Leadership Lessons From The Great Books – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee w/Tom Libby

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Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 109

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with our book today, a southern gothic novel

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and, build on. I love saying that word. It’s

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Jesan, that stands alongside Uncle Tom’s

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Cabin as one of the rare books in the United States of America

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and cultural and literary history that has grown larger in the

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American social conscience over the long course of time.

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The author wrote of what she saw and experienced directly

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during her childhood and during a time when people weren’t necessarily

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bleeding all over themselves in public because there was no Internet

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and there was no social media. Reactions

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to the novel varied widely upon publication.

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Despite the number of copies sold and its widespread use in education

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litter literary analysis of this book is actually

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shockingly sparse. In speaking about

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the novel, the author once said, I know and I quote,

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I never expected any sort of success with this book. I

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was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of the reviewers,

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but at the same time, I sort of hope someone would like it enough to

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give me encouragement, public encouragement. I

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hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot.

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And in some ways this was just about as frightening as the

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quick merciful death I’d expected.

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Close quote. This book,

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which garnered its first time author

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and unheard of Pulitzer Prize win, has not

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endured a quote, unquote quick merciful death in the public conscience.

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Instead, just the opposite has happened with

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this book. Today, we will

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be focusing on some of the very many

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ins and outs of whatever

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re one in high school, at least believes is one of the

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important novels by a female author of the

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late 20th century, the 19

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sixties Tom Kill a Mockingbird by

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Harper Lee. Leaders know the

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difference between positions and principles and choose

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very carefully where you will stand.

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And, of course, today, as usual, we will be joined

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by our regular co host, Tom Libby. This

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is Tom’s favorite book, and he was very excited to do this episode once

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he saw it on the list last year. So how are you doing, Tom?

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I am doing great. And you’re right. It was it is definitely one of

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my I put it in probably the top five of my all time favorites. Like,

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when you think of books, you know, that you have read throughout your life Mhmm.

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Number 1 and 2 kinda bounce back and forth between this and bury my

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heart at wounded knee and a couple of others. But but this is definitely definitely

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at certain points has been my one of my all time favorite books. And as

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we get deeper into the book itself, I I’m sure

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why will come out as during this episode fourth at least I hope the why

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comes out. Yeah. It’s I def I

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so I had read this book, not in high not

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early in high school, which is most people are usually assigned in, like, 8th, 9th

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grade, somewhere in that weird, like middle school, early high school kind

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of period. I got the book when I

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was probably 16 or

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17 was my first interaction with, to kill a mockingbird.

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And I vaguely remember reading probably

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about half of it and then just

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kinda wandering away slowly from it. Not because it was a bad

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book, but because at that time in my life, I was kinda distracted by

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a whole bunch of other nonsense. You know, I was into movies, and I was

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into comic books, and it just seemed, you know, it had

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the, had the cover, by the way, the copy of the book that I have

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here, I’ll show it on the video. Those of you who are listening to the

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audio can’t see it, but this is the original,

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Harper perennial modern classics cover from the

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19 sixties for Tom Kill and Mockingbird. This is the cover of the book that

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I had back in the day when I checked it out from the library, because

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the library by the way, for those of you who don’t know, the library was

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this giant sampling thing before the Internet where you went and got books. You know?

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Although I hear gen z is actually going there

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because it’s quiet and it’s a no phone zone, and they can actually, like,

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talk to people. Imagine that.

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It’s the new bar anyway. But this is the version that I

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have. And, and the version that I had when I was a kid did not

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have winner of the Pulitzer Prize on it. I I think they put that on,

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like, after she, after she died, in 2016. And we’ll

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talk about, of course, fourth literary life of Harper Lee and get into a little

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bit of her background, which is a little bit Tom be more fascinating than a

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book, but to close my thought, I had read it when I was

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like I said, 16 or 17. And I kind of just wandered away from it

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and I never went back and picked it back up again. And then as a

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result of this podcast, went back and looked at it again. And of course I’ve

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seen the Gregory Peck movie, you know, who

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hasn’t? But I don’t think I’ve revisited that either. I might go

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back and watch that after we get done with this recording. Maybe I’ll watch that

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this weekend. I would suggest that knowing you as a movie

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buff as you are because there are some nuances to that

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movie that you just don’t see today. Right. Right?

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Like facial expressions and the the way that the cinematography

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works on the Zooms and things like that because you don’t need to do that

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today with all the technology we have. And, I

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would essays, you know, I mean, Gregory Peck is Gregory Peck. And

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and, you know, people can argue how

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great he was and one of the better actors of all time, blah blah blah,

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so so forth. But I gotta honestly, in this movie, he was

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even from my standard, like, he was really good. And then even more

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a real weird thing that I realized

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that that not a lot of people know, just a very small, you

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know, kinda footnote turning, is this was Robert

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Duvall’s first movie.

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Okay. That’s interesting. Fun fact. Robert Robert Duvall

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plays the, the role of Boo Radley in the in the movie.

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Yeah. Yeah. And, it was his it was his first movie role. So I thought

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that was interesting too. Just so for those two things alone, I would suggest you

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watch the movie because it was interesting to to, to watch the movie

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knowing that. Yeah. Well and I who’s the last thing I saw

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Gregory Peckin? The last movie I oh,

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Roman holiday. Well, my because my daughter who

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doesn’t like other things, certain books, she

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she really she really enjoys Roman holiday because she likes the idea of,

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like, essays and riding around Europe. And, of course, Gregory Peck is in

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that with, oh, what’s her name? Audrey Audrey

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Hepburn. And then of course, I’ve seen Gregory Peck

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in guns of Navarone. And as an actor, he always

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impressed me as being a guy who was he

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was sort of he wasn’t Cary Grant or Cary Grant always, like, sort of smirked

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at the camera. He’s a smirking kind of gentleman. That’s why he could do comedy.

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Gregory Peck took himself, at least least as an actor, I always thought

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he did, and the roles that he played. He always played morally

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serious roles, like, with moral weight. He sort of reminds me

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a little bit of, George Clooney in

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that way a little bit, except, you know,

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Clooney came along at a different time and has different parameters because it’s just

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different era. But I could easily see Clooney doing Gregory Peck

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Sorrells. Because I think he, I think he sort of likes that idea of

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being a serious actor. Whereas

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Carrie Grant was always more like Brad

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Pitt. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Oh,

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I know I’m good looking and I’m gonna kinda like smirk around it and

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get whatever. I’m like, Tom it. Anyway,

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I’ll watch Tom kill Mockingbird this weekend. I’ll I’ll check it out. It’s on, it’s

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on TCM classics actually, in the, in the max,

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app. So I actually, I actually,

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I saw it on, to be. Oh, on Tubi.

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Okay. Alright. I I just got I just got turned on to Tubi, like, about

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2 months ago. So It’s an it’s an interesting platform, but we don’t have to

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talk about tech. No. We don’t. We don’t. Because that will lead into a discussion

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of, like, Brooklyn 99, and no one is, you know, no one is no one

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cares about us. Exactly. No one cares about us talking about any of that. But

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but I think but but book to the the movie book comparison,

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I I felt very strongly that this was one of

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those movies that did that did the book justice

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Okay. Versus because I know a lot of times now, we’re turning we’re turning books

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into entire series of shows on

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on whether it’s HBO or or whatever, HBO Max or

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Netflix or whatever because we’re we’re trying to shy away

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from trying to fit a, you know, 300 page book into a hour you know,

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it’s a 90 minute movie. Or they’re doing things like Dune where they’re

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separating the movie out into, like, 2 or 3, 4 parts, but it’s

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still you know, Dune’s 3 hours. So we’re trying to fit

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I I think this was one of the few books to me that took a

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regular length movie and actually did the book justice.

