters because it's just
different era. But I could easily see Clooney doing Gregory Peck
Sorrells. Because I think he, I think he sort of likes that idea of
being a serious actor. Whereas
Carrie Grant was always more like Brad
Pitt. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Oh,
I know I'm good looking and I'm gonna kinda like smirk around it and
get whatever. I'm like, Tom it. Anyway,
I'll watch Tom kill Mockingbird this weekend. I'll I'll check it out. It's on, it's
on TCM classics actually, in the, in the max,
app. So I actually, I actually,
I saw it on, to be. Oh, on Tubi.
Okay. Alright. I I just got I just got turned on to Tubi, like, about
2 months ago. So It's an it's an interesting platform, but we don't have to
talk about tech. No. We don't. We don't. Because that will lead into a discussion
of, like, Brooklyn 99, and no one is, you know, no one is no one
cares about us. Exactly. No one cares about us talking about any of that. But
but I think but but book to the the movie book comparison,
I I felt very strongly that this was one of
those movies that did that did the book justice
Okay. Versus because I know a lot of times now, we're turning we're turning books
into entire series of shows on
on whether it's HBO or or whatever, HBO Max or
Netflix or whatever because we're we're trying to shy away
from trying to fit a, you know, 300 page book into a hour you know,
it's a 90 minute movie. Or they're doing things like Dune where they're
separating the movie out into, like, 2 or 3, 4 parts, but it's
still you know, Dune's 3 hours. So we're trying to fit
I I think this was one of the few books to me that took a
regular length movie and actually did the book justice.
Well, and I Her components were in it. All the major, like, dialogue was
in it. All the major story lines, all the major
moral thoughts that they had in it. Like, you got almost all of that
from the movie that you that you did by reading the book. So I thought
I thought it was a really good really good depiction. Well, Harper Lee was
involved in the, I believe she was involved in writing the screenplay. The original
screenplay. The original screenplay, which I mean, you know, if
Scott Fitzgerald wrote screenplays, but, you know, I think if I
remember correctly, and of course our listeners can correct me on this,
because I don't have IMDb up right now, but if I remember correctly, he
wrote the movie script for his novel tend to risk the night.
And he was, and he was, he didn't like Hollywood. He didn't like working with
Hollywood. He did it because he had to eat and he moved on with the
rest of his life, but he struggled with with that
conversion of his book to a script. But the other the
other author that I think of, 20 century author who worked really well in
film was William Faulkner. William Faulkner wrote a lot of
scripts and Faulkner. Well, no. Harper
Lee is often brought up in the conversation along with William
Faulkner as one of those, as I said in the turning, southern gothic writers
that sort of really captured this out during a particular historical and cultural
moment. And the fact that that script had all that in there
was probably I mean, obviously due to her influence. She knew what to cut, you
know, of her own, of her own work. All
right. Well, let's get into the book. As usual with a
book of this weight and this, size that is, of course,
still in copyright, you can't get an open source version of To Kill A
Mockingbird, like anywhere. We will be summarizing To Kill a
Mockingbird. So we'll be looking at really the first
part. This is divided up into 2 parts, and there's a lot of
stuff that happens in this book. We cannot possibly cover the whole book.
So I would recommend you going out and readers it. But Tom kill and
Mockingbird opens with, the characters of
Jim Fitch, Atticus Finch, dill,
Calpurnia, Boo Radley, who we already mentioned, played by Robert
Duvall, the film, and, and scout, Jesan
Louise Finch. She's the narrator of the story. Now Scout stands in
for Harper Lee, in this, in this
novel, and the entire thing is written. And
then this is gonna be one of the things that's gonna capture you. And it,
and as an adult, it really fourth kind of blew me away that she was
able to hold the narrative all the way through. But, it's
written through her, her eyes, right through what she essays,
and not the eyes of an adult, although it is an adult looking
book. But it's an adult looking back and then trying to fit themselves
into a 6 to 8 year old brain and
mindset, and not do it in a precocious or
precious kind of way, which is one of the one of the one of the
reasons why this book works. In chapters 1
through 4 of Tom kill a Mockingbird, we learned that, all of
the children, live in a segregated environment in,
in Macomb, Alabama. But they don't perceive the
segregation deeply, nor are they in an age where it will impact the
impressions of their lives. We often talk in our own era and Tom
and I will talk a little bit about this today as well, because this is
one of the main themes of the book. We often talk in our era about
can't children see race and how soon should we begin bias training with children
and how soon should we begin, you know, knocking down social and cultural
biases around race or gender or any other form of identity. And the
fact of the matter is, do children come in? No, not do
children. The fact of the matter is children come into the world with certain
impressions, for sure, but they also come in blank. It's a weird mix
and you don't know where the blank parts are and you don't know where the
impression parts are. And the first four chapters of To Kill A
Mockingbird really set that tone. We're looking at a child's
life through a child's eyes, and there is segregation,
but that word isn't even used
by Scout anywhere in the book. No. It's too
complicated a word for a
6 to 8-year-old. The father
Atticus Finch played by Gregory Peck in the movie, is a local
attorney. And the Jesan main theme of the
book that we'll talk about today is this idea of a paternal
presence that sets the moral undertone of not only a
family, but also of the book. Again, this is something that's really
interesting and why I don't think To Killamocky Bird could be written today.
We live in a world where we are currently in the
backwash of the Homer Simpson father
figure kind of idea, where the father is kinda dumb
and, kinda not great. And the mom has to come along. I
even see this on social media. And the father the mom has to come along
and fix things that the father does. And there's a tension there.
Right? Because the reality is we do live in a world of competent fathers.
I mean, we're recording this, the day after d
day, in, in 2024.
And Father's Day is coming up, which is
according to one comedian I follow, but interestingly enough on Instagram,
the worst holiday ever.
He he has a compelling he's a compelling argument there.
Even my children struggle with what Tom get me for father's day. And I, and
I tell them as I'm sure every father who is listening, even Tom's a father,
every father listening tells them you don't have to really give me anything because I
can already get everything myself. If I already want to get it,
I don't need anything. But
Atticus presents that moral weight,
particularly for Scout and for her
brother, Jesan, and their friend, Bill. He also
presents the moral weight for the town, as a local
attorney, and we get the beginnings of that. And a lot of
the ways in which Scout views him are the way a
child views, views a grown up, not in the way
grown ups view other grown ups. So there are many things that
are mystery in these first four chapters to, to
scout. We also begin to explore in chapters 1 through fourth
character of the town of Maycomb, through its citizens and
their relation to history as perceived by a child. Again,
I wanna reemphasize, this is not written from an adult's
perspective. There's not an adult sense of maturity
and wisdom and and even cynicism on all of this. There is a sense
of innocence in To Kill a Mockingbird, and that's probably why it's
assigned to high school students, because,
you know, if you're a teenager, you can really read this book and really get
your arms around it because you think adults are stupid and they don't know anything.
And from your perspective, they are stupid and they don't know anything.
But you're also still a child. Right? You still
have some, depending upon your circumstances, sense of
wonder about what is laying in front of you in the world.
When we think about To Kill a Mockingbird, we have to think about Harper
Lee. She was born on April
28, 1926, and she died February 19,
2016, not but a few years ago.
She was an American novelist, and that's pretty much the only
job she had that I can find anyway. She was the
youngest of 4 children. Her parents were Francis
Cunningham and Amasa Coleman Lee. Lee's mother
was a homemaker, but her father was a former newspaper editor, a businessman, and
a lawyer who also served in the Alabama state legislature from 1926
to 1938. And I do believe that she had a strong relationship with her father
because, well, Atticus Finch is basically
Arberly's dad. Through her father, she was related
to confederate general Robert E. Lee and a member of the
prominent Lee family. Before, her father,
Amasa Coleman Lee became a title lawyer, he once defended 2 black
men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a
father and a son were hanged, which is how things happened back in the
day. And I'll tell a story here on the podcast a little bit
later, about my own personal
interaction with such
social problems. While enrolled
at Monroe County High School, Lee developed an interest in English literature,
in part through her teacher, Gladys Watson, who became also her mentor.
In the summer of 1948, Lee attended a summer school program. And by the
way, she was already writing by this point, small articles,
magazine publications, things like that. Right? And her father
thought that the summer school program, European civilization in the
20th century at Oxford University in England,
would help her may be more interested in legal studies at
Tuscaloosa because he really wanted her to go off and become a lawyer.
That turned out to be a hope in vain. And that was not the
path that she was going to go down.
So we've got Harper Lee and we've got to kill a mockingbird and we've got
some background here. So Tom, what's
your reaction to the first encounter your first encounter with Keller Mark.
We're talk a little bit about that, and the impression that this book has made
on you. Well, I
I think that that by itself is probably a loaded question because I I think
we could stop right there, and we could just talk for the next hour and
a half about just this question.
Because so I found one of the reasons I
found this book so fascinating was I grew up in a
very mixed race environment. I I grew I grew up
very poor. I mean, I felt like I was I was reading about
myself in some portions of this book. Right? Like, not
not I wasn't in Alabama. I get that. Like but and it certainly wasn't
racially segregated the way that they were talking about, but we felt economically
segregated. Like, whether you were black, white, or Hispanic, or or other,
we were all in that group treated just differently than some of our
counterparts that weren't growing up in that in that air in in that
same neighborhood. So but but one of the things that that really
stood out to me was, I should
probably preface this. So this this might make a little bit of an impact to
your to the audience. So I grew up not
knowing my biological father until I was about 21, 22 years
old. Okay. So when I so when I read when I started
reading, like, I I almost kinda
wanted a father like Atticus. Right? Like like Atticus Finch where and
I felt like he would be the kinda guy that I could bring home my
friends that were not
racially the same as me, and he wouldn't have treated them differently based
strictly on the way they looked because that's how that's the feeling you got
from him in the book, that his moral compass was in such a way
that that he was judging people by their merit,
not other factors, including how poor they were. And if you
again, if you read the book, Scout at one point even asks him, daddy, are
we poor? And he says yes. And she goes, are we as poor as the
other family? I can't remember the name of the family at this point, but are
we as poor as the other fit? And he goes, well, they're farmers and we're
not. The farmers were hit harder. So, yeah,
they're a little bit more poor than we are, but we're never gonna make them
feel that way, essentially. I'm paraphrasing. But
so he even looked at it like the poor
looking down at the poor, and he didn't care what their race or
or color was at that point. He just felt like we're not gonna make them
feel bad because they're more poor than we are. We're just gonna make them feel
we're gonna make them feel like they're they're our peers, so to speak. And again,
I'm paraphrasing. But when I when I'm reading stuff
like that and when I was looking at this as a kid, I'm thinking to
myself, wow. Like, I if I had a doubt like that, like, all my
friends could come over and he wouldn't think anything of it. Like, he wouldn't
he wouldn't invite them to dinner or because he does that in the
book with one of the one of the kids that Scout gets into a
conflict with. They end up inviting him over for dinner, and I was like,
I think that is cool now. So, you know, in in
in bouncing back between the book and the and the movie because I think again,
like I said earlier, I think this particular movie does a really nice job
interpreting the book. Right? Like in Gregory Peck in particular. And when you watch
Gregory Peck interact with the black community in the
movie, you just get this sense that
the segregation wasn't in his mind. The
segregation was was physical. I mean, obviously, you can see it, you know,
and it was written about and how this was a white neighborhood and that was
a black neighborhood. But the way that Gregory the way that the book is written
and as you're reading it and the way that Gregory Peck depicts it in the
movie, you could just get this sense from him that
the segregation isn't in his mind. The segregation is only there because it has to
be there, so to speak. Right? Yeah. It's it's required to be there, so I'll
deal with it because it's there. But he gives it just the
way he, again, I'm I'm referring to Gregory Peck in the movie. Just the
way he walks to the front porch and shakes the man's hand, and then you're
like, because in 19 thirties Alabama, you're just not expecting
that. Right? Like, you're just Right. You're not expecting that kind of that kind
of, respect and,
mutual, and there's a
and there's another part to it where, you know,
Atticus is leaving the courthouse and one of the one of the members of the
black community kinda nudges Scout and she he's like, hey. Stand up.
