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Go Set a Watchman: Harper Lee Reboot’s Atticus Finch is White Racist – Rupert Murdoch Publishes
By Debbie
Schlussel
“Go Set a Watchman: A Novel
,” the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com since the
final Harry Potter book, is in keeping with the current trend: White is the new
Black. White people are the new bad guys, to be persecuted, defamed, attacked,
and harmed. The Atticus Finch you grew up with was the heroic White guy who
defended a Black man falsely accused of rape. But, now, he’s a racist Klansman
in Harper Lee’s new “reboot,” “Go Set a Watchman.” It’s no coincidence that it
comes at a time when all White people are the official devil in America. The
timing was right to take down yet another White guy, who is significant in
American culture despite being a fictional character.
“Go Set a Watchman: A Novel
,” the most pre-ordered book on Amazon.com since the
final Harry Potter book, is in keeping with the current trend: White is the new
Black. White people are the new bad guys, to be persecuted, defamed, attacked,
and harmed. The Atticus Finch you grew up with was the heroic White guy who
defended a Black man falsely accused of rape. But, now, he’s a racist Klansman
in Harper Lee’s new “reboot,” “Go Set a Watchman.” It’s no coincidence that it
comes at a time when all White people are the official devil in America. The
timing was right to take down yet another White guy, who is significant in
American culture despite being a fictional character.Most American kids are required to read Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the Pulitzer-Prize-winning 1960 novel in which Finch is a brave Southern lawyer who is appointed to defend the wrongfully-accused Tom Robinson in the early 1930s. Finch rises to the challenge and is considered a hero for proving Robinson’s innocence, despite the jury convicting the man (and Robinson ultimately being killed while attempting a jailbreak). The Ewells, Robinson’s accusers, are humiliated as they are exposed as liars. Finch endures threats from the Ewells and the taunts and verbal attacks on his children.
But in this day of “Blacks–good; Whites–very bad,” none of those things matter. Instead, we are given a more politically correct version of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” in which Finch is a racist and a Klansman (and Finch’s young daughter, Scout, gets drunk, according to one TV commentator). And Finch’s defense of Robinson isn’t worthy–isn’t anything to be lauded. The “one good White guy” in the American South in 1933-35 is actually a bad guy. You know those crackaz–they’re all bad. That’s the attitude in a 2015 where police are bad and MTV is telling us how bad White people have made America . . . an America in which White privilege reigns supreme (which is funny because all of my “disadvantaged” Black neighbors have expensive smartphones, and I don’t have one). Where “Mockingbird” was about the courage of the White Atticus to vigorously defend Robinson and the courage of his daughter Scout to fight her bullies, the new version is about Atticus’ hate and weakness.
There are no coincidences in America. And that includes the timing of Lee’s new book. There’s a reason this “long lost” manuscript was “suddenly found” and announced early this year. Lee is now 89 years old and easily manipulated. While an investigation found that she was of sound mind, that’s a debatable proposition. But somebody wanted to make some money and make it by defaming White people and taking down yet another White hero in American pop culture, exposing him as yet just another vessel of racist hate. We–all of us White people, even the most heroic and charitable, the most moral–are all just haters of Black people and segregationists. That’s the message.
Lee reportedly wrote this book in 1960, but her publisher didn’t want it, preferring something “softer”–less racist against White people. But why now? Why did Lee and/or her handlers wait until now to release this inflammatory book? Why did they wait until after the original became considered a classic and required reading for generations of school children? Because it’s easy to take heroes down after investing so much to build them up. And it’s time to attack every White person of achievement or heroism in American history, according to the conventional wisdom.
This isn’t about the Confederate battle flag, as that chain of events is too recent to have played a part in plans for the book’s release. But it plays into the same viewpoint. First, start attacks and challenges against police all over the country–make sure it’s a highly-publicized attack on authority. (And that began nearly a half year before this new “White Heroes Are Racist” Mockingbird reboot was announced, so the planning of Lee’s handles surely took all of the Blacks v. Cops stuff into account.) Then, take down that flag; now, disinter Southern officers; next, remove Alexander Hamilton from the $10 bill; and after that, get rid of all references to Washington and Jefferson because they owned slaves. And while you’re at it, Atticus Finch has got to go, even if he never really existed. Heck, the General Lee and the Dukes of Hazzard didn’t exist, either. And, now, they are history as far as broadcasts are concerned. Ditto for Atticus on the pages.
Do you think kids in schools across America are just going to be assigned “To Kill a Mockingbird,” anymore? Think again. They will be assigned “Go Set a Watchman” as a companion book . . . or in the spirit of the PC revisionist virus now afflicting our country, many kids will be assigned Watchman instead of Mockingbird.
Mockingbird is already a heavy-handed, PC book. But the White male is courageous and moral and decent. And we can’t have Whitey being any of those. So the new, new, new PC novel is here. And FOX News’ Rupert Murdoch is getting in on the action. His HarperCollins is publishing the rewrite, and making a mint off of it. A taste, according to the New York Times, which seems to revel in this new PC-ing of a previously already very PC book:
Atticus Finch — the crusading lawyer of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” whose principled fight against racism and inequality inspired generations of readers — is depicted in “Watchman” as an aging racist who has attended a Ku Klux Klan meeting, holds negative views about African-Americans and denounces desegregation efforts. “Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?” Atticus asks his daughter, Jean Louise (the adult Scout), in “Watchman.” . . .
“Whether you’ve read the novel or seen the film, there’s this image you have of Atticus as a hero, and this brings him down a peg,” said Adam Bergstein, an English teacher in Queens whose 10th- and 11-grade students read “Mockingbird.” “How do you take this guy who everybody looked up to for the last 50-plus years, and now he’s a more flawed individual?”
In this version, Atticus is 72 years old, suffering from arthritis and stubbornly resistant to social change. He stands in sharp contrast to the gentle scholar in “Mockingbird,” who tells Scout, when explaining why he has gone out on a limb to defend a black man, that “I do my best to love everybody.”
In “Watchman,” which comes out Tuesday, Atticus chides Scout for her idealistic views about racial equality: “The Negroes down here are still in their childhood as a people.”
Some say this book is autobiographical and that Watchman is Lee’s portrayal of her allegedly racist father. But even the NYTimes points out that, with age, he turned out to be more Mockingbird Atticus Finch than this new Watchman version:
While A. C. Lee was moderate by the standards of the times, he supported states’ rights and held segregationist views, according to Mr. Shields. Later, after the publication of “Mockingbird” in 1960, his views softened, and he started campaigning for redistricting in the county to protect disenfranchised African-American voters.
I’m not sure Lee actually wrote this new book or that it wasn’t embellished by others, including the new theme of the racism of Atticus. The whole sudden announcement 55 years later with Ms. Lee nearly a nonagenarian and “shunning” interviews, we don’t even know if she’s all here anymore and aware of anything that is going on.
One thing’s for sure: once she left for New York, she became an unabashed liberal who hung out with the likes of Truman Capote and believed most Southerners were racist.
Still, I wonder–with this revisionism on the fictional Atticus Finch–will we see more revisionism with real-life characters?
Will Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman be transformed into bald-faced racists who hated Black people, too?
Harper Lee’s handlers and Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins are working on it.
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