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Well, and I Her components were in it. All the major, like, dialogue was

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in it. All the major story lines, all the major

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moral thoughts that they had in it. Like, you got almost all of that

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from the movie that you that you did by reading the book. So I thought

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I thought it was a really good really good depiction. Well, Harper Lee was

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involved in the, I believe she was involved in writing the screenplay. The original

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screenplay. The original screenplay, which I mean, you know, if

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Scott Fitzgerald wrote screenplays, but, you know, I think if I

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remember correctly, and of course our listeners can correct me on this,

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because I don’t have IMDb up right now, but if I remember correctly, he

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wrote the movie script for his novel tend to risk the night.

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And he was, and he was, he didn’t like Hollywood. He didn’t like working with

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Hollywood. He did it because he had to eat and he moved on with the

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rest of his life, but he struggled with with that

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conversion of his book to a script. But the other the

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other author that I think of, 20 century author who worked really well in

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film was William Faulkner. William Faulkner wrote a lot of

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scripts and Faulkner. Well, no. Harper

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Lee is often brought up in the conversation along with William

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Faulkner as one of those, as I said in the turning, southern gothic writers

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that sort of really captured this out during a particular historical and cultural

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moment. And the fact that that script had all that in there

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was probably I mean, obviously due to her influence. She knew what to cut, you

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know, of her own, of her own work. All

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right. Well, let’s get into the book. As usual with a

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book of this weight and this, size that is, of course,

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still in copyright, you can’t get an open source version of To Kill A

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Mockingbird, like anywhere. We will be summarizing To Kill a

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Mockingbird. So we’ll be looking at really the first

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part. This is divided up into 2 parts, and there’s a lot of

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stuff that happens in this book. We cannot possibly cover the whole book.

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So I would recommend you going out and readers it. But Tom kill and

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Mockingbird opens with, the characters of

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Jim Fitch, Atticus Finch, dill,

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Calpurnia, Boo Radley, who we already mentioned, played by Robert

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Duvall, the film, and, and scout, Jesan

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Louise Finch. She’s the narrator of the story. Now Scout stands in

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for Harper Lee, in this, in this

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novel, and the entire thing is written. And

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then this is gonna be one of the things that’s gonna capture you. And it,

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and as an adult, it really fourth kind of blew me away that she was

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able to hold the narrative all the way through. But, it’s

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written through her, her eyes, right through what she essays,

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and not the eyes of an adult, although it is an adult looking

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book. But it’s an adult looking back and then trying to fit themselves

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into a 6 to 8 year old brain and

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mindset, and not do it in a precocious or

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precious kind of way, which is one of the one of the one of the

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reasons why this book works. In chapters 1

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through 4 of Tom kill a Mockingbird, we learned that, all of

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the children, live in a segregated environment in,

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in Macomb, Alabama. But they don’t perceive the

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segregation deeply, nor are they in an age where it will impact the

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impressions of their lives. We often talk in our own era and Tom

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and I will talk a little bit about this today as well, because this is

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one of the main themes of the book. We often talk in our era about

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can’t children see race and how soon should we begin bias training with children

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and how soon should we begin, you know, knocking down social and cultural

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biases around race or gender or any other form of identity. And the

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fact of the matter is, do children come in? No, not do

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children. The fact of the matter is children come into the world with certain

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impressions, for sure, but they also come in blank. It’s a weird mix

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and you don’t know where the blank parts are and you don’t know where the

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impression parts are. And the first four chapters of To Kill A

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Mockingbird really set that tone. We’re looking at a child’s

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life through a child’s eyes, and there is segregation,

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but that word isn’t even used

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by Scout anywhere in the book. No. It’s too

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complicated a word for a

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6 to 8-year-old. The father

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Atticus Finch played by Gregory Peck in the movie, is a local

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attorney. And the Jesan main theme of the

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book that we’ll talk about today is this idea of a paternal

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presence that sets the moral undertone of not only a

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family, but also of the book. Again, this is something that’s really

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interesting and why I don’t think To Killamocky Bird could be written today.

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We live in a world where we are currently in the

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backwash of the Homer Simpson father

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figure kind of idea, where the father is kinda dumb

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and, kinda not great. And the mom has to come along. I

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even see this on social media. And the father the mom has to come along

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and fix things that the father does. And there’s a tension there.

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Right? Because the reality is we do live in a world of competent fathers.

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I mean, we’re recording this, the day after d

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day, in, in 2024.

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And Father’s Day is coming up, which is

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according to one comedian I follow, but interestingly enough on Instagram,

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the worst holiday ever.

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He he has a compelling he’s a compelling argument there.

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Even my children struggle with what Tom get me for father’s day. And I, and

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I tell them as I’m sure every father who is listening, even Tom’s a father,

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every father listening tells them you don’t have to really give me anything because I

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can already get everything myself. If I already want to get it,

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I don’t need anything. But

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Atticus presents that moral weight,

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particularly for Scout and for her

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brother, Jesan, and their friend, Bill. He also

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presents the moral weight for the town, as a local

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attorney, and we get the beginnings of that. And a lot of

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the ways in which Scout views him are the way a

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child views, views a grown up, not in the way

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grown ups view other grown ups. So there are many things that

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are mystery in these first four chapters to, to

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scout. We also begin to explore in chapters 1 through fourth

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character of the town of Maycomb, through its citizens and

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their relation to history as perceived by a child. Again,

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I wanna reemphasize, this is not written from an adult’s

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perspective. There’s not an adult sense of maturity

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and wisdom and and even cynicism on all of this. There is a sense

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of innocence in To Kill a Mockingbird, and that’s probably why it’s

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assigned to high school students, because,

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you know, if you’re a teenager, you can really read this book and really get

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your arms around it because you think adults are stupid and they don’t know anything.

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And from your perspective, they are stupid and they don’t know anything.

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But you’re also still a child. Right? You still

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have some, depending upon your circumstances, sense of

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wonder about what is laying in front of you in the world.

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When we think about To Kill a Mockingbird, we have to think about Harper

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Lee. She was born on April

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28, 1926, and she died February 19,

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2016, not but a few years ago.

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She was an American novelist, and that’s pretty much the only

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job she had that I can find anyway. She was the

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youngest of 4 children. Her parents were Francis

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Cunningham and Amasa Coleman Lee. Lee’s mother

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was a homemaker, but her father was a former newspaper editor, a businessman, and

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a lawyer who also served in the Alabama state legislature from 1926

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to 1938. And I do believe that she had a strong relationship with her father

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because, well, Atticus Finch is basically

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Arberly’s dad. Through her father, she was related

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to confederate general Robert E. Lee and a member of the

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prominent Lee family. Before, her father,

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Amasa Coleman Lee became a title lawyer, he once defended 2 black

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men accused of murdering a white storekeeper. Both clients, a

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father and a son were hanged, which is how things happened back in the

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day. And I’ll tell a story here on the podcast a little bit

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later, about my own personal

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interaction with such

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social problems. While enrolled

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at Monroe County High School, Lee developed an interest in English literature,

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in part through her teacher, Gladys Watson, who became also her mentor.