Your your father's walk like, this is important to your father. Stand up. Like and
it was the black community that was trying to teach her that lesson, not the
segregated white community. Like so I I I just felt like this book did a
really nice job of, like, and don't even get me started about,
what was her name? The the the the house, Oh, Calfurnia?
Calfurnica. Yep. Right? Because there was a there was a quick
and I think it might get lost to a lot of people about this
part, but Calpurnica pulled Scout aside
to discipline her. Now this is a black woman
disciplining a white girl in her own home, and
Gregory Peck thought nothing of it, which is, again, one of the things that I
found blew my mind. Right? And I was like, that wasn't supposed
to happen during those during those Tom, like and and and by the
way, and the movie kinda shows, like, she actually gives her a little tap on
the butt, and I was like, wow. This is this is powerful. Like,
this that to me was like, yes. Because
people like, I one of my favorite lines, and
and and I'm gonna get into a little bit of trouble here, so I I
I I apologize, but Yeah. I'm just gonna say I'm just gonna say it because
I say it. Right? One of my favorite lines is when people say them to
other people, like, I you know, and you've heard the phrase a 1000 times, Jesan.
I know you have. They say, well, I don't see color. Oh, yeah. And I'm
like, well, you kind of freaking have to, man. Like, we're
different colors. Like, you don't see color. Now that being said,
so when my kids asked me growing up so my kids asked me what that
meant. Right? Like, what did what do they mean when they say that? Do they
not recognize that that person is black or that person is brown because they're Hispanic
fourth that, you know, that when in the middle of summer, when we're tan, we
have a red tint to our skin. We always have a red tint that it
because of our culture. And and I was
like, okay. So when people say that phrase and they mean it
legitimately, they're naive. They have no idea what they're talking about. Because if
they if they truly say they don't see color, then they're not
experiences they're they're not experiencing the wonder of
cultural differences that we all have. Right? Mhmm. What I
think they mean by that is I don't
judge people based on strictly their color. I don't view people
or treat them based on their color because I
either dislike or like people based on the merits of the person,
not what their skin tone is. Right? So I like just as many
black people as I don't like. That has nothing to do with seeing color or
not seeing color. I like them as a person. I don't like them as a
Jesan. And I don't care what color they are. I'm I'm gonna base my opinion
of you on your merits. And the reason I say all of this is
because I think some of that comes out in this book with Gregory Peck in
the movie Tom. And the way that he sees people, the way he stands up
for Tom Robinson, the way in the scene, or or the
the the chapter when the mob goes to the jail. Right?
Because they're they're the the Tom Robinson finally came back to the local
jail because at some point, the the sheriff was holding him outside of
the outside of the communal jail because he he knew what would happen. Like, the
the the sheriff knew what would happen. And so as soon as soon as he
comes back, sure enough, mob shows up. And who's standing in front of the mob
not letting them in? Gregory Peck. Mhmm. And I was like, damn it. Like, I
really wanna know this guy. Like, because this kid this can't possibly
be a real guy in 19 thirties Alabama. Well,
that's apparently, it was, though. Apparently, it was, though.
So I think that's why this book
And again, I place it next to uncle Tom's cabin by Harry Beecher stow.
So, yeah, it's one of those books that
when I, when I finally bang through it and read the whole thing,
right. It's one of those books where I realized about 3
quarters of the way through, I thought this book came
along. And by the way, this is not Harper Lee's fourth. It has nothing to
do with her. She wrote, she published, she did what she was supposed to do.
That's her job. One of the things we've been talking about,
fourth we did talk about last month with some of our female authors, like Catherine
and Fourth Porter and, Zora Neale Hurston,
was, how timing
is hugely important. Yeah. Like, for for for Hurston,
unfortunately fourth her, you
know, she came along and then
she declined. And and and but the people had to pick her up later on.
Right? They had to they had to find her on their own. Right? Catherine and
Porter nominated for Pulitzer writers, but nobody
reads her stuff anymore. She's like Pearl Buck. Nobody reads her stuff anymore. And by
the way, we should be reading it. She wrote one of the better explanations
at an emotional level of what happens in a flu epidemic,
because she lived through the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918,
and she went bald and all her hair turned white. I think that made an
impression on her. I just think
it did. Timing is everything.
Stowe had timing with uncle Tom's cabin. Matter of fact, Abraham Lincoln
is quoted as, when he met her at the white house, I believe,
or in Washington DC. Because the white house didn't exist. Basically at that point in
time, they were building it. I think if I remember correctly.
But, he said to her, oh, you're the one you're the little woman who wrote
this great big book that started this war. You know? Yeah. And,
Harper Lee is just to sort of bring that forward another 100
years, Harper Lee is the woman that wrote this book that
landed in an environment that was right for desegregation.
And so I think that's why it's had its cultural impact. We'll talk a little
more about that today, had its cultural impact that it has
had and talking about your own personal
engagement with it. You said you read it in high school and
you emotionally connected with it because of your personal experiences.
I read it in high school And I got distracted
by it because other emotional things, and I'll talk a little bit about this
today, but other emotional things were happening with me around that
area. And so there was a lot of confusion there, not about
segregation, not about racism, not about any of that, but
confusion about where do I personally stand as
a man? Like, what is that going to be? And I
didn't, at that time of my life,
I did not have a whole lot of good role models. Right? I had a
whole lot of bad ones, but I did not have a whole lot of good
role models. And so, you know I didn't I
didn't have any. Yeah. You didn't have any. You didn't have any.
You know? So I think that that's the other
place where this book lands to your point. And then talking
about Calpurnia, you know, you mentioned, you know, the, and she's the, you
know, the African American housekeeper that lives in the,
in the house with the finches. The paragraph here,
in the first it's in literally the very first chapter. It's exactly what you're
talking about. And I quote Calpurnia was something else again. Now this is again
through scout's eyes, right, through the 6 year old's eyes.
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones.
She was nearsighted. She squinted her hand was wide as
a bed slat and twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of
the kitchen, asking me why I couldn't behave as well as Jim when she knew
he was older and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come. Our
battles were epic and one-sided Calpurnia always
won mainly because Atticus always took her. She had
been with us ever since gem was born and I had felt her tyrannical
presence as long as I could remember.
I loved it. I love that. Come on. Love it.
It it's it's it again again, when you're thinking about the
time and the error that this was supposed to take place Yeah.
I bet you half of America would not have believed that actually happened if
you'd announced it at the time. Right? So well well hold on. Well
okay. Let me let me do this. I'll tackle this one early.
So one of the things that you do get from people who live
in the fourth, and I lived in the south for a good chunk of my
my high school years. You know, people call Texas the south
who are from the northeast. Y'all don't know what you're talking about. This is the
west. Y'all no clue what you're talking about. Not you, but just in general, you,
the global you. Y'all don't know what you're talking about. This is the west out
here. It's not Yellowstone, Kevin Costner West, but it's trust
me. It's the west. People walk around here unironically with
cowboy hats on and giant belt buckle belt buckles. Like, give me a break. Come
on. And they're wrestling cows. So I don't even wanna
hear it. When I think of the south,
I think of the deep fourth geographically.
That's the deep fourth. And even Georgia is shifting around.
Well, to me, Georgia's the south, but the 3 other 3 are the deep south.
Right? Like, that's, like, I think that's where the the dividing line is for me.
Yeah. Like, you got, like, you know, Georgia, the Carolinas,
Georgia, Tennessee. That's all the south. Then you get into the deep south, which is
like Alabama, Louisiana. Well and there's an and there's an argument to be
made that maybe the south begins at the begins on the east
side of Dallas and moves to, like, the the west side
of Atlanta. There's an argument to be made there, maybe,
geographically. Right? And maybe goes as far north as
maybe Memphis and as far fourth as Jacksonville. Okay.
When you talk to actual people who actually live here,
it actually live in those areas that I've named, that geographic boundary that I've
named. One of the things that drives them absolutely nuts. And actually
the book references it Tom some of the women in the sewing circle. Talk about
it. In part 2 of the book,
one of the things that drives them nuts is the
perceived on their part. And they're not wrong in this, by the way,
the perceived hypocrisy on the part of, as they call them Yankees,
who will talk about equality all day, but
won't let black people marry their daughters.
At least we down here, actually the Sony circle actually says this. One of
the ladies does at least we down here are keeping them in their place, but
we're allowing them to rise in their own place. So which one is, and of
course, you know, it's framed as which one is better. And
we talk about Martin Luther king Jr. On this podcast every February with,
with black history month. And one of
the great, I don't
know if I would call it a success. Jesan are the
great knock on effects from the civil rights struggle
was in the 1960s seventies was the
forcing of Americans,
on either side of what was formerly known as the Mason Dixon line. No one
even uses that term anymore, to actually
confront their individual hypocrisy. So
people in the north north of the Mason Dixon line, had
to confront, okay. We say
black folks are equal to white folks,
but guess who's coming to dinner as a popular film. Right? Like that that didn't
I don't know if I remember correctly. That's a place in, like, California that didn't
take place in, in, Alabama. And then, you
know, the south separate, but equal,
but we're not going to give money to make it actually equal. We're
going to let it just sort of do whatever it's going to do with let
a 1,000 puppies bloom. Okay. I
think those dynamics are well represented in the book.
And I think that that is, that is a huge literary
achievement for a first time author.
And it represents not only the level of her talent, but I
think it also represents her level of
hotspot maybe. Because she didn't know what
she didn't know. Writers. She didn't know that you were not supposed to do
that. I was just gonna say, she just kinda threw it out there. Just kinda
threw it out there. Yeah. Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens. I was
gonna see what to her own words, like, she was hoping fourth,
like, a quick depth. Meaning Right. She wanted if if she was not going
to be a good author, she wanted to know right away, so she'd go do
something else. Right. Right? That that was the whole point of that statement. Yeah.
Her, one of her mentors, was,
oh, what's his name? The guy
who writers. I'm not going to remember it.
It doesn't matter, but he was a famous twentieth century author. Y'all can look it
up on Wikipedia, but he was one of her mentors and,
Turning Capote. There it is. I knew if I talked long enough, it would eventually
come, come into my brain. So Truman Capote who wrote, in cold
blood. Okay. A book which we will not be covering on this
podcast, but, Truman Capote
basically advised her to write from her direct
experience as much as is humanly possible. And so I
think that what you're seeing in Atticus
is what not only her father was,
And I think Southerners
had a problem with this book because it we're gonna talk about it winding up
on the banned book list too. Yeah. I think Southerners
had a problem because not because they didn't have Atticus types
in their midst. They did.
I think they looked at the Atticus types as their dirty
laundry. Oh, so I was thinking And they didn't
want their dirty laundry exposed to the rest of the world. I was
thinking that the Atticus Finches of the world were
not as impactful in real life as they were
portrayed. Because Is it No. I think well, I think that's the dirty laundry part.
I think that's the dirty laundry part. Right? And then Hollywood comes along. And and
and here's the other part that we, like, forget. The dynamic
between regions in this country. Cause this country is, I mean, we're a third of
a continent for God's essays. The dynamic between the regions in this
country, is, I mean, we saw this with
COVID is still sharp. It's still sharp. Like I thought it had
died down. Right. But nope, Nope. It's still an undercurrent. It's still
there. And so from a Southerners perspective, number 1, I
got these Northern Yankees coming down here turning me I got Tom desegregate. And
then I got these California hippies coming here and making some.
