This month, America celebrates the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird." More people have probably seen the movie starring Gregory Peck than have actually read the book, but it is the novel most folks claim to have read in their youth.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a nuanced exploration of this nation's founding sin — racial intolerance — disguised as a Depression-era coming-of-age story about three white kids in an Alabama town. The book is beloved by millions because it is a relatively gentle indictment of Southern injustice when it could have been angry and didactic.
Though the story is straightforward enough, it has taken on additional meanings half a century later. Wildly divergent interpretations of Lee's book are a testament to her novelistic ambitions. One could also say that her novel is a little too subtle for a nation perpetually in denial about race.
Americans love "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it allows folks who have never lifted a finger for civil rights or even thought kindly about it to see themselves in Lee's story as either the crusading defense lawyer Atticus Finch or his precocious adolescent daughter, Scout.
Black folks are thrust by default and tradition into the role of Tom Robinson, a black man maliciously accused of raping a white woman. Equally interesting is the fact that no one, not even the crudest racist, ever identifies with Robert E. Lee "Bob" Ewell, the father of the woman who makes the false accusation that puts Tom on trial for his life.
Representing a black rape defendant generates a lot of hassles for Atticus, but he refuses to back down. He explains to his kids that doing the right thing is often costly, but unavoidable. His principled decency, so persuasively embodied by Gregory Peck on the big screen, has become the archetype for racially mature white-collar professionals.
When Rush Limbaugh referred to the late New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner in his on-air eulogy as a "cracker who made a lot of African-Americans millionaires," he probably didn't consider himself the spiritual heir of Bob Ewell. For allegedly speaking truth to power, Limbaugh thinks of himself as just a high-tech version of Atticus Finch.
When Mark Williams, a spokesman for the Tea Party movement, called the NAACP a "vile racist group" that "makes more money off of race than any slave trader ever," he probably believed he was channeling Atticus Finch. He would probably be ready to fight anyone who compared him to Bob Ewell.
Though Williams is the same spokesman who referred to Barack Obama as "our half-white, racist president" and an "Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug turned anointed," he still wants to be considered racially enlightened. He resents the charge that racists can find a non-judgmental home in the Tea Party movement no matter what the signs say.
In an impressive bit of sleight of hand, Glenn Beck told millions of his followers that the "Silent Generation," the same folks who fell for the Southern strategy that Fox News impresario Roger Ailes helped pioneer in the Nixon White House, gave birth to and supported the civil-rights movement.
Yes, indeed. Atticus Finch would be a regular contributor to Fox News, according to the assortment of scoundrels claiming to be modern-day iterations of the character.
Meanwhile, no one is giving any love to the book's villain or the all-white jury that ultimately convicts Tom Robinson. Today, even irredeemable bigots with swastikas tattooed on their foreheads think of themselves as Gregory Peck.
That's why Lee's novel, as great and celebrated as it is, is too subtle for most Americans who read it under duress in the 10th grade. People don't see themselves as they actually are when they flip through the pages of "To Kill a Mockingbird." They see themselves as they'd like to be: noble, tolerant and unafraid of difference.
As we ride out the last few months of this summer of racial discontent, Americans are celebrating Lee's novel and missing the point of it entirely. We forget that even though the setting for the novel was the Great Depression South, it was conceived and written at the height of the civil-rights movement. It drew much of its moral energy from lunch-counter sit-ins, desegregation marches and an unflinching belief in the righteousness of racial equality.
What passes for racial tolerance and enlightenment these days is embarrassing. Where's Boo Radley when you need him?
E-mail Tony Norman at tnorman@post-gazette.com. Scripps Howard News Service