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In the summer of 1948, Lee attended a summer school program. And by the

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way, she was already writing by this point, small articles,

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magazine publications, things like that. Right? And her father

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thought that the summer school program, European civilization in the

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20th century at Oxford University in England,

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would help her may be more interested in legal studies at

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Tuscaloosa because he really wanted her to go off and become a lawyer.

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That turned out to be a hope in vain. And that was not the

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path that she was going to go down.

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So we’ve got Harper Lee and we’ve got to kill a mockingbird and we’ve got

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some background here. So Tom, what’s

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your reaction to the first encounter your first encounter with Keller Mark.

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We’re talk a little bit about that, and the impression that this book has made

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on you. Well, I

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I think that that by itself is probably a loaded question because I I think

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we could stop right there, and we could just talk for the next hour and

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a half about just this question.

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Because so I found one of the reasons I

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found this book so fascinating was I grew up in a

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very mixed race environment. I I grew I grew up

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very poor. I mean, I felt like I was I was reading about

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myself in some portions of this book. Right? Like, not

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not I wasn’t in Alabama. I get that. Like but and it certainly wasn’t

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racially segregated the way that they were talking about, but we felt economically

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segregated. Like, whether you were black, white, or Hispanic, or or other,

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we were all in that group treated just differently than some of our

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counterparts that weren’t growing up in that in that air in in that

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same neighborhood. So but but one of the things that that really

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stood out to me was, I should

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probably preface this. So this this might make a little bit of an impact to

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your to the audience. So I grew up not

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knowing my biological father until I was about 21, 22 years

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old. Okay. So when I so when I read when I started

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reading, like, I I almost kinda

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wanted a father like Atticus. Right? Like like Atticus Finch where and

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I felt like he would be the kinda guy that I could bring home my

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friends that were not

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racially the same as me, and he wouldn’t have treated them differently based

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strictly on the way they looked because that’s how that’s the feeling you got

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from him in the book, that his moral compass was in such a way

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that that he was judging people by their merit,

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not other factors, including how poor they were. And if you

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again, if you read the book, Scout at one point even asks him, daddy, are

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we poor? And he says yes. And she goes, are we as poor as the

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other family? I can’t remember the name of the family at this point, but are

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we as poor as the other fit? And he goes, well, they’re farmers and we’re

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not. The farmers were hit harder. So, yeah,

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they’re a little bit more poor than we are, but we’re never gonna make them

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feel that way, essentially. I’m paraphrasing. But

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so he even looked at it like the poor

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looking down at the poor, and he didn’t care what their race or

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or color was at that point. He just felt like we’re not gonna make them

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feel bad because they’re more poor than we are. We’re just gonna make them feel

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we’re gonna make them feel like they’re they’re our peers, so to speak. And again,

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I’m paraphrasing. But when I when I’m reading stuff

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like that and when I was looking at this as a kid, I’m thinking to

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myself, wow. Like, I if I had a doubt like that, like, all my

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friends could come over and he wouldn’t think anything of it. Like, he wouldn’t

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he wouldn’t invite them to dinner or because he does that in the

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book with one of the one of the kids that Scout gets into a

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conflict with. They end up inviting him over for dinner, and I was like,

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I think that is cool now. So, you know, in in

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in bouncing back between the book and the and the movie because I think again,

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like I said earlier, I think this particular movie does a really nice job

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interpreting the book. Right? Like in Gregory Peck in particular. And when you watch

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Gregory Peck interact with the black community in the

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movie, you just get this sense that

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the segregation wasn’t in his mind. The

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segregation was was physical. I mean, obviously, you can see it, you know,

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and it was written about and how this was a white neighborhood and that was

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a black neighborhood. But the way that Gregory the way that the book is written

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and as you’re reading it and the way that Gregory Peck depicts it in the

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movie, you could just get this sense from him that

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the segregation isn’t in his mind. The segregation is only there because it has to

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be there, so to speak. Right? Yeah. It’s it’s required to be there, so I’ll

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deal with it because it’s there. But he gives it just the

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way he, again, I’m I’m referring to Gregory Peck in the movie. Just the

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way he walks to the front porch and shakes the man’s hand, and then you’re

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like, because in 19 thirties Alabama, you’re just not expecting

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that. Right? Like, you’re just Right. You’re not expecting that kind of that kind

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of, respect and,

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mutual, and there’s a

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and there’s another part to it where, you know,

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Atticus is leaving the courthouse and one of the one of the members of the

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black community kinda nudges Scout and she he’s like, hey. Stand up.

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Your your father’s walk like, this is important to your father. Stand up. Like and

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it was the black community that was trying to teach her that lesson, not the

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segregated white community. Like so I I I just felt like this book did a

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really nice job of, like, and don’t even get me started about,

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what was her name? The the the the house, Oh, Calfurnia?

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Calfurnica. Yep. Right? Because there was a there was a quick

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and I think it might get lost to a lot of people about this

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part, but Calpurnica pulled Scout aside

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to discipline her. Now this is a black woman

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disciplining a white girl in her own home, and

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Gregory Peck thought nothing of it, which is, again, one of the things that I

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found blew my mind. Right? And I was like, that wasn’t supposed

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to happen during those during those Tom, like and and and by the

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way, and the movie kinda shows, like, she actually gives her a little tap on

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the butt, and I was like, wow. This is this is powerful. Like,

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00:24:37,335 –> 00:24:41,115
this that to me was like, yes. Because

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people like, I one of my favorite lines, and

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and and I’m gonna get into a little bit of trouble here, so I I

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00:24:49,825 –> 00:24:52,705
I I apologize, but Yeah. I’m just gonna say I’m just gonna say it because

402
00:24:52,705 –> 00:24:56,385
I say it. Right? One of my favorite lines is when people say them to

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other people, like, I you know, and you’ve heard the phrase a 1000 times, Jesan.

404
00:24:59,740 –> 00:25:02,940
I know you have. They say, well, I don’t see color. Oh, yeah. And I’m

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like, well, you kind of freaking have to, man. Like, we’re

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different colors. Like, you don’t see color. Now that being said,

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so when my kids asked me growing up so my kids asked me what that

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00:25:14,269 –> 00:25:17,710
meant. Right? Like, what did what do they mean when they say that? Do they

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not recognize that that person is black or that person is brown because they’re Hispanic

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fourth that, you know, that when in the middle of summer, when we’re tan, we

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have a red tint to our skin. We always have a red tint that it

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because of our culture. And and I was

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like, okay. So when people say that phrase and they mean it

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legitimately, they’re naive. They have no idea what they’re talking about. Because if

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they if they truly say they don’t see color, then they’re not

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experiences they’re they’re not experiencing the wonder of

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cultural differences that we all have. Right? Mhmm. What I

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think they mean by that is I don’t

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judge people based on strictly their color. I don’t view people

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or treat them based on their color because I

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either dislike or like people based on the merits of the person,

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not what their skin tone is. Right? So I like just as many

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black people as I don’t like. That has nothing to do with seeing color or

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not seeing color. I like them as a person. I don’t like them as a

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Jesan. And I don’t care what color they are. I’m I’m gonna base my opinion

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of you on your merits. And the reason I say all of this is

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because I think some of that comes out in this book with Gregory Peck in

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the movie Tom. And the way that he sees people, the way he stands up

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for Tom Robinson, the way in the scene, or or the

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the the chapter when the mob goes to the jail. Right?