Like, get out of town, go back to your, go back to where you belong
and stop coming down here and telling me how to live now.
Now from the Californians and the the Hollywood perspective, oh, we're
gonna go down there and we're gonna make a movie and it's gonna be socially
relevant and we're gonna expose. And I'm not saying this is the thought process of
folks making, you know, to kill a Mockingbird. I'm just saying that this is the
undercurrent sort of,
exaggeration or metaphor or or or or
or or literature, right, that we put on It's like a righteousness.
Right? It's like righteousness of Hollywood. Like, they feel like they're gonna they're gonna do
it right. They're gonna make sure it's right. It's authentic. It's the like, and
they they I shouldn't say they never do, but they rarely get the gist
of it. You know, like, it I Jesan, I I think you got some
kid watching movie in New York or in Boston going, wow. Is that what the
fourth is really like? Holy crap. Or if you're from
Boston and you watch a movie like the departed and you go, who has an
accent like that? Like, I don't know anybody that like like so the rest of
the country thinks we speak like that? They're like, what is wrong with
this? Because they over they over they tend to overemphasize
that quirkiness of whatever region they're talking about. Right? Like Right. So, again, the
Boston accent and, by the way, I know we have one. I get that. But
and and and some of my some of my best friends have Boston accents.
So it's We were just we were just talking about Dennis Leary before fourth
recorded this podcast. You know, I hit record. But and I forgive them for that.
And no. No. But but but the way when Hollywood gets their things on their
their their grips on it, they're like, we're gonna make it authentic, so we're gonna
make this Boston accent really pop, really show. And I feel like they do
that everywhere else. Like, around and not just the country, by the way. I feel
like they do it around the world when they're making a movie about anywhere. It's
like they they they grab onto that thing that the region is known for and
they over accentuate it to make sure that people understand that that's what they're doing
and they're trying to make it And then they overdo it and it becomes
a nuisance to people. Like, every time a TV show, a
movie, or documentary is made about
our the the the fourth or whatever, I'm just waiting
Tom my cringe hackles are already up, because I'm waiting to
hear the Boston accent that drives me bananas. Because, like,
half the people around me do not speak like that. Like, we're not
it doesn't so and I'm assuming that's part of their problem too. Like, when they're
gonna say, we're gonna make this Southern, but we're gonna make it authentic, and we're
gonna give we're gonna ring this to the and then I'm like,
and and I'm sure southern people cringe at it. Right? Oh, yeah. To Tom your
point, the the rest of the country or the rest of the people watching it
think that this is authentic, and this is how everybody down there acts, and everybody
down there is, and everybody I I it drives me crazy
sometimes, but Well, and the nuance of the book, and then we
can, we'll go back to our, go back to re summarizing here fourth, in a,
in a moment. But the nuance of this book is
that to your point, she wrote an
individual book about individual people living individual
lives inside of a
group, social cultural, socio
cultural milieu that,
and by the way, there are characters in this book, like Ms. Maude,
right. Or on Alexandra. It's not just Atticus
Finch, Dill, and miss Rachel.
Love that kid, Dill. There were characters in this
book, even the villain, Bob Yule,
who
they knew the thing they were in,
but they didn't have the power or the will to
change it. And See, I I felt like
that was I felt like that was stronger from the sheriff's perspective than Bob
Ewells. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. When he's talking to Atticus at the
end At the end. When what happens with the kids and all that, and he's
like, listen. I loved it how he froze. Like, I'm 43 years old.
I don't know a whole lot about a lot of things, but I know a
lot about this. Yeah. You let me make this decision.
Right. And he and he took the burden off Atticus' conscience.
Right. But, like, that's an exam well, we talk
about this sometimes on the podcast. That's an example of an adult in the room.
When I when I say on this show, where are the
adults in the room? That's what I'm talking about. That
interaction right there. Where are the people who will go, listen,
name your age here. That's older than whoever's in the room.
I've got a few more years of life on you. I know a few more
things, and you know a lot about a lot of fancy things, and
book is that cool. But I know
about the permanent things that you don't know about yet. So I'm gonna
make this decision, and you're gonna kick and scream, and you're gonna
cry and wail. Hell, you're gonna blow me up on that thing called TikTok that
I'm not even on. I don't care.
This is the decision that needs to be made right now. And then they just
go off and make it. And they go off and go over the consequences of
it. Yeah. It was also a good example of, like, doing what's
right is not always by the book, so to
speak. Right. Exactly. Right? You sometimes you have to some yeah.
Sometimes you have to take a a slight left turn to Tom make sure
that there's a difference between
being right and being just. Right. And in this and in this particular
case, I felt like the right decision
was making sure that the just decision was was was to the
surface. Well, and Harper Lee wasn't. So again,
she's writing this through the perspective of a, of a 6 to 8 year old.
So a 6 to 8 year old is not going to ask
the question. And I think this is why there's been very little
literary analysis of this book because a sophisticated
critic in our year of our Lord 20, fourth is
going to ask this question. Why
couldn't the sheriff have done the same thing for
Tom Rob?
And the answer to that question is this
6 to 8 year olds don't deconstruct the world to figure out
who's got power and who doesn't.
6 to 8 year olds don't perceive
the socio cultural political milieu
in the same way that a 35 year old critic with an ax
to grind in a blog in New York or wherever does.
They just don't, they haven't lived that experience. We
all get to talk about a lot about lived experience. Well, the lived experience of
a 68 year old, ain't that The limits of a
68 year old is, well, this thing happened over here with
the adults, and then I went off. And by the way, this is exactly how
the book is written. And then I went off and did a bunch of stuff
with my buddies, and I got into a bunch of shenanigans. I loved how she
talked about Halloween. I I love that line. The
ham. Right. Like, she she took up whole pages about this.
I'm like, what modern author would have the guts? It's it was
amazing. And oh, and by the way, the
reason why there was a ham let me let me go to this for just
a moment. And this is the back chapter of the book. Yeah. The reason why
there was a ham. So was in October
fourth the back end of the book, and they're talking about Halloween
and talking about the costume and missus Tootie and Fruity
Barber and, sort of why,
why Halloween happened in the way that it happened.
And, and I quote,
the Jesan change in Maycomb since last year was not one of national significance.
Until then, Halloween and Maycomb was a completely unorganized affair. Each
child did what he wanted to do with assistance for other children if there was
anything to be moved, such as placing a light bugging on top of Libby stable.
But parents thought things went too far last year when the piece of
miss Tucci and miss Frutti was shattered.
That's an 8 year old. That's writing specifically from an 8 year old's perspective fourth,
I'm sorry, a 6 year old's perspective. Missed back to the book for just
a second turning. Missus Tootie and Frutie Barber were maiden ladies, sisters who
Libby together in the only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar. The Barber ladies were
rumored to be Republicans. No judgment there. Just this is the thing I
hear as a sister what it is. I don't even know what that means. Having
migrated from Clanton, Alabama in 1911, their ways were strange
to us. And why they wanted a seller, nobody knew. But they wanted 1, and
they dug 1, and they spent the rest of their lives chasing generations of children
out of it. And I quote further, missus Judy and Frodey,
their names were Sarah and Francis, aside from their Yankee essays, were both
deaf. Miss Trudy denied it and lived in a world of silence, but
miss Frudy, not about to miss anything, employed an ear trumpet
so enormous that Jim declared it was a loud speaker fourth
one of those dog victrolas. And I had to pause for a minute and think
about the logo, by the way. Well, I was like, that's brilliant. Logo? The
RCA logo. That's brilliant. Back to the book for just
a moment. With these facts in mind and Halloween at hand, some wicked
children had waited until the missus Barber were thoroughly asleep, slipped
into their living room. Nobody with the Radleys locked up at night.
Stealthly made away with every stick of furniture therein and hid it in the
cellar. I deny having taken part in such a
thing. I read that twice just to
get it, just to make sure I got the joke. Yeah.
That's, that's the mind of a 6 to 8 year old.
And that's that there are whole passages like this
in this book, and that's why it defies literary analysis, I think.
Well, that it well, that and and one of the most one of the
most profound parts of the book was when
Scout at the end at the end of the book, when Scout is trying to
ease the mind of Atticus as to why the sheriff is right And coming
from the mind of a 6 year old Yep. It was powerful in
its simplicity. And it was and it was it was
simple because it was coming from the mind of a 6 or 8 year old.
But, you know, to your point, but that's where all the power came from. And
you're like, oh, damn. Like Mhmm. That
was written very, very, very well. And and how
how she pulled back a lesson she learned from him earlier in
the book, he she basically used his own words, not against him,
but she used his own words to teach him his own lesson.
Right. I I just think, again, it was it was great. It was really
good. I love this book. Let's get
back to the summary. So we're gonna go through there's only leaders part of the
book. We're bouncing around a little bit. But, in chapters 4 through
7, school shows up for the kids.
And, school is precisely what you would think that it would be,
for a, for a, for an 8 year old and
a, I think, I think Jim was, was probably,
11 at the time. And scout was like 6. So Jesan
scout worked their way through school. Those scout who can read and write at an
unexpected level in the 1st grade, much to the chagrin of her teacher,
does not value school highly. As a matter of fact, she
almost equates it with being in a prison with a bunch of weirdo
inmates that she has to deal with constantly.
And by the way, one of the things that's also interesting about this book in
the early chapters is we do establish that scout is clearly a
Tom. Oh, yes. She is clearly
a little girl, and she knows she's a little girl. She's not confused that she's
a little girl. There's no gender dysphoria going on about her being a
little girl. She knows she's a little girl, and
and she could fight as good as her brother, and she will waylay you in
a heartbeat if she thinks that you're getting out of line. And, you
know, if she thinks that her brother's getting out of line, she go try to
waylay him Tom. And the level of and it
reminded me of being a kid. I will be honest. It did. It reminded me
of being a kid in the nineties. The last time I
do believe the last time children actually took care of
things in between themselves where it didn't escalate to like a weird
level of psychotic violence,
either, online or in Jesan.
It was just, I've got, I've got these 2 hands. You want to come on,
get some or what? Right. We can't fix this now. And,
you know, the siblings, Jesan scout,
you know, were able to do that. And Harper Lee really described that childlike
environment. Very not childlike that. Yeah. Well, yeah, that childlike
environment very, very well. Both siblings also engage
in the early chapters in all kinds of varieties of shenanigans,
all the way from,
turning to prank book Radley, the, the reclusive
neighbor in town Jesan. And, and these
shenanigans culminate in culminate in Jim losing his pants turning to escape over a
fence, out of a out of a out of a yard full of
collared greens.
Harborleigh does a really good job in these early chapters of bringing
around the neighborhood's dark side and
seeing again, how that's perceived through the eyes of a child.
As rumors begin to swirl. And again,
the children are not paying attention to this as a level of a, that an
adult would not even a little bit of teenager would. They're they're pre
adolescents. They're like they're kids. And they
start hearing about how Atticus is defending. And and
by the way, they don't even say Tom Robinson. Abbott's Atticus is defending
this, well, I'm gonna use the word here because it is in the book, this,
well, this nigger. By the way,
that's why this book is on the banned book list
because the word is
used quite prominently. As a matter of fact,
if I be so bold, Harper Lee,
whom by the way, never took any heat as far as I'm aware for
the usage of this word in the way that Ernest Hemingway did
in the sun also writers. And he only used it. Like, I think like, like
there's a, there's a whole passage in there where Mike is talking in the book
about a writers, But because Hemingway is writing
about adults, Hemingway gets run. Harper Lee is
writing about children, so she's okay.
Interesting. Wasn't there a a point, though, where Atticus even asks her
not to use that word? Yes. He does. Yes. Yes. And he's like he's like,
okay. Can we not? Can we pass on that? And Okay. And it's just
such a part of her existence, but he doesn't but he doesn't tell her
why she shouldn't use it. True. But I think but
that might be why that Tom be one of the smaller reasons that Harper
Lee never got vilified for it because there was a point in which
somebody looked at her and said, can we please not? Can we please not
use that word? Like Right. It's I think there was a little bit of a,
like, a, like, a gotcha moment for for for people reading it. You know what
I mean? Like, so, like, people reading it and especially, I think today,
in our oversensitivity version of the world, people reading
it today, I don't think they pick up that same nuance. No. Right? Oh,
god. No. I think they they just see the word visually and they autumn they
have a visceral reaction to it that that word shouldn't be in books. We shouldn't
be reading it. And not to mention the fact that forget about, you know, if
God forbid you're in a classroom and you have to read it out loud. Right?
So the teacher now has to make sure that she's selecting students
to read that are going to actually read the word. And now she's
he or she are hesitant to to we're
if you It's nonsense. We're we're in a different kind of place. It's nonsense. It
well, I'm not sure if it's nonsense or not because there's still some uncomfortability in
it. But but but my point to it is is that the nuance is
gone. Like, that's more important to me. Like, you you wanna skip over
the word? Fine. I I get that. You you don't wanna let the student read
the word? I get that. Fine. But if you're losing the nuance to
that, you're missing the bigger picture.
If we're not going okay. Nuance. I agree with you.
I agree with you on the nuance piece, and I want to double down
if I can't read to kill. No, not even if I, if a
13 year old kid in
Evanston, Illinois, a 13 year old black kid at
Evanston, Illinois, can't read to kill a Mockingbird.
Then they also can't rebury my heart and wounded me.
Sorry. No, they just can't. Sorry. They can't, they can't read empire
of a summer moon. They can't read The Sun Also
Rises. They can't read, Huckleberry Finn. Oh, by the way, they can't
Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn's on that list, by the way. Oh, I know. Want to
get, like Oh, I know. They can't read the Rape of Nanking by
Iris Chan. Yeah.
Because you know what? The
responsibility that falls on the people to teach the
nuance is now being abdicated in
favor of everybody being comfortable. Yes. Right. And you
don't grow and change in order to,
let me be blunt, fight the things you think are
wrong without knowing what exactly
the hell it is you're fighting and all the
nuances of it. Like I'm
one of those weird people that turning that and I'll go for
it. I'm one of those weird people that think selections from the Bible should be
read as literature in school. That will never happen.
We're we're not we're not we're not, what, 70 years almost
podcast. You can't pray in school? We're 70 years past that. I mean, once that
door opened, forget it. You're done. You can't you can't bring in religious books. And
by the way by the way by the way, bible, let's read from the Quran.
Let's read from the Talmud. Let's Let's readers fourth. Let's do the
whole freaking thing. Because guess what?
White light 15? You need not just a
little bit of that. You need a range of
that. Yeah. Because even more so than college and
a humanities degree where you get to go specialize, let's be blunt,
in high school where 84% of the people
in this country, when they graduate from high
school, fourth. It's been this way since the GI bill in the 19 fifties.
fourth% of people who graduate from secondary education
do not go to college. Been that way since 19
fifties. That number has never moved.
It goes up 1 goes up 1 or 2 percentage points when it's economic
downturn. It kinda goes down when things are good. 16% is the
average since 19 fifties. So
16% of the graduating population Goes to college.
Goes to college. We haven't moved the needle on that
number. Do you know why? Because
people, when they get through high school, you know what they essays? And they
said, you said it. I said it. Get me the f out of
here. What did I learn? Yeah. I wasted my damn time.
Right. I I looked at it as I don't want another 4 year sentence. Literally
fourth that came out of my fourth. Because I felt like high school was like
a like like a sent I I was sentenced to be there, and I
had to finish it, and that was it. Like, it was like it was a,
yeah, it was like it was a prison sentence for me. Sentence. That's By the
way, that's how she's writing it in this book. That's how Scout looks at it.
She's like, I'm I'm doing time. I already know
I already know how to read. Atticus taught me how to read. Well, your dad
better not teach you how to read. And she's like, what? I don't even understand
the words that are coming out of your mouth. Yeah. And and the other thing
to to go to to circle this back around to the the word the word
that started this whole thing. Uh-huh. Can I can I just remind people
that words only have the power that we give them? Yep.
So if you are that teacher in Illinois and you wanna read
this book, that word is only gonna have the amount of power that
you allow it to have. Like, I mean, I don't know as a society
that, like, we're frowning on using that word in general, and I
get that. Like, I I certainly get that. Like, I don't I'm not sitting here
thinking that we should go around using that word for everybody. That's just
asinine. No. But but when you're talking about
classic literature in times and the times
were different, if we can't you you listen. You and I have talked about this
so many times now that I think maybe the listeners are gonna start getting bored
with it. But if you're not learning from that past and you're
not truthful to that past to Tom that past,
then you are damned and bound to repeat it. So if we
start scratching this these words and and again, there are other
words that that not just that one, but there are a a plethora of
these books and words that are in these books that people don't wanna talk about
anymore because they're not politically correct and whatever.
But if they're taken in the framework of those book, we're
we're doomed to okay. So it's not gonna be that word, but that
some other word is gonna be depicted as just as hurtful,
and we're gonna use that instead because we're not learning from the past. We're
just repeating it. And, again, you and I have mentioned this several times Tom this
podcast, and I'm I I don't I don't want our listeners to not listen to
us anymore, but it is true. It is true. Words have
the power that you give them. Take the power away from
it. Take the power away from the word. The I
I I highlighted in here. I'm looking for my highlight. Was as you're as you're
talking, I'm looking for my highlight. I think it was when Heck was talking with,
with Atticus. And he says, and I I actually
paraphrased it to my wife the other day about something else.
But people in general find what they're looking
for. If you go looking for
something, they find it. So if you're looking for bias in
literature, congratulations. You'll find it.
You'll find it. If you're looking to be butthurt, and, yes, I'm using that
term, on this podcast about a word, about
the language, you're well, guess what? You're you're gonna find
that hurt for your butt. You just you are. You're
going to find it. If you are looking for
revelatory or even maybe not even revelatory, if you're
looking fourth, like, Tom opened up with if you're
looking for meaning,
and and a role model and
hope, Guess what?
You're gonna find it in literature. You're gonna find it in the great literature
of the 20th 20th century and of the 19th century and of the 18th century.
You're going to find it in great western literature, hell's bells. You're gonna find it
in great eastern literature. You're going to find it. That's why this is
called the leadership lessons from the great book. And guess what? I get to
decide because it's my podcast. What's great?
I get to decide that. And, yes, we have talked about it
repeatedly, but guess what? There's always new people coming in who haven't heard it
fourth. They're not gonna go back through all 100 and some odd episodes to find
it out. So someone's gonna wind it up, then it's gonna it's fine.
I get incredibly frustrated when I see books on a banned
list because Libby,
not lists, sorry. Books can jumpstart social reform, which is what
this book did. Sure. Just like I already
mentioned, knuckle Tom's cabin cabin and, and
the time at which to kill a mockingbird came along.
You know, we were, we were kind of on the cusp because this book was
published in, 1960, I believe.
Yeah. So shortly after it was shortly after Brown versus
Board of Education to speak to Kansas. It was shortly before all
the, you know, MLK, Martin Luther King's movements. Yep. It was
like that right it was right in the middle. So I'm not suggesting that this
was the catalyst, but I do think people reading this felt
a heck of a lot more comfortable moving fourth. Like, because
they Well well, in culture books are part of culture. Maybe a heck
of a lot more is probably not the right phrase. But it it gave people
a sense of what the past could have looked like.
Again, like, with Atticus and the way that he interacted with people and the way
that he treated people and the way that he his his moral compass, if the
past could look like that, then why the hell can't the future look like that?
Right. Exactly. Well and and culture moves society. We talked about
this with Catherine and Porter with her book, with her short story, pale horse, pale
writers. The solo episode that I did, I would
recommend going back and listening to folks who recommend them to go back and
listen to that. Because I mentioned
particularly in light of COVID and sort of the moment that we're
in now, at least in the United States where we have on the one
side writers in august magazines, like the Atlantic
and, and on, and on August
television stations like CNN,
proclaiming that. Well, you know, we
made mistakes were made during COVID. Of course we, when we say mistakes were
made to think about the language of that, There's no accountability in that
sentence. Well, mistakes were made. Everybody should just get over it. My
bad. See you next time. And then
on the other side of that, you have the Patrick Henry resistance types, and
I'll go ahead and sign up to be with with those folks who
look around and go, excuse me. What?
Now I'm not as far in it as some of
those types are where they're calling for a reckoning and heads on
pikes. You know, I'm not calling for Doctor. Anthony Fauci to
like be publicly, you know, castrated or anything like that. And
they've never do that. Maybe he should
probably give back some of the money he got from like Pfizer that might be
helpful. That might lead people to have him, you know, believe he's trustworthy,
maybe sell some of that Pfizer stock that he's got. But, but, but, you
know, you know, Hey, I don't get between a man and his money. Okay.
My point is if we want there
to be a cultural reckoning, the thing that moves
culture is, well,
literature and movies. It isn't people
on social media. They think they do, but they don't. They actually
follow culture. Culture is moved by the artifacts that we
create inside of it. Movies, books,
stories. These are the things that move culture. And
then guess what happens when culture moves? Laws are
passed after culture changes because number 1,
politics always politicians are always late to the game. And number 2, government's
always a late a late bloomer. Like, they don't even know what the hell is
going on until after everything's already gone, ever after everything's ever ever
after everything's already happened, it has moved culture. This is why when you see things
in the culture that are moving a culture towards a particular way, if you
object to that, go fight it in the culture. That's where you've gotta go
fight it. That's why we have culture wars. That's what that term means. Okay?
And Harper Lee and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Fourth and
Zora Neale Hurston, they all wrote books that
contributed to the foundation of cultural change in the 20th
century without one law being passed. And
by the way, they're all female. Like, I want to bring up that point too.
This isn't some like this isn't some like
Smoky and the bandit racist white white guy writing some
book. You know? Like, I I saw I I've never I've never I
didn't know what Harper Lee looked like in the in the Wikipedia article. Like, they
had one picture of her from, like, back in, like, I don't know, maybe the
forties or fifties when she was a young woman, and then they had another one
where she got some presidential Jesan medal of freedom and fourth she passed away from,
like, Barack Obama or whatever. And, you know, she's nice little old
lady, just like a little Christian grandma. Who'd be
like praying somewhere. Shouldn't look like anybody
turning. And it's it's and and by the way,
when you go look at Harry Beatrice, she wasn't threatening either. Same thing. Yeah. It
was the same thing. You know? Out of out of all the fourth names that
I mentioned, Katherine Ann Porter kinda book like a little bit like a model,
but even her, like, Spanish. Right? Zora
Neale Hurston, You know, the thing that she was not classically
beautiful, but she was a woman who when you look at
her picture and when you look at how she's photographed, she's always looking directly at
the camera. She's coming for you. She was busy. This is how
culture shifts. That's what I'm saying. Hurston, though,
like, I I I found it interesting that I was
she wasn't classically beautiful, but I was drawn to her because I felt like she
was a bit more regal. Right? Like Yes. She has, like, a regal quality to
her, which which made her a bit more attractive than the
average. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. To Tom fourth point, not necessarily
classically beautiful. I I agree with that. I mean, she's, you know
but but I she was definitely far from ugly. I like, I I
found her to be like I said, the the word regal comes to mind. She
had a poise about her, Tom your point, because all I'm seeing is
images from, you know, pictures. But so it's like but she had a she had
this poise about her that came across from the camera. Like, it was anyway,
I thought she was she was she was that sucker. Yeah. She
was she was impressive in a different fashion, like, in a different
way than than some of the but, anyway So, I mean, I'm saying all
that to say this. If we want people to change the culture, we have to
allow them to use whatever words they need to use in order to change the
culture. And we used to kind of understand that. And now
we're in this weird. And of course book because we're
at the end of the 4th turning. We're at the end of our, of our
latest seculum cycle. I understand why we're here. It's not weird to
me. And by the way, we are coming up on
our next the beginning of our next seculum cycle. I already mentioned that we're
recording this podcast, the day after, D
day. June 6, 1944.