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Because they’re they’re the the Tom Robinson finally came back to the local

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jail because at some point, the the sheriff was holding him outside of

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the outside of the communal jail because he he knew what would happen. Like, the

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the the sheriff knew what would happen. And so as soon as soon as he

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comes back, sure enough, mob shows up. And who’s standing in front of the mob

436
00:26:55,544 –> 00:26:59,360
not letting them in? Gregory Peck. Mhmm. And I was like, damn it. Like, I

437
00:26:59,360 –> 00:27:03,200
really wanna know this guy. Like, because this kid this can’t possibly

438
00:27:03,200 –> 00:27:06,765
be a real guy in 19 thirties Alabama. Well,

439
00:27:06,765 –> 00:27:10,545
that’s apparently, it was, though. Apparently, it was, though.

440
00:27:11,245 –> 00:27:13,805
So I think that’s why this book

441
00:27:15,880 –> 00:27:19,580
And again, I place it next to uncle Tom’s cabin by Harry Beecher stow.

442
00:27:19,800 –> 00:27:22,700
So, yeah, it’s one of those books that

443
00:27:23,895 –> 00:27:27,335
when I, when I finally bang through it and read the whole thing,

444
00:27:27,335 –> 00:27:31,095
right. It’s one of those books where I realized about 3

445
00:27:31,095 –> 00:27:34,830
quarters of the way through, I thought this book came

446
00:27:34,830 –> 00:27:37,710
along. And by the way, this is not Harper Lee’s fourth. It has nothing to

447
00:27:37,710 –> 00:27:40,270
do with her. She wrote, she published, she did what she was supposed to do.

448
00:27:40,270 –> 00:27:43,505
That’s her job. One of the things we’ve been talking about,

449
00:27:44,059 –> 00:27:47,645
fourth we did talk about last month with some of our female authors, like Catherine

450
00:27:47,645 –> 00:27:50,705
and Fourth Porter and, Zora Neale Hurston,

451
00:27:51,520 –> 00:27:55,059
was, how timing

452
00:27:55,600 –> 00:27:58,899
is hugely important. Yeah. Like, for for for Hurston,

453
00:28:00,665 –> 00:28:04,345
unfortunately fourth her, you

454
00:28:04,345 –> 00:28:07,870
know, she came along and then

455
00:28:08,090 –> 00:28:11,049
she declined. And and and but the people had to pick her up later on.

456
00:28:11,049 –> 00:28:14,890
Right? They had to they had to find her on their own. Right? Catherine and

457
00:28:14,890 –> 00:28:18,635
Porter nominated for Pulitzer writers, but nobody

458
00:28:18,635 –> 00:28:22,395
reads her stuff anymore. She’s like Pearl Buck. Nobody reads her stuff anymore. And by

459
00:28:22,395 –> 00:28:25,950
the way, we should be reading it. She wrote one of the better explanations

460
00:28:26,890 –> 00:28:30,030
at an emotional level of what happens in a flu epidemic,

461
00:28:31,025 –> 00:28:34,085
because she lived through the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918,

462
00:28:34,785 –> 00:28:37,825
and she went bald and all her hair turned white. I think that made an

463
00:28:37,825 –> 00:28:39,940
impression on her. I just think

464
00:28:41,240 –> 00:28:44,500
it did. Timing is everything.

465
00:28:46,535 –> 00:28:50,294
Stowe had timing with uncle Tom’s cabin. Matter of fact, Abraham Lincoln

466
00:28:50,294 –> 00:28:53,595
is quoted as, when he met her at the white house, I believe,

467
00:28:54,400 –> 00:28:57,520
or in Washington DC. Because the white house didn’t exist. Basically at that point in

468
00:28:57,520 –> 00:29:00,260
time, they were building it. I think if I remember correctly.

469
00:29:01,595 –> 00:29:04,635
But, he said to her, oh, you’re the one you’re the little woman who wrote

470
00:29:04,635 –> 00:29:08,475
this great big book that started this war. You know? Yeah. And,

471
00:29:09,420 –> 00:29:13,260
Harper Lee is just to sort of bring that forward another 100

472
00:29:13,260 –> 00:29:17,085
years, Harper Lee is the woman that wrote this book that

473
00:29:17,544 –> 00:29:20,684
landed in an environment that was right for desegregation.

474
00:29:22,745 –> 00:29:26,330
And so I think that’s why it’s had its cultural impact. We’ll talk a little

475
00:29:26,330 –> 00:29:29,309
more about that today, had its cultural impact that it has

476
00:29:31,049 –> 00:29:34,730
had and talking about your own personal

477
00:29:34,730 –> 00:29:38,525
engagement with it. You said you read it in high school and

478
00:29:38,525 –> 00:29:41,905
you emotionally connected with it because of your personal experiences.

479
00:29:43,245 –> 00:29:46,860
I read it in high school And I got distracted

480
00:29:47,960 –> 00:29:51,720
by it because other emotional things, and I’ll talk a little bit about this

481
00:29:51,720 –> 00:29:55,195
today, but other emotional things were happening with me around that

482
00:29:55,195 –> 00:29:58,715
area. And so there was a lot of confusion there, not about

483
00:29:58,715 –> 00:30:02,315
segregation, not about racism, not about any of that, but

484
00:30:02,315 –> 00:30:05,980
confusion about where do I personally stand as

485
00:30:05,980 –> 00:30:09,340
a man? Like, what is that going to be? And I

486
00:30:09,340 –> 00:30:12,924
didn’t, at that time of my life,

487
00:30:13,065 –> 00:30:16,664
I did not have a whole lot of good role models. Right? I had a

488
00:30:16,664 –> 00:30:18,985
whole lot of bad ones, but I did not have a whole lot of good

489
00:30:18,985 –> 00:30:22,610
role models. And so, you know I didn’t I

490
00:30:22,610 –> 00:30:26,309
didn’t have any. Yeah. You didn’t have any. You didn’t have any.

491
00:30:26,450 –> 00:30:30,095
You know? So I think that that’s the other

492
00:30:30,095 –> 00:30:33,934
place where this book lands to your point. And then talking

493
00:30:33,934 –> 00:30:37,610
about Calpurnia, you know, you mentioned, you know, the, and she’s the, you

494
00:30:37,610 –> 00:30:40,590
know, the African American housekeeper that lives in the,

495
00:30:41,770 –> 00:30:45,210
in the house with the finches. The paragraph here,

496
00:30:45,610 –> 00:30:49,315
in the first it’s in literally the very first chapter. It’s exactly what you’re

497
00:30:49,315 –> 00:30:52,995
talking about. And I quote Calpurnia was something else again. Now this is again

498
00:30:52,995 –> 00:30:56,660
through scout’s eyes, right, through the 6 year old’s eyes.

499
00:30:56,720 –> 00:31:00,420
Calpurnia was something else again. She was all angles and bones.