That's 80 years ago as of yesterday.
80 years is a S that's a, that's a secular, that's a cyclical
cycle in history. It's an 80 year cycle in the west. We go through 80
year cycles. That means we're done. It means, like, this is the last year of
the cycle. And by the way, the last 20 years of an 80 year cycle
are always chaotic, which as I said repeatedly on this podcast, we've had
nothing but chaos since the year 2001. We're at the
end of chaos, kids.
The cultural tastemakers that are going to set the
next positive cycle for us in this country
had really better understand and be competent about what culture really
is and where culture really lies, particularly with our ability to self publish
our ability to do the kinds of things that you and I are doing right
now. Those, these are huge tools that we've
never had before. And so are we gonna get
really angry about language? Like, really?
Are we really gonna do that in order so we have because because we are
that we can't move the culture. That's my whole point. We can't move the culture.
You know? Dave Chappelle I go back to words only have power that you give
them. Dave Chappelle infamously says the Jesan amendment exists. I love this
in case that first amendment don't work out.
Okay. And he's he's and this is a man who he's
got a whole bit about living in Ohio and going to Walmart
and buying a gun. Like, Hey, I gotta go Walmart by gun.
And the white guy at Walmart sold him a gun, sold him a
shotgun. I think it was, you know, it goes buckshot buckshot
buckshot buckshot.
He did a whole bit, whole bit about this. Oh, no. It was it was
buckshot buckshot rounds. That's what it was. You know, you wanna pepper him up a
little bit first. And he goes Yeah. Yeah. You got anything on there that says,
I don't want a white guy running through my backyard? The white guy the
white guy at Walmart goes, that thing right there.
That'll do it. Welcome to America.
This is it. This is where we live. This is the
culture moves things here. Alright. Let's
round the quarter on this. What is leadership let's talk about leadership because
we should probably talk about that. What
what insights about leadership and competency can leaders gain from To Kill
a Mockingbird? Because we talked about Atticus. We talked about Harper Lee. We talked about
sort of scout a little bit, how she's pugilistic. I mean, it's
it is written as a no. It's not written as a kid's book. It's not.
That's the deceptive part. It comes off as a kid's book, but it's not.
So I think there's I think there's actually a lot to unpack there from a
leadership perspective, but I think 2 things come to
mind very, very quickly. Number 1, one of the one of
the more powerful lessons of the book talks about
seeing situations through somebody else's eyes. Right? There's there's a lot of talk about
how when she comes out, when Scout, drops
when she walks Boo Radley home or whatever, she's standing on his
podcast. Standing on Boo Radley's porch, looking at the rest of the
community, she finally gets a sense of what it might must feel
like to him. Right? So from a leadership perspective, being able
to address a problem or a situation with the other person's
thoughts and minds mindset in mind when you do so, trying
to look at the problem from their perspective could potentially be very very powerful
for you. Right? Number 1. The second one that comes across, we already
talked about it a little bit, was at the very end when Scout basically
sets Atticus' mind at ease using his own his
own language and his own lesson, that that
I always talk let me back I'll I'll tell you this from a sales perspective,
strictly from a sales perspective because I find that sales leaders
sometimes forget that you can learn yourself as a
sales leader. You can learn something about sales from somebody who's never been in the
industry before. They've never been a salesperson before. They're brand new to it. So in
this case, they're Scout. Because they
have an idea fourth thought or a does not mean you should just ignore them
because they have no experience. Listening to them and listening
and trying to learn something from somebody else's perspective or
getting somebody who's taking your lessons
from fresh eyes and regurgitating them back to you,
you may hear something different in your own words. Right? Like, so or you may
you may you may have a lesson to learn from that brand new person that
you weren't thinking you were learning. It's it's all this
this reciprocal and circular thing that you think of, but I think
for me, from a leadership perspective and and, of course, I mean,
all of us should be taking Atticus' lead when it comes to
moral compass, moral code, doing the job that you're asked to
do whether you like it or not, being fourth being, you know,
I I go back to also when and, again, I know we're we've got a
lot of spoilers here, people. So if you haven't read the book yet and you're
thinking, I apologize, but when Tom Robinson dies, the
way that Atticus responds to that to me was really he
was a community leader at that point. He wasn't a white man. He wasn't dealing
with the black community. When he goes back to that family to tell them there
that that that he is now dead, Again,
he he that's a leadership role to me. Right? Like, he looked at that and
said because even the I forget who he was talking to at the time. Maybe
it was the sheriff that he was like, oh, now I gotta go tell the
family. He was like, I'll do it. Let me let me tell them.
He took that ownership of that because he knew it was gonna happen.
Like, this and you could tell not so much in the writing of the
book, but the way that Gregory Peck depicts it at the courtroom at the end
of the court trial, you could just tell
why he wasn't surprised when he got the knock on his door that Tom Robinson
was dead. Like, he knew it. He he just knew it and that he
took that burden on himself as the community leader to make sure
he was the one to go back and take ownership of that to his family.
So, again, I it's like I think there's a lot to unpack. I think if
you look at this from because because, again and there's a couple
of interactions with the kids and a couple of the other
members of the community that kind of like, it's
almost like one of those, like, like, you're his kids. You didn't know your dad
was this cool? Like, you didn't know you didn't know your you didn't you didn't
know your dad was like, everybody in the town looks up to him? You didn't
know that? Because they're so close to it that they don't get it. Right? They're
so close to him that that's just their dad and he's their dad and they
whatever. And they don't and it takes a little bit of the book to
understand that Atticus is not simply a run of the mill
guy. He's not simply just another lawyer. He's not simply there's a
reason that the judge specifically comes to him and says,
listen. I was thinking about asking you to take this case. How would
you feel about that? So instead of just throwing it down his throat going, oh,
by the way, you're the court appointed attorney. You have to do this. He came
to him because he knew he was gonna do the right thing. Like, he he
he knew he presented it to him as a as an option, but it
really wasn't. But he presented it to him that way because he knew Atticus would
do it. And he knew that he would do a good job with it. He
knew that Tom Robinson was only gonna have a shot in the dark
if Atticus was the guy because of his stature, because of his
leadership, because of his position in the town, all that other stuff. And
all that negativity that Atticus got from the town was
was superficial. Mhmm. It was superficial because ultimately people
respected him. Ultimately people knew that he was gonna do the right thing no matter
what they said. Ultimately, there's just a lot of that that happened.
So I think I think there's a lot. And I don't know how I don't
know how you felt about it or if you had additional commentary, but I I
felt there was a lot of really good leadership lessons in this book. Oh,
yeah. We're gonna we're gonna use this opportunity to take a turn and talk a
little bit about those leadership principles a little bit more in-depth, particularly around the
trial. I wanna talk a little bit about judge Taylor as
well, and the men in the town. So we've got judge Taylor, we've got sheriff
Hector Tate. Obviously, we got book Radley and then
I wanna talk about Bob Buell because I
think I think there's a lesson there as well.
That is the minority report Jesan. So we
go to the lessons that make us feel good or make us feel morally right.
But you can learn leadership even from a negative
there's things there's things to be learned from Kim Jong Un or from
Fidel Castro. There's things to be learned. Usually, what not to
do, but also
sometimes sometimes what to do. So,
yeah, let's let's talk a little bit about that. By the way,
the line that I was gonna quote earlier from the book, is actually from judge,
from judge Taylor when he's correcting mister Ewell,
during his, during his testimony, during the,
during the trial. And the judge essays, and I quote, people generally see what
they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to
subject their children to it. But I can assure you of one
thing. You will receive what you see and hear in silence, he's addressing the
court, or you will leave this courtroom, but you won't leave it until the whole
boiling of you come before me on contempt charges.
And then to the point about Atticus,
and this is this is right after Atticus finds out about
Tom Robinson's, death. Miss Maudie
says to, aunt aunt Alexandra. And so aunt
Alexandra is, Atticus's sister.
And, you know, their relationship is interesting the way that,
again, it's perceived through scout's eyes. It
is a it is a at least from her perspective, it is a tension driven
relationship. And I can remember thinking that way about
the relationship between relatives and my family, female relatives and male relatives, female
male relatives in my family, because I didn't understand all the dynamics that had occurred
on the back end, that got them to where they were. Just like
I'm sure my kids look at my relationships with my siblings in a
certain particular kind of way because I can't really explain it to them. It's
just sort of like, this is how we were raised. But, and we
all have those kinds of dynamics. And so when a child observes this, you
know, it's very interesting. And, and in the book,
after Tom Robinson gets shot and then Atticus goes out to go and
deal with the the challenge at the at the prison where he had wound up
Tom, miss Maudy says, have you ever thought of it this way,
Alexandra? Whether may comb knows it or not,
we're paying the highest tribute. We can pay a man. We trust him to
do right. It's that simple.
That's it. That's that's leadership. We trust him to do
right. Speaking of
the book, back in the earlier writers. So
Jesan Atticus, have a conflict.
And it's interesting because jam is not set up as
a male counterparts to Atticus. He set up as his
own character, Very often in coming of age stories,
which I guess this would kind of qualify as that as a buildos
roman, it would, typically,
when a story is told through the eyes of a child, the sibling is set
up as the adult stand in. And that's not
quite how it works in Tom kill a Mockingbird. Gem is allowed to be his
own character. He's allowed to develop and grow.
But he's also, you can tell, in direct tension with his father.
And by the way, you know, one of my,
I shouldn't essays, passions. It might be obsessions. And, again, this is
because of my previous life experiences, which I'll talk a little
bit about here as we get around to the trial. One of
one of my obsessions is with fathers and sons, the relationship between
fathers and sons. I don't think that merely gets talked about nearly enough
in our culture. A, because men don't really
know. No. That's not it. We're not enculturated
in the last parts of the 20th century and the early parts of the 21st
century to actually talk about the
dynamics of being a son to a
father, nor are we incentivized as
men to talk about, at least extensively, to talk
about what it actually means to raise a son.
Women tell us very often what we should be doing
and how we should be behaving, but there's
very little talk even on even on even in in the in the mountains and
mountains of videos and words that are on social media and on the Internet. There's
very little practical talking about the nature of fathers and Jesan, really the
relationship between fathers and Jesan. And, this is
somewhat explored in the early chapters of, to kill a
mockingbird, by the way, which sets up what happens later on in the back end
of the book when, well, when
Jim does the only thing that Jim can do, when,
when Bob Yule decides that he's going to follow through on his threats.
As I said before, breaking into boo Radley's backyard doesn't go so well. And,
Jim loses his pants because he is still a kid and he is still engaged
in shenanigans. And, there's a fire with
questionable beginnings that's never fully explained that burns down miss
Maudie's house. And it's kind of a narrative thread that kinda
hangs in the first part of the book, but Harper Lee does a
really clever job of, a, never really re referring it referring back
to it again, kinda like Anton Chekhov's gun. She just leaves the
gun on the table. But, also, she uses it to set up
miss Maudie and uses that narrative or that thing happening to her in the
narrative as a way to set her up as a strong character, sort
of a sort of a female version of Atticus Finch.
But, again, removed from scout. Right? Because she's over there and
and scout is over here. So let's talk
about that trial.
In the Fourth, in the 1930s,
which is when this book is supposed to be set. Jim
Crow was alive and well, by the way, that term is, I think it's only
used once maybe in To Kill A Mockingbird, and it might just
be me placing that term on the book. I don't actually think she actually wrote
those words in the book. I don't I don't think I remember seeing those physical
those actual words. But yeah. Right. But everybody knew what Jim Crow was.
And for those of you who don't know what Jim Crow was, Jim Crow was
a series of laws that, socially
separated black people from white people in the
deep south and also quite frankly in the north. Now in the north,
Jim Crow was informal. It wasn't written down. It
was just something that quote, unquote knew, when,
when the writer, Ralph Ellison it was Ralph
Ellison or might have been James Baldwin. I can't remember.
No, it was Richard. Writers? It was one of those 3 when Richard, right? Yes,
it was Richard. Right? That's right. Yes. Because I remember when I was reading about
his biography for the, for the podcast episode we did on native sun, when he
was trying to find a, hotel
in New York City as a socialist, as part of
the communist party, the communist party
hotels in New York City were segregated,
which is insane to me because the entire ideology
of communism is about workers of the world United. There are no separations
between all of us. We're all united against the man. And what could be
more of an more exemplary of being the
man than, I don't know,
discriminatory practices in your hotel.
Like that's the man, if I ever heard of it.
Well in the Jim Crow south,
Tom Robinson runs across
a set of people who are living in Macom,
are just on the other side of where the and the word is used in
the book, the Negro settlements are, where
the Yule's live. Now the Yule's live in,
from scout's perspective, they basically live in trash. Right? They live in
the garbage dump, and they mine the garbage dump. And they
are poor. They are white, and they mine the
garbage dump. And so you put those three words together. And while that term
of poor white trash is never actually used, that is what
is meant by Scout's description.
And from this description, you do get the idea
that the only thing that the Yules have is
the fact that they don't share the same skin color
with, the the folks who are living in, well,
the black part of town. Now in the book, that's
an interesting description because when Scout talks about it, she talks about how
basically the Yule's live in trash. And then in the Negro
settlements, she talks about how they go down there with Christmas once a year to
help out the Yules. You could smell the good smells coming
of book, coming out of their little tiny shacks and everything was neat and as
as as neat as a pin. That's how she describes it. And then the Yules
are living in this literal, literal shotgun
shack with 7 kids Yeah. And squalor. Right?
So, you know, a moral
and again, scouts, what, 7 years old? She's not drawing a moral conclusion
from this. She's just saying, this is what I saw. And
this is, this is this. Well, this creates a
dynamic where Tom Robinson, a, a
Negro farm worker, walks past,
the Yule's every day and gets caught up with Mayella.
You will Bob Yule's daughter
And, in the process of trying to do her some favors, which he probably
shouldn't have done, I would have advised him to stay away from her.
Not because she was poor, not because she was white,
but because, well, she was a different class,
in all the ways that class writers. It doesn't have anything to do with money
that doesn't have any Hold on. There there there's there's another piece to this. Tom
Robinson was married. This was another I don't care what color she is, but there's
another woman asking you to help out in the no. You just don't need to
give advice to yourself. That. Put yourself in that position in the first
place. Which which, I mean, the so that was brought
out at the trial. Yeah. And scout of again, this is a
7 year old. Right? So, like, it's through the just sort of skipped
over. And I went back and I looked at that and I thought, what that
guy's wife have to say? Yeah. Right. Well, you're never gonna find out. You're never
gonna know. Because
because she she whooped his ass on the way to the getting
arrested just for being in the vicinity. Never mind whether he was
guilty or innocent. She didn't even care. Alright?
She she didn't care he was guilty or innocent. The fact that he was
helping her. Forget it. She's she killed she kicked his ass.
I'm not helping anybody. I don't help anybody. I tell
my wife, I don't even know other women's names. I don't know their faces. I
don't I don't know who they are. I have no idea. I don't know. Do
you want me to? She goes, no. Exactly. I don't know. I don't know who
they are. I have no idea. I'm married. I walk over
here, which is what Tom Robinson should've done. Should've done. Right. The only women that
I know are people that are in my family. Yes.
I know her. I know her. I know her. I'm related to them. That's it.
No. That's all that matters. Small anecdote. Went to chicken
process Tom process some chickens. We've talked about this off the air,
but I, heard processed some chickens a couple of weeks ago.
And another couple that we know is there, and,
I I said a variation of literally that. I don't know any other women. I
don't talk to them. And the woman standing there, she goes, well, I feel attacked.
And I go, listen. You're not a woman. You're his wife.
Writers, that's like, we're don't pretend like you don't understand what's going
on. You're here. Stop it. Come on.
Oh my god. So but but I I I found so
I I gotta tell you a small Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. We're gonna you're jumping
into it. Small tidbit of information too. This book
almost, almost changed my mind
to go to college and to go to and to go potentially to go to
law school and to go to, like I I
when I read this, I was like, I wanna be a lawyer. Like,
I Atticus had me so wrapped up in and again, the the
if you read if you read the transcript, or if you read the
portion of the book that is the trial. Mhmm. And I was like,
I I was like, well, he there's no way that the that this guy is
innocent. He is Right. Clearly innocent, clearly innocent. Look
at the great job this guy did. I wanna be a lawyer like that. And
then to find out that there was no way on this God's green earth that
a 12 person jury of all white men are gonna
let this poor guy walk away knowing damn well
he was innocent. No. There's no way, shape, or
form that anyone in that jury could have possibly even thought that he even had
a shot in hell of doing it. But yet, there's no way, to your
point, with Jim Crow and all that other stuff happening in the 19 thirties in
Alabama, the second he was arrested and put on trial,
they knew. And and I that's kinda what I go back to with, like,
Atticus knowing he he knew from the start how it was gonna
end. He already knew that. There was no question in his mind, but he
still went through with the best defense possible for his
client, so to speak. Right? So I read that and I was like, oh, I
wanna I wanna be a lawyer. And then I met leaders, and I was like,
never mind. I'm not doing that. Never mind. I don't wanna be a lawyer.
And he's not he's not out of constraint at all. No. Not even close.
Well, one of the challenges I had with the trial,
reading this as a person who
walks around in the skin of, you know, an African American in America.
And who has made without getting deeply into my
personal life here, but who has made certain choices about who I love and who
I marry and who I make children with and who I make a life with
and all this kind of stuff. There are
pieces of this where, to my point about
Tom Robinson, that you also
reinforced, you know, you could see the train wreck
coming. And the reason you could see the train wreck coming
is because
when you're no.
When you're in that kind of social environment, I'm gonna frame it this way, when
you're in that kind of social environment, what power do you really
have? And by the way, not power to take someone's
life, which is what Bob Yuall thought he had.
Not power to make a
social change, which is what Atticus Finch was trying to do. Right?
Not even power to influence a
family, which is what Alexander was trying to do. Right?
If you're Libby Will, what power do you have? You've
none. You live in a garbage dump.
You are in a segregated society that tells
you that these people over here with this darker skin,
because of the fact that they have this darker skin are less than you,
and yet with your 2 eyes, you can see them living better
than you. There's something here that, as we say
these days, the maths don't math. Right. It doesn't add
up then when you go to the welfare
office and by the way, this is during the depression. So So you not only
live in a garbage dump, but you live in a garbage dump during the depression,
which is even worse. K? And so you go to the aid office
and you don't speak well. You don't act well. You don't
dress well. You maybe take a shower not even a shower.
A a a bath once a year. All your kids
don't have a Tom, you don't know where she is, you're you're basically hitting
all the rungs all the way down the ladder
of how to not be socially appropriate regardless, by the way, of skin
color, regardless of skin color, but you're hitting all those rungs.
And and by the way, scout brings this up
and the people whose
color you share don't wanna
have anything to do with you, weather. Yeah. They don't like you. They don't like
you. Jim
Crow fundamentally existed, and I'm going to say
something extremely controversial here. But
Jim Crow fundamentally existed to protect poor
white women
from poor black men. That
was what Jim Crow fundamentally existed to do because it
wasn't actually about the race. It was actually about the
racial designations and the racial distinctions and the racial separations. Everybody
said it was, but it wasn't really about that. It was about
making sure that people of a certain class
stayed where they were,
regardless of their skin color.
Bob Ewell may have thought that Jim Crow worked out for him when Tom Robinson
died, but it turns out
that actually it didn't work out for
him because guess what? He held a grudge.
And that is one of the fascinating things about this book that I think
begs analysis, particularly from a leadership perspective.
He had no power. How was he gonna go out and grab that power?
Well, he was gonna go grab that power by harassing
the white man who embarrassed him and
made him look bad, made him lose face.
He got what he wanted. He got the structure
of the system to work for him in the way that it had worked for
him based on the laws that were set up by the system. He got the
outcome. He should have been happy, and yet
yet he was not. Explain Bob
Ewell to us because that's one of the
more fascinating characters to me in this book.
It's like the Amy Mann song from,
oh gosh, Magnolia, the Magnolia soundtrack book in
the day, you got what you wanted, but now you can hardly stand
it. And that's
Bob. He got what he wanted. But the problem did he, though? Did he
really, though? Because by the by the verdict,
maybe. But what he wanted ultimately was
for everybody to be on his side and blaming Tom
Robinson. He wanted everybody to believe him. And the fact that
Atticus didn't, that's, like, that's what
held the grudge. It had nothing to do with the verdict. It had to do
with the fact that that he it was it was almost like a
But at a material level, if if
if we and by the way, this book was written at at the tail end
of modernism. Right? So at the in modernist books,
which are typically books that are published between the end of World War 1 and
the beginning of the the end of the well, at the beginning of the middle
of 19 sixties. Everything from from the
Ford, Maddox Ford, and Ernest Hemingway, all the way to Joan
Didion. That's modernism. Right? In modernist novels,
the villain gets what they want, but they don't know how
to deconstruct it. In postmodern
novels, which is everything written since the 19 sixties, Don
Delilah, Charles Portis, not only
does the villain not get what they want, sometimes the villain gets justice, sometimes the
villain doesn't. Other Tom, the villain gets punished, sometimes the villain doesn't.
Sometimes it's an antihero. We have no idea what the hell is going on. This
is where you get Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis, but you also
get, like, you also get, oh gosh, lucky net
pepper in, in, true grit. Like,
the postmodern novels are all over the map because we've deconstructed everything.
But modernist Sorrells? In modernist
writing, there's still that Christian strain
of moralism that the villain gets what
they deserve. Well, well, that's a different statement.
He definitely got what he deserved in the end of the book.
Sure. At the end. But but that that's that's a
different comment than a few seconds ago where you're asking, like, he got what he
wanted. Oh, yeah. That's that's my point. I don't think he got what he
wanted. Tom Robinson being convicted
was not the ultimate goal for him because he knew that was gonna happen. He
he again, everybody in the town knew that was gonna happen. Like, there was even
a, there was a a phrase in there somewhere that
before the trial started, I I can't remember the, of fourth, it's been
a while since I've read it and I and I know I've read it, but
there there's there's a there's a phrase in there or or some a sentence or
2 in there that tells you that you know already that he's going
to be convicted. There's no doubt in your mind he's going to be convicted before
the trial even starts, before you even start reading it. Right?