500
00:31:01,065 –> 00:31:04,905
She was nearsighted. She squinted her hand was wide as

501
00:31:04,905 –> 00:31:08,665
a bed slat and twice as hard. She was always ordering me out of

502
00:31:08,665 –> 00:31:12,220
the kitchen, asking me why I couldn’t behave as well as Jim when she knew

503
00:31:12,220 –> 00:31:15,900
he was older and calling me home when I wasn’t ready to come. Our

504
00:31:15,900 –> 00:31:19,655
battles were epic and one-sided Calpurnia always

505
00:31:19,655 –> 00:31:23,415
won mainly because Atticus always took her. She had

506
00:31:23,415 –> 00:31:26,840
been with us ever since gem was born and I had felt her tyrannical

507
00:31:26,840 –> 00:31:29,100
presence as long as I could remember.

508
00:31:31,000 –> 00:31:34,140
I loved it. I love that. Come on. Love it.

509
00:31:36,025 –> 00:31:39,784
It it’s it’s it again again, when you’re thinking about the

510
00:31:39,784 –> 00:31:43,404
time and the error that this was supposed to take place Yeah.

511
00:31:45,040 –> 00:31:48,800
I bet you half of America would not have believed that actually happened if

512
00:31:48,800 –> 00:31:52,240
you’d announced it at the time. Right? So well well hold on. Well

513
00:31:52,320 –> 00:31:55,425
okay. Let me let me do this. I’ll tackle this one early.

514
00:31:56,045 –> 00:31:59,805
So one of the things that you do get from people who live

515
00:31:59,805 –> 00:32:03,410
in the fourth, and I lived in the south for a good chunk of my

516
00:32:03,410 –> 00:32:07,250
my high school years. You know, people call Texas the south

517
00:32:07,250 –> 00:32:10,130
who are from the northeast. Y’all don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the

518
00:32:10,130 –> 00:32:13,535
west. Y’all no clue what you’re talking about. Not you, but just in general, you,

519
00:32:13,535 –> 00:32:16,015
the global you. Y’all don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the west out

520
00:32:16,015 –> 00:32:19,775
here. It’s not Yellowstone, Kevin Costner West, but it’s trust

521
00:32:19,775 –> 00:32:23,299
me. It’s the west. People walk around here unironically with

522
00:32:23,299 –> 00:32:26,900
cowboy hats on and giant belt buckle belt buckles. Like, give me a break. Come

523
00:32:26,900 –> 00:32:30,505
on. And they’re wrestling cows. So I don’t even wanna

524
00:32:30,505 –> 00:32:34,345
hear it. When I think of the south,

525
00:32:34,345 –> 00:32:35,940
I think of the deep fourth geographically.

526
00:32:44,095 –> 00:32:47,554
That’s the deep fourth. And even Georgia is shifting around.

527
00:32:47,695 –> 00:32:51,054
Well, to me, Georgia’s the south, but the 3 other 3 are the deep south.

528
00:32:51,054 –> 00:32:54,870
Right? Like, that’s, like, I think that’s where the the dividing line is for me.

529
00:32:54,870 –> 00:32:58,570
Yeah. Like, you got, like, you know, Georgia, the Carolinas,

530
00:32:58,789 –> 00:33:02,335
Georgia, Tennessee. That’s all the south. Then you get into the deep south, which is

531
00:33:02,335 –> 00:33:05,934
like Alabama, Louisiana. Well and there’s an and there’s an argument to be

532
00:33:05,934 –> 00:33:09,695
made that maybe the south begins at the begins on the east

533
00:33:09,695 –> 00:33:13,440
side of Dallas and moves to, like, the the west side

534
00:33:13,440 –> 00:33:16,799
of Atlanta. There’s an argument to be made there, maybe,

535
00:33:16,799 –> 00:33:20,375
geographically. Right? And maybe goes as far north as

536
00:33:20,375 –> 00:33:23,835
maybe Memphis and as far fourth as Jacksonville. Okay.

537
00:33:24,970 –> 00:33:28,510
When you talk to actual people who actually live here,

538
00:33:28,650 –> 00:33:32,315
it actually live in those areas that I’ve named, that geographic boundary that I’ve

539
00:33:32,315 –> 00:33:36,095
named. One of the things that drives them absolutely nuts. And actually

540
00:33:36,235 –> 00:33:39,515
the book references it Tom some of the women in the sewing circle. Talk about

541
00:33:39,515 –> 00:33:41,625
it. In part 2 of the book,

542
00:33:43,500 –> 00:33:47,260
one of the things that drives them nuts is the

543
00:33:47,260 –> 00:33:51,004
perceived on their part. And they’re not wrong in this, by the way,

544
00:33:51,625 –> 00:33:54,764
the perceived hypocrisy on the part of, as they call them Yankees,

545
00:33:56,105 –> 00:33:59,690
who will talk about equality all day, but

546
00:33:59,690 –> 00:34:02,110
won’t let black people marry their daughters.

547
00:34:03,930 –> 00:34:07,610
At least we down here, actually the Sony circle actually says this. One of

548
00:34:07,610 –> 00:34:11,101
the ladies does at least we down here are keeping them in their place, but

549
00:34:11,101 –> 00:34:14,592
we’re allowing them to rise in their own place. So which one is, and of

550
00:34:14,592 –> 00:34:18,219
course, you know, it’s framed as which one is better. And

551
00:34:18,520 –> 00:34:22,199
we talk about Martin Luther king Jr. On this podcast every February with,

552
00:34:22,359 –> 00:34:26,105
with black history month. And one of

553
00:34:26,105 –> 00:34:29,944
the great, I don’t

554
00:34:29,944 –> 00:34:33,739
know if I would call it a success. Jesan are the

555
00:34:33,739 –> 00:34:36,960
great knock on effects from the civil rights struggle

556
00:34:37,660 –> 00:34:41,355
was in the 1960s seventies was the

557
00:34:41,355 –> 00:34:42,655
forcing of Americans,

558
00:34:44,875 –> 00:34:48,155
on either side of what was formerly known as the Mason Dixon line. No one

559
00:34:48,155 –> 00:34:51,600
even uses that term anymore, to actually

560
00:34:51,600 –> 00:34:55,440
confront their individual hypocrisy. So

561
00:34:55,440 –> 00:34:59,205
people in the north north of the Mason Dixon line, had

562
00:34:59,205 –> 00:35:02,825
to confront, okay. We say

563
00:35:03,285 –> 00:35:04,985
black folks are equal to white folks,

564
00:35:08,090 –> 00:35:11,210
but guess who’s coming to dinner as a popular film. Right? Like that that didn’t

565
00:35:11,290 –> 00:35:13,690
I don’t know if I remember correctly. That’s a place in, like, California that didn’t

566
00:35:13,690 –> 00:35:17,505
take place in, in, Alabama. And then, you

567
00:35:17,505 –> 00:35:20,405
know, the south separate, but equal,

568
00:35:21,265 –> 00:35:25,070
but we’re not going to give money to make it actually equal. We’re

569
00:35:25,070 –> 00:35:27,470
going to let it just sort of do whatever it’s going to do with let

570
00:35:27,470 –> 00:35:31,230
a 1,000 puppies bloom. Okay. I

571
00:35:31,230 –> 00:35:34,370
think those dynamics are well represented in the book.

572
00:35:35,154 –> 00:35:38,934
And I think that that is, that is a huge literary

573
00:35:39,075 –> 00:35:41,734
achievement for a first time author.

574
00:35:43,500 –> 00:35:47,260
And it represents not only the level of her talent, but I

575
00:35:47,260 –> 00:35:50,080
think it also represents her level of

576
00:35:51,045 –> 00:35:54,885
hotspot maybe. Because she didn’t know what

577
00:35:54,885 –> 00:35:58,565
she didn’t know. Writers. She didn’t know that you were not supposed to do

578
00:35:58,565 –> 00:36:00,950
that. I was just gonna say, she just kinda threw it out there. Just kinda

579
00:36:00,950 –> 00:36:03,829
threw it out there. Yeah. Let’s see what happens. Let’s see what happens. I was

580
00:36:03,829 –> 00:36:07,369
gonna see what to her own words, like, she was hoping fourth,

581
00:36:07,430 –> 00:36:11,165
like, a quick depth. Meaning Right. She wanted if if she was not going

582
00:36:11,165 –> 00:36:14,285
to be a good author, she wanted to know right away, so she’d go do

583
00:36:14,285 –> 00:36:18,119
something else. Right. Right? That that was the whole point of that statement. Yeah.

584
00:36:18,119 –> 00:36:21,720
Her, one of her mentors, was,

585
00:36:23,560 –> 00:36:27,115
oh, what’s his name? The guy

586
00:36:27,115 –> 00:36:30,954
who writers. I’m not going to remember it.

587
00:36:30,954 –> 00:36:34,154
It doesn’t matter, but he was a famous twentieth century author. Y’all can look it

588
00:36:34,154 –> 00:36:36,860
up on Wikipedia, but he was one of her mentors and,

589
00:36:37,994 –> 00:36:40,860
Turning Capote. There it is. I knew if I talked long enough, it would eventually

590
00:36:40,860 –> 00:36:44,380
come, come into my brain. So Truman Capote who wrote, in cold

591
00:36:44,380 –> 00:36:47,975
blood. Okay. A book which we will not be covering on this

592
00:36:47,975 –> 00:36:50,875
podcast, but, Truman Capote

593
00:36:51,415 –> 00:36:54,690
basically advised her to write from her direct

594
00:36:54,849 –> 00:36:58,530
experience as much as is humanly possible. And so I

595
00:36:58,530 –> 00:37:02,150
think that what you’re seeing in Atticus

596
00:37:03,515 –> 00:37:06,095
is what not only her father was,

597
00:37:10,920 –> 00:37:12,460
And I think Southerners

598
00:37:14,600 –> 00:37:17,720
had a problem with this book because it we’re gonna talk about it winding up

599
00:37:17,720 –> 00:37:21,375
on the banned book list too. Yeah. I think Southerners

600
00:37:21,435 –> 00:37:25,195
had a problem because not because they didn’t have Atticus types

601
00:37:25,195 –> 00:37:27,775
in their midst. They did.

602
00:37:29,460 –> 00:37:32,980
I think they looked at the Atticus types as their dirty

603
00:37:32,980 –> 00:37:36,740
laundry. Oh, so I was thinking And they didn’t

604
00:37:36,740 –> 00:37:40,444
want their dirty laundry exposed to the rest of the world. I was

605
00:37:40,444 –> 00:37:44,045
thinking that the Atticus Finches of the world were

606
00:37:44,045 –> 00:37:47,404
not as impactful in real life as they were

607
00:37:47,404 –> 00:37:50,570
portrayed. Because Is it No. I think well, I think that’s the dirty laundry part.

608
00:37:50,570 –> 00:37:54,250
I think that’s the dirty laundry part. Right? And then Hollywood comes along. And and

609
00:37:54,250 –> 00:37:57,714
and here’s the other part that we, like, forget. The dynamic

610
00:37:57,714 –> 00:38:00,914
between regions in this country. Cause this country is, I mean, we’re a third of

611
00:38:00,914 –> 00:38:04,275
a continent for God’s essays. The dynamic between the regions in this

612
00:38:04,275 –> 00:38:08,030
country, is, I mean, we saw this with

613
00:38:08,030 –> 00:38:11,790
COVID is still sharp. It’s still sharp. Like I thought it had

614
00:38:11,790 –> 00:38:15,550
died down. Right. But nope, Nope. It’s still an undercurrent. It’s still

615
00:38:15,550 –> 00:38:19,345
there. And so from a Southerners perspective, number 1, I

616
00:38:19,345 –> 00:38:23,025
got these Northern Yankees coming down here turning me I got Tom desegregate. And

617
00:38:23,025 –> 00:38:26,160
then I got these California hippies coming here and making some.

618
00:38:27,099 –> 00:38:29,819
Like, get out of town, go back to your, go back to where you belong

619
00:38:29,819 –> 00:38:32,960
and stop coming down here and telling me how to live now.

620
00:38:33,235 –> 00:38:37,075
Now from the Californians and the the Hollywood perspective, oh, we’re

621
00:38:37,075 –> 00:38:39,475
gonna go down there and we’re gonna make a movie and it’s gonna be socially

622
00:38:39,475 –> 00:38:42,440
relevant and we’re gonna expose. And I’m not saying this is the thought process of

623
00:38:42,440 –> 00:38:45,880
folks making, you know, to kill a Mockingbird. I’m just saying that this is the

624
00:38:45,880 –> 00:38:47,740
undercurrent sort of,

625
00:38:51,045 –> 00:38:54,885
exaggeration or metaphor or or or or

626
00:38:54,885 –> 00:38:58,480
or or literature, right, that we put on It’s like a righteousness.

627
00:38:59,020 –> 00:39:02,540
Right? It’s like righteousness of Hollywood. Like, they feel like they’re gonna they’re gonna do

628
00:39:02,540 –> 00:39:06,015
it right. They’re gonna make sure it’s right. It’s authentic. It’s the like, and

629
00:39:06,015 –> 00:39:09,775
they they I shouldn’t say they never do, but they rarely get the gist

630
00:39:09,775 –> 00:39:13,375
of it. You know, like, it I Jesan, I I think you got some

631
00:39:13,375 –> 00:39:17,193
kid watching movie in New York or in Boston going, wow. Is that what the

632
00:39:17,193 –> 00:39:20,780
fourth is really like? Holy crap. Or if you’re from

633
00:39:20,780 –> 00:39:24,045
Boston and you watch a movie like the departed and you go, who has an

634
00:39:24,045 –> 00:39:27,645
accent like that? Like, I don’t know anybody that like like so the rest of

635
00:39:27,645 –> 00:39:31,325
the country thinks we speak like that? They’re like, what is wrong with

636
00:39:31,325 –> 00:39:34,849
this? Because they over they over they tend to overemphasize

637
00:39:35,549 –> 00:39:39,230
that quirkiness of whatever region they’re talking about. Right? Like Right. So, again, the

638
00:39:39,230 –> 00:39:43,075
Boston accent and, by the way, I know we have one. I get that. But

639
00:39:43,155 –> 00:39:46,535
and and and some of my some of my best friends have Boston accents.