So but that's not ultimately what Bob Ewell wants. What
ultimately Bob Ewell wants is validation and
vindication and and from the rest of the from everybody. So as
as people start understanding that they know he's lying,
that he it it it that's where the grudge lies. The grudge lies
with with somebody it's not Tom Robinson. He doesn't have the grudge against Tom
Robinson. He has the grudge against the person who was able
to essentially show the town who he really was.
So what he what he ultimately wanted was for the entire town to be on
his side. They wanted them he wanted the town to view him
like they view Atticus because he was right and just and he was
but he wasn't, and it and it came out in the trial. And that's really
where his his, his His vindictive.
Yeah. He's vindictive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the only way he could do
it is to get because he knew he couldn't confront Atticus face to face. There's
no way. Well, and he he had multiple opportunities. He was offered
the opportunities to do so, and he declined. Declined? Because he I
we we get the vibe that Atticus would've whooped his ass. Right? Like, if we
get the vibe, Atticus was not somebody to mess with. Now they don't
explicitly that's the other thing Harper Lee does really, really well.
She says stuff without saying it. Writers, that's the best part of it. Like, to
your point with the Jim Crow laws, with the the social reform piece, with Atticus.
Like, there's a lot of things she says that without saying it, fourth white trash.
She doesn't say those she doesn't use those words, but you don't you know damn
well what she means. So she did the same thing with
Atticus in the way that he has respect in the town. He just comes you
get the feeling that he was the guy that nobody wanted to mess with in
any way, shape, or form. So you went to
the direction that he felt he could hurt him, which was going after his children.
Okay. So there is a and we've talked about it briefly on this
hierarchy is. Women don't, but men know. We, we all know we talked about
this fourth, you know, who's the alpha, who's the beta, who's the Sigma, who's whatever
in the room. Okay. And there's some of us who don't care about that. You
don't care about that. You're like, whatever the hell I'll go in whatever room I
want. I don't care. That was sets, makes you good at sales because
you have to be that guy. I'm that guy because I'm just,
I'm just pugnacious, and I don't you know?
My own ego is fine. This is whatever. I
I got a healthy ego. I need a stomp on my chest to know I'm
a man. I'm I don't yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, please.
But if you but but but but if you're gonna come over here, like,
you know, like I'm not gonna, like, we're gonna do, we're gonna do some business.
Writers. Okay. The hierarchy of makeup
to your point is set up where Bob is at the bottom of the hierarchy,
of these characters. Atticus is considered to be at the top because he's in the
legislature. And then you've got the sheriff, sheriff
Heck, and then you've got the judge, judge Taylor. Now
the judge in the trial runs
his courtroom like his own fiefdom, because
it is. Right? That's where, like,
he could do what he wants. He could set his own rules. If he wanted
to move all the black people out the balcony and make them sit, what are
you gonna do? Like, bam. Gonna happen. Done. Y'all wanna
be in contempt or what? Or do you wanna sit here and be quiet? Like,
he he he makes the law there. Right? And by the way,
we see this interestingly enough in our current
political contra Trump, around well, a former
candidate who shall not be named, who's a current candidate for president. You
know? And and and going through the
trial process, we are all being re
reminded of how much,
power a judge, even a district court judge
has in their own territory and in their domain and not even
a former president of the United States gets to overstep that.
Yeah. Okay. Interesting dynamic. It doesn't work like that
in other countries. That is incredibly unusual in most other
countries. The judiciary is impotent
to say the least, or at least a rubber stamping of whatever the
dominant structure says is the way that we're going to go, but
not, not in this country, not the way we've got things set up.
Okay. Judge Taylor.
Wasn't gonna let Bob Yule get out of control. And by the
way, to back up your point, Bob Yule tried to get judge
Taylor, or at least that's intimated in the book.
Yeah. So it wasn't just is
that his ire was aimed at Atticus. His ire was aimed. And I
guess this backs up your point further. His ire was aimed at the entire
male hierarchical structure of makeup. He wasn't
going to hurt no woman, but the dudes, he was going to try to like,
get, get those, get those dudes.
Writers.
Then we have the dynamic of
the false accusation of rape.
Now this one's kinda touchy because
for me, anyway, because I have had people in my
family who have perished due
to false allegations
of right.
As recently as the 1990s,
a person in my family was lynched in the
south. I won't say which state because of
a false accusation. And that
when the member of my family who was related to this
individual went and tried to go to the law about this because there's no more
Jim Crow and we have equality. Right? Went to the local
sheriff. The local sheriff told my relative, and I quote,
everybody here knows what happened. Go
home.
And so I looked at this through that lens
Tom. Right. And I don't talk about this ever. The member, this is the first
time I've ever been mentioned this publicly. I don't write about it, talk about
it. It's just one of those things that just Libby, one of those things just
happens to people, and you just sort of it is what it is.
And by the way, it hasn't changed my view of like race relations or any
of that other kind of stuff. Like I'm able to have a principle and, and
I'll, and have a position. And I'm able to hold 2 constricting TED thoughts in
my head at the same time and be okay. Like, I can do that. Right.
When we look at that false accusation and when we look at Mayella,
so the the the the the dynamic there of
her, She has even less power in the structure than even
Bob does. And there is some intimation in the story that Bob was
beating his daughter and may have even indeed been,
you know, assaulting her, sexually or
otherwise. And she is even trying to use the system
and use the testimony to serve her own
ends. As a matter of fact, when she talks to Atticus
in the cross examination, that's one of the more fascinating parts of the
story to me because,
it's a perfect example of a person who
literally is, she's underneath Book. Even she is at the, she's at
the bare, the bare bottom of the social structure. She
she's she has nothing. She's the only conception. She's so far down. She
doesn't have a conception of how far down she is. And yet, the thing that
she holds on to is her pride. And I think that was
Bob's sin. His sin was pride. And I said all that to
say that. I think that that was the thing that got him. I don't think
it was actually he wanted the respect of the town. I think he just had
pride. He just had pride.
Pride in what? Pride in what? Pride he was he was he was the
guilty party of beating his his daughter and and possibly, to
your point, possibly other things and pushing that guilt off on
somebody else. Where's the pride in that? What do you that's not
I'm saying that pride was the driver. He so
it's people are weird, Tom. I got you know this. People are
weird. Their motivations are weird. Right? And I
look at a guy like Bob, and I go, okay.
He was a proud man.
What he had to be proud about didn't matter. It doesn't matter because it doesn't
matter how how we look at that. It mattered how he looked at that.
And, again, we're looking at this through scout's eyes. So we're getting a we're getting
we're looking at it through a narrow keyhole. We have to kinda be aware of
that. Right? And I think that
in and and maybe this maybe me putting more weight on this
character than this character can actually handle. But when I
look at Bob Ewell, I don't see a person who's just pursuing
revenge out of out of a
sense of I want these people to respect me. I see him
pursuing it as a sense of I have hurt pride. My pride has
been hurt. My pride has been damaged, and I'm
gonna go restore that. I don't know.
I I I I'm not sure. I I
mean, I understand where you're coming from, and I I definitely We could sit on
this. It's okay. We could sit on this. I was saying I I I could
I could see where you're covering. I I just don't think he was that complicated.
I I like, I think he was more simple than that. I think it was
really that simple that, you know, Atticus
Atticus made him look bad, and now he's gonna hold a
vendetta against him. And it's that simple. I don't think I don't think he had
enough thought. I don't think he had enough brain cells to realize that he
had pride. Like, that that's the way they depict him anyway. Right? Like,
he's Right. Like, that that I'm not sure he had an I'm not sure he
had enough self
awareness to be prideful of anything in particular about himself. Well,
okay. Alright. Let me ask you this question then because we're we're gonna we gotta
turn a corner here. We talked for a couple of hours. We book wait a
wait a we spent some time on this.
Would you say that Bob had principles?
I know. I know. I know. He's a simple man. Lack of lack of principles,
maybe. He's he's a simple man with simple appetite. He's he's other
principles. That's that's that's that food is too rich for Bob.
Okay. Let's move up the hierarchy. Clearly, Atticus had
principles clearly. Clear clearly. Yeah. Dutch Taylor, very
principled, right, particularly in his courtroom. Right? The sheriff, which we've already
mentioned, clearly got principles.
Jem, right, the brother, not principled yet, but coming
along. Right? And actually You could see you could see them developing. You could see
them developing. Right. Okay.
Tom Robinson probably could have benefited from having some principles.
Yes. For sure. I think one of Oh, go ahead. Go
ahead. Sorry. Like, the principle of just not going to someone else's house to whom
you're not married. Even if you're walking by on your way home from
work. Like, just go to work. Just go to work and go home. Yeah. Stay
on the other side of the street. Stop. Okay. Yeah.
The one the the one that surprised me, I think, was was Boo
Radley. When you talk about principles Yeah. That's the one that stands
out that is like, wait a minute. We're we're let
we're we're turning down a path of belief about this character.
And now throughout the course of the book, you realize that
that legend is not true. I mean, that I'm not suggesting that we
it's not an epiphany at the end of the book that he's that he's got
some Sorrells, But it is surprising
to see that his principles
still drive him even though he's reclusive and he does not interact with anybody.
He he wants no part of the town. He wants no part of talking with
anybody. He wants no part of interacting with anybody, but his principles
still guide him to do the right thing
even though he's still that recluse of that's what surprised me. That was was
the part that was like, did I feel like he was gonna get involved some
way? Sure. Like, you you knew that there was something there because the book kinda
drags you along that way about, it's like a it's it's almost like the
climax of a movie. Right? It, like, builds up, builds up, builds up, but I
wasn't expecting that to be the climax of the movie, so to
speak, where Lou Radley really has
a keen sense of what's right and wrong and what's principled about
and and that protective nature that that comes across toward the end. So I I
think that one surprised me more than anybody, you know, whether Bob not having
principles or the sheriff having principles or Atticus, of course, having
a a a a gigantic moral
compass. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But Boo Radley
was the one that that I was pleasantly surprised about at the end of the
book that that that, and and, you know, to be honest, if you
think about it from a leadership perspective, Boo Radley is that
silent leader. Right? Like, that that guy that doesn't cause a lot of ruckus fourth
that girl that doesn't draw a lot of attention to herself, but yet
everybody seems to follow her or him. Right? Like, that's, like,
that's Book Radley's character to me. Like, everybody kinda takes
a page out of his book because of something that he
is like, something he does, but he just kinda does it in in a way
that nobody really like, he doesn't want people to notice. So
the there's a line in the book that Atticus actually tells,
Scout and gem, when they get
guns for Christmas. Right? He tells them they can shoot all the blue jays that
they want. Yep. But it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Right?
Right. Which I'd never okay. And I I've I
have been really dug deeply into sort of where that idea comes from.
It came from somewhere, and put it in the book.
Well, they do explain it a little bit in the book. Right? Because the the
crows and the blue jays destroy things. They go after they go after,
you know, farms, farmers, the seeds. Like, they destroy some of those crops. The
mockingbirds don't harm nobody. All they do is
provide us beautiful sounds and music. Right. Or something to that
effect. Something to that effect. Yeah. So it's a sin to kill the mockingbird because
it's a defenseless creature that has no other purpose than to bring beauty into the
world. Right. Now the reference that Scout uses to Book
Radley. To Boo Radley. Right.
Except let's be let me be clear here. Boo
Bradley knife demand. Okay. Come on.
With a kitchen knife. And
and then and then in the process
because he's he's sensitive and delicate, it doesn't wanna have anything to do with the
town and da da da da, all these things that you mentioned. He's
I'd have allowed to go back into it. This is, by the way, where I
agree with the sheriff even though he didn't frame it this way. Boo Bradley was
already in prison. Yeah. Boo Radley,
because of his past experience with his father and the kinds of things that had
happened to him before he even showed up, or before any of this nonsense
or not nonsense. These shenanigans ever started.