640
00:39:46,675 –> 00:39:50,349
So it’s We were just we were just talking about Dennis Leary before fourth

641
00:39:50,349 –> 00:39:54,190
recorded this podcast. You know, I hit record. But and I forgive them for that.

642
00:39:54,190 –> 00:39:57,685
And no. No. But but but the way when Hollywood gets their things on their

643
00:39:57,685 –> 00:40:00,725
their their grips on it, they’re like, we’re gonna make it authentic, so we’re gonna

644
00:40:00,725 –> 00:40:04,569
make this Boston accent really pop, really show. And I feel like they do

645
00:40:04,569 –> 00:40:08,170
that everywhere else. Like, around and not just the country, by the way. I feel

646
00:40:08,170 –> 00:40:11,066
like they do it around the world when they’re making a movie about anywhere. It’s

647
00:40:11,066 –> 00:40:14,543
like they they they grab onto that thing that the region is known for and

648
00:40:14,543 –> 00:40:18,019
they over accentuate it to make sure that people understand that that’s what they’re doing

649
00:40:18,019 –> 00:40:21,349
and they’re trying to make it And then they overdo it and it becomes

650
00:40:22,289 –> 00:40:25,730
a nuisance to people. Like, every time a TV show, a

651
00:40:25,730 –> 00:40:29,105
movie, or documentary is made about

652
00:40:29,325 –> 00:40:32,925
our the the the fourth or whatever, I’m just waiting

653
00:40:33,091 –> 00:40:36,920
Tom my cringe hackles are already up, because I’m waiting to

654
00:40:36,920 –> 00:40:40,700
hear the Boston accent that drives me bananas. Because, like,

655
00:40:41,160 –> 00:40:45,000
half the people around me do not speak like that. Like, we’re not

656
00:40:45,365 –> 00:40:48,484
it doesn’t so and I’m assuming that’s part of their problem too. Like, when they’re

657
00:40:48,484 –> 00:40:51,045
gonna say, we’re gonna make this Southern, but we’re gonna make it authentic, and we’re

658
00:40:51,045 –> 00:40:54,184
gonna give we’re gonna ring this to the and then I’m like,

659
00:40:55,020 –> 00:40:58,140
and and I’m sure southern people cringe at it. Right? Oh, yeah. To Tom your

660
00:40:58,140 –> 00:41:01,119
point, the the rest of the country or the rest of the people watching it

661
00:41:01,795 –> 00:41:05,075
think that this is authentic, and this is how everybody down there acts, and everybody

662
00:41:05,075 –> 00:41:08,515
down there is, and everybody I I it drives me crazy

663
00:41:08,515 –> 00:41:12,280
sometimes, but Well, and the nuance of the book, and then we

664
00:41:12,280 –> 00:41:15,720
can, we’ll go back to our, go back to re summarizing here fourth, in a,

665
00:41:15,720 –> 00:41:19,319
in a moment. But the nuance of this book is

666
00:41:19,319 –> 00:41:23,095
that to your point, she wrote an

667
00:41:23,095 –> 00:41:26,555
individual book about individual people living individual

668
00:41:26,695 –> 00:41:30,190
lives inside of a

669
00:41:30,190 –> 00:41:33,790
group, social cultural, socio

670
00:41:33,790 –> 00:41:36,905
cultural milieu that,

671
00:41:38,485 –> 00:41:41,945
and by the way, there are characters in this book, like Ms. Maude,

672
00:41:42,085 –> 00:41:45,880
right. Or on Alexandra. It’s not just Atticus

673
00:41:45,940 –> 00:41:49,640
Finch, Dill, and miss Rachel.

674
00:41:50,340 –> 00:41:54,005
Love that kid, Dill. There were characters in this

675
00:41:54,005 –> 00:41:57,704
book, even the villain, Bob Yule,

676
00:41:59,125 –> 00:41:59,625
who

677
00:42:03,000 –> 00:42:05,100
they knew the thing they were in,

678
00:42:06,920 –> 00:42:10,765
but they didn’t have the power or the will to

679
00:42:10,765 –> 00:42:14,605
change it. And See, I I felt like

680
00:42:14,605 –> 00:42:18,260
that was I felt like that was stronger from the sheriff’s perspective than Bob

681
00:42:18,260 –> 00:42:21,620
Ewells. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. When he’s talking to Atticus at the

682
00:42:21,620 –> 00:42:24,340
end At the end. When what happens with the kids and all that, and he’s

683
00:42:24,340 –> 00:42:28,185
like, listen. I loved it how he froze. Like, I’m 43 years old.

684
00:42:29,605 –> 00:42:32,244
I don’t know a whole lot about a lot of things, but I know a

685
00:42:32,244 –> 00:42:35,785
lot about this. Yeah. You let me make this decision.

686
00:42:36,200 –> 00:42:39,660
Right. And he and he took the burden off Atticus’ conscience.

687
00:42:40,200 –> 00:42:44,035
Right. But, like, that’s an exam well, we talk

688
00:42:44,035 –> 00:42:46,935
about this sometimes on the podcast. That’s an example of an adult in the room.

689
00:42:47,075 –> 00:42:50,835
When I when I say on this show, where are the

690
00:42:50,835 –> 00:42:54,320
adults in the room? That’s what I’m talking about. That

691
00:42:54,320 –> 00:42:57,860
interaction right there. Where are the people who will go, listen,

692
00:43:00,675 –> 00:43:04,055
name your age here. That’s older than whoever’s in the room.

693
00:43:04,755 –> 00:43:07,870
I’ve got a few more years of life on you. I know a few more

694
00:43:07,870 –> 00:43:11,630
things, and you know a lot about a lot of fancy things, and

695
00:43:11,671 –> 00:43:15,414
book is that cool. But I know

696
00:43:15,414 –> 00:43:19,255
about the permanent things that you don’t know about yet. So I’m gonna

697
00:43:19,255 –> 00:43:22,869
make this decision, and you’re gonna kick and scream, and you’re gonna

698
00:43:22,869 –> 00:43:26,309
cry and wail. Hell, you’re gonna blow me up on that thing called TikTok that

699
00:43:26,309 –> 00:43:30,154
I’m not even on. I don’t care.

700
00:43:30,535 –> 00:43:34,055
This is the decision that needs to be made right now. And then they just

701
00:43:34,055 –> 00:43:37,174
go off and make it. And they go off and go over the consequences of

702
00:43:37,174 –> 00:43:40,820
it. Yeah. It was also a good example of, like, doing what’s

703
00:43:40,820 –> 00:43:44,420
right is not always by the book, so to

704
00:43:44,420 –> 00:43:48,175
speak. Right. Exactly. Right? You sometimes you have to some yeah.

705
00:43:48,175 –> 00:43:52,015
Sometimes you have to take a a slight left turn to Tom make sure

706
00:43:52,015 –> 00:43:55,530
that there’s a difference between

707
00:43:55,530 –> 00:43:59,130
being right and being just. Right. And in this and in this particular

708
00:43:59,130 –> 00:44:02,575
case, I felt like the right decision

709
00:44:02,875 –> 00:44:06,394
was making sure that the just decision was was was to the

710
00:44:06,394 –> 00:44:10,119
surface. Well, and Harper Lee wasn’t. So again,

711
00:44:10,119 –> 00:44:13,900
she’s writing this through the perspective of a, of a 6 to 8 year old.