He was already locked in a prison of his own mind. And sometimes
well, again, to paraphrase from the the the the great
movie Magnolia, the sheriff in there, the cop in there
says, you know, being a cop is hard. Sometimes
some people need to be listened to sometimes some people need
to take a beating and sometimes some people need to go to jail and
that's a really hard call and I have to make those kinds of calls every
day And I don't always do it well.
And that's the case with book Radley. Right? Yes, for
sure. He, he had to be in his house. That was his
jail cell. And it might be a
sin to kill a mockingbird, but it's not a sin to lock one up
apparently. And Tom just let it be a well,
let it be a caged bird. Right. The
moral compass piece as we round the corner here,
Atticus had a gigantic moral compass and it occurs
to me. And that was one of the big things I pulled from this book.
It occurs to me that just like when we, when we read about, Malcolm
Books, Malcolm X had a huge moral compass too. He did.
Now his moral compass, his moral authority came from religion.
That's where his moral compass came from, from from Islam. Right?
Martin Luther King Junior had a moral compass. His moral compass came from Christianity.
We read Charles Fourth' true grit. The
character in there, The, the female
character in there, her moral compass, came
from her Christian Pentecostal Pentecostal? Yeah.
It might have been Pentecostal. I can't remember right now. I read a lot of
books on this podcast. You'll remind me. But it came from from that her
her came from that Christian basis. Right? Her Christian moralism. Right?
Essays thing here. Right? Except
religion isn't a powerful driver in here.
They talk about going to church, but it's not the
the it's not the the orbit
around which their lives turn as sometimes as satirized,
not as satirized, exaggerated or assured by about people in the south.
One thing I tell folks is that people in the south can be just as
unchristian as people in the north. Please give me a break
or there's human beings. The church is full of writers.
There you go. That's the point of it. And so, like, I think
We're callers. Anyway Hey. Hey. Hey. You know what? Come right on, dad. We've
got room for 1 more. You
know, so we have to
understand as leaders, I think.
And this is it is something I really emphasized during the first
half of this year on this podcast. We have to
understand where our moral compass comes from. I
need you to have one. I I
I I I I I I can't I think we've had enough of leadership in
our world that doesn't have a moral compass. I just think we've had
enough, or at least I've had enough. You you need
to articulate where your moral compass is coming from. And if you by the way,
if your moral compass comes from, and I've said this fourth this podcast, if it
comes from ESG or DEI or some social thing
or whatever culture, fine. Say it. Say that that's where your moral compass comes
from. Like, the CEO of Patagonia.
I think that guy's moral compass is
not where I would put mine, but that's
fine. No one's holding the gun to my head saying I gotta go buy a
Patagonia sweater. Like, it's fine. Go have your moral compass
wherever you want. That's freedom. That's what we have in America. Doesn't impact Tom.
Go go do what you wanna do with your company. You, you know, you wanna
give away your entire company to save a bunch of trees and like Montana. Cool.
Knock it up. You built it. That's your moral compass.
And by the way, be very clear with people when they come to work at
Patagonia, that this is what they're getting. This is why I think
that companies like Amazon on the other end of that spectrum,
particularly underneath Bezos, not so much under, under this new
guy, but under Bezos, Bezos was very, very clear.
We are here to work. I don't like human beings. They're a
real problem. You could all be replaced with robots tomorrow.
So work Tom your highest level of productivity. I will pay you whatever
that highest level is, and then you can get the hell out.
Why are we objecting to this? Why does this make us feel icky? Well, it
makes us feel icky because so many leaders don't clearly
articulate where their moral compass comes from, nor do they
have the capacity, I think, to defend it. And that's just the
inadequacy. And the other
thing that I would take from this is that as my grandmother
might say, the child is the father of the man. Right. And so,
you know, pay attention to what's happening with your
children. In particular, not as early as the shenanigans
they're getting into, but in particular, the example you provide for them as the
patter familias is the, as the person who looms
large in their conscience. Like, I know I know that I loom large in
my kids' consciences. I know that, Tom, you know, you loom
large in your child's cut. You do in your children's conscious. They you're a big
mountain to get over. Like, that's just that's it. And you may not
think you're that big, but guess what? Like
you are in their head. You are, and
that's very, very significant.
And Atticus was a gigantic
mountain that scout couldn't even begin to
understand, you know, and as she's
writing the book, looking back on her life,
I get a sense that she appreciated that more,
obviously, the older and older she got. So
how do leaders stay on leadership path with To Kill A Mockingbird?
How do we how do we do that? Well, I think I think
we already talked about that a little bit. I think I think it I think
part of it is, like, being open to learning lessons from
from a multitude of layers and levels and not being not
sitting on your high horse thinking I'm the CEO, so I know everything. Like, being
able to, again, listening to your own words being regurgitated to
you and take, you know, taking, you know, taking a a spoon
of your own medicine, so to speak, on occasion being it
it also shows it shows that
portion of the book shows Atticus'
humility. Like, he's humble enough to know that when Scout repeats
this back to him, she's right. It's not, oh, you learned the
lesson I taught you. Oh, it's not it's not, oh, see?
You you you got it. No. No. No. It's you are right. Like,
he didn't he doesn't go into that. Like, and I think that's part of sometimes
what we lose as leadership, is not allowing somebody else
to be right. Just let them be right and learn that lesson back
for fourth yourself so that you can become a better leader. Yeah.
Yeah. How do we anchor
that kind of leadership to social reform? Because there's all
these kinds of things that we would like to see fourth. Right?
From bias at various places
all the way to social inequalities. I mean, we've had an
endless outpouring, particularly over the last 5th
10 to 15 years of just, like, this is
the endless parade of problems.
And yet we have not had an equally
endless outpouring of an endless parade of solutions,
much to my frustration, by the way. How do
we tie this you have to know moral leadership
or you have to have a moral compass in order to lead to
fixing some of these problems that we'd like to see fixed. And by the way,
we could pick any problem. Libby, we don't have to even pick a big one.
We could pick, book, picking up trash in your neighborhood. Like, how do we how
do we get leaders to get a community to
place their trust in them?
Because I'm not worried about I'm not worried about changing the environment at a global
level. I'm worried about picking up trash on my street. Yeah. Jesan. Listen.
I've always been a huge advocate. I I I don't know the
answer to this question. I'm gonna be I'm just gonna be very clear and
say, I don't have the answer to this question other than to
say that every leadership role that I have ever had,
there's not a single person underneath me that could say that
I didn't experience everything they did because I was right there with
them. I I would go I would I was in the, you know, when I
was in the restaurant industry, I would wash dishes as a general man I I
ran the restaurant. I would still wash dishes. So the dishwasher could never say that
I didn't understand what they were going through. When I was in as sales management
and sales leadership, I was the one on the ground floor selling the stuff before
I ever got there, so the sales rep could never tell me that I didn't
understand the plight that they were going through. For me,
the only thing that I have in my in my power
is to lead by example. Right? Is to be shoulder to shoulder with
them, elbow to elbow with them so that they know that
I'm never going to throw something at them that I
wouldn't be willing to face myself.
Outside of that, I don't have an answer for any of this.
Because my my answer is always going to
be, I'll do it first. If you don't think that that's
doable or it's workable or I'll do it first. And
then once I do it, I'll teach you how to do it. And
then you'll lead me when I tell you you'll listen to me when I tell
you that this can be done and here's the numbers that we wanna hit and
all this stuff. You're gonna there's gonna be buy in there because they know that
I'm not just blowing smoke up their keisters. Right? Like,
it's so for me and believe me, I'm I am a
100% aware and positive that there are better ways. I just don't
know of any other than to roll up my sleeves and do it. I that's
that's the only that's the only shit that's the only leadership
material that I have. Mhmm. Like and you could talk about, like, there's difference
you know, there's conflict resolution in how you can read this book and get better
at that, and there's the, sure. I'm not downplaying any of that.
I'm just saying when it comes to who do I want to follow, I
wanna follow somebody that I know for a fact has been there, done that, and
they're not gonna lead me astray just because. So if you want
people to if you want people to pick up trash in your neighborhood, go pick
up trash. I'm gonna go pick up trash. Go pick up trash. If you want
people to treat people better in your
workplace, start doing it yourself. I'm gonna start treating you better. Exactly.
Exactly. Want, if
you want income income inequality to be
overcome, well, give up some of your income.
And and by the way, one of my I I had this conversation, some with
somebody recently. One of my favorite things about being in sales Mhmm.
Is that the salary Mhmm.
Doesn't care what color you readers, doesn't care what gender you are.
You earn your book you earn your your actual money on your own
merits. It's about who you are and and how good of a salesperson you are.
So that pay inequality, I never had the real
I'm not suggesting it's not real by any means or it's not there. I just
personally have never had to I've never had to deal with it in that
level because now as people are getting promoted and stuff like
that, you know, and let's just let's say a woman woman gets promoted to
a to a sales manager, you better damn well know that I was
not allowing our company to offer her less money than the sales manager I
hired 6 months ago that was a guy. That wasn't gonna happen. I was
because to me, the a sales manager gets paid the
same that the last sales manager got paid. Why would why would we offer her
less money? Now if that if that puts me in a light of
being sensitive to that that pay inequality, then sure.
I'll I'll I'll gladly say thank you. But to me, it wasn't. To me,
it was just I was looking at the job, the
role. I didn't care if it was male, female, black, white,
Hispanic. None of that mattered. This is the role. This is what it pays, and
there you go. And in sales, that's a lot easier to do. So I I
will say that that's a lot easier to do because there's not because in other
facets of business, there's all the the KPIs are so different.
What you judge people on is different. It's it and it
becomes very gray, and I don't like gray, which is why I love
sales. It's it's very clear. You're a great salesperson. We're
gonna you're gonna get paid because you're great. It's that simple. If
you suck, you're fired. It's that it's that it's really that
simple. I've never fired a minority person
and had them look at me and go, that was because I'm a girl, that
was a a woman. Sorry. That was because I'm a woman fourth that was because
I'm black or that was I've never had that happen. When I've every time I've
ever fired somebody, it's been like, look, you suck. That's it. The
paper the numbers say that you're not very good. Now there
have been rare occasions where somebody said, well, I didn't get the training
I expected. Okay. Let's back the truck
up for a second. Let's talk about your training. Did you get this? Did you
get that? Did you get this? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Whatever. Okay. Well, then you got
the same training everybody else did. So you're fired.
So you're fired. So you gotta go you gotta go as good. Answer is if
the answer is no, you know, again, because certain roles I
I I play, I I'm hiring different levels. Right? So certain roles I
go, what did you you got the same turning? Well, I didn't get I got
this one, but didn't get the next 2. Alright. Let's talk about, you
know, a improvement plan. Right? Let's talk about a
a a production improve improvement plan, a PIPA a PIPA or whatever. So
then maybe they don't get fired that that day, but they're gonna have very clear
expectations that they're going to get that training, and you have now 60 days to
turn this around fourth you're fired. Or you're fired. Yep. But again, that has nothing
to do with race, color, sex, none of that. It's just clear. It's
very clear. So Yeah. Anyway. But to your
original question, yes. I I if the trash needs to be going to pick up,
I I'm gonna at least get it started. I might ask for help. I I
I'd be the Tom Sawyer of that. Mhmm. Right? Like, look how much fun I'm
look how much fun I'm having picking up this trash. And if you don't wanna
join me, go on. Join me. And then I might back away into the trip.
He's He's gonna he's gonna sell it. He's gonna sell
it. He's gonna sell it. Well, with that, I'd
like to thank everybody for listening today to, the leadership lessons
from the Great Book Pad podcast. Almost flipped that at the end.
And, with that, well,
we're
out.