712
00:44:13,960 –> 00:44:17,799
So a 6 to 8 year old is not going to ask

713
00:44:17,799 –> 00:44:21,465
the question. And I think this is why there’s been very little

714
00:44:21,465 –> 00:44:25,085
literary analysis of this book because a sophisticated

715
00:44:25,385 –> 00:44:29,079
critic in our year of our Lord 20, fourth is

716
00:44:29,079 –> 00:44:32,140
going to ask this question. Why

717
00:44:32,839 –> 00:44:36,520
couldn’t the sheriff have done the same thing for

718
00:44:36,520 –> 00:44:37,339
Tom Rob?

719
00:44:40,765 –> 00:44:43,665
And the answer to that question is this

720
00:44:47,110 –> 00:44:50,950
6 to 8 year olds don’t deconstruct the world to figure out

721
00:44:50,950 –> 00:44:52,730
who’s got power and who doesn’t.

722
00:44:54,805 –> 00:44:56,825
6 to 8 year olds don’t perceive

723
00:44:58,165 –> 00:45:01,545
the socio cultural political milieu

724
00:45:02,085 –> 00:45:05,910
in the same way that a 35 year old critic with an ax

725
00:45:05,910 –> 00:45:09,130
to grind in a blog in New York or wherever does.

726
00:45:09,910 –> 00:45:13,755
They just don’t, they haven’t lived that experience. We

727
00:45:13,755 –> 00:45:16,715
all get to talk about a lot about lived experience. Well, the lived experience of

728
00:45:16,715 –> 00:45:20,520
a 68 year old, ain’t that The limits of a

729
00:45:20,520 –> 00:45:24,360
68 year old is, well, this thing happened over here with

730
00:45:24,360 –> 00:45:26,600
the adults, and then I went off. And by the way, this is exactly how

731
00:45:26,600 –> 00:45:28,704
the book is written. And then I went off and did a bunch of stuff

732
00:45:28,704 –> 00:45:32,065
with my buddies, and I got into a bunch of shenanigans. I loved how she

733
00:45:32,065 –> 00:45:35,904
talked about Halloween. I I love that line. The

734
00:45:35,904 –> 00:45:39,750
ham. Right. Like, she she took up whole pages about this.

735
00:45:39,750 –> 00:45:43,109
I’m like, what modern author would have the guts? It’s it was

736
00:45:43,109 –> 00:45:46,815
amazing. And oh, and by the way, the

737
00:45:46,815 –> 00:45:49,855
reason why there was a ham let me let me go to this for just

738
00:45:49,855 –> 00:45:53,055
a moment. And this is the back chapter of the book. Yeah. The reason why

739
00:45:53,055 –> 00:45:56,710
there was a ham. So was in October

740
00:45:56,810 –> 00:46:00,570
fourth the back end of the book, and they’re talking about Halloween

741
00:46:01,270 –> 00:46:04,805
and talking about the costume and missus Tootie and Fruity

742
00:46:04,805 –> 00:46:08,425
Barber and, sort of why,

743
00:46:09,765 –> 00:46:12,505
why Halloween happened in the way that it happened.

744
00:46:14,010 –> 00:46:15,950
And, and I quote,

745
00:46:18,490 –> 00:46:21,870
the Jesan change in Maycomb since last year was not one of national significance.

746
00:46:22,385 –> 00:46:26,065
Until then, Halloween and Maycomb was a completely unorganized affair. Each

747
00:46:26,065 –> 00:46:29,185
child did what he wanted to do with assistance for other children if there was

748
00:46:29,185 –> 00:46:33,020
anything to be moved, such as placing a light bugging on top of Libby stable.

749
00:46:33,800 –> 00:46:37,640
But parents thought things went too far last year when the piece of

750
00:46:37,640 –> 00:46:40,475
miss Tucci and miss Frutti was shattered.

751
00:46:41,415 –> 00:46:45,175
That’s an 8 year old. That’s writing specifically from an 8 year old’s perspective fourth,

752
00:46:45,175 –> 00:46:48,920
I’m sorry, a 6 year old’s perspective. Missed back to the book for just

753
00:46:48,920 –> 00:46:52,680
a second turning. Missus Tootie and Frutie Barber were maiden ladies, sisters who

754
00:46:52,726 –> 00:46:56,515
Libby together in the only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar. The Barber ladies were

755
00:46:56,515 –> 00:47:00,275
rumored to be Republicans. No judgment there. Just this is the thing I

756
00:47:00,275 –> 00:47:02,970
hear as a sister what it is. I don’t even know what that means. Having

757
00:47:02,970 –> 00:47:06,770
migrated from Clanton, Alabama in 1911, their ways were strange

758
00:47:06,770 –> 00:47:10,464
to us. And why they wanted a seller, nobody knew. But they wanted 1, and

759
00:47:10,464 –> 00:47:13,984
they dug 1, and they spent the rest of their lives chasing generations of children

760
00:47:13,984 –> 00:47:17,765
out of it. And I quote further, missus Judy and Frodey,

761
00:47:18,059 –> 00:47:21,900
their names were Sarah and Francis, aside from their Yankee essays, were both

762
00:47:21,900 –> 00:47:25,500
deaf. Miss Trudy denied it and lived in a world of silence, but

763
00:47:25,500 –> 00:47:29,215
miss Frudy, not about to miss anything, employed an ear trumpet

764
00:47:29,215 –> 00:47:32,947
so enormous that Jim declared it was a loud speaker fourth

765
00:47:32,975 –> 00:47:36,780
one of those dog victrolas. And I had to pause for a minute and think

766
00:47:36,780 –> 00:47:40,460
about the logo, by the way. Well, I was like, that’s brilliant. Logo? The

767
00:47:40,460 –> 00:47:44,275
RCA logo. That’s brilliant. Back to the book for just

768
00:47:44,275 –> 00:47:47,955
a moment. With these facts in mind and Halloween at hand, some wicked

769
00:47:47,955 –> 00:47:51,650
children had waited until the missus Barber were thoroughly asleep, slipped

770
00:47:51,650 –> 00:47:54,790
into their living room. Nobody with the Radleys locked up at night.

771
00:47:55,410 –> 00:47:59,170
Stealthly made away with every stick of furniture therein and hid it in the

772
00:47:59,170 –> 00:48:02,835
cellar. I deny having taken part in such a

773
00:48:02,835 –> 00:48:06,675
thing. I read that twice just to

774
00:48:06,675 –> 00:48:09,655
get it, just to make sure I got the joke. Yeah.

775
00:48:10,340 –> 00:48:14,020
That’s, that’s the mind of a 6 to 8 year old.

776
00:48:14,020 –> 00:48:17,780
And that’s that there are whole passages like this

777
00:48:17,780 –> 00:48:21,375
in this book, and that’s why it defies literary analysis, I think.

778
00:48:21,994 –> 00:48:25,675
Well, that it well, that and and one of the most one of the

779
00:48:25,675 –> 00:48:29,349
most profound parts of the book was when

780
00:48:29,349 –> 00:48:32,470
Scout at the end at the end of the book, when Scout is trying to

781
00:48:32,470 –> 00:48:36,125
ease the mind of Atticus as to why the sheriff is right And coming

782
00:48:36,125 –> 00:48:39,725
from the mind of a 6 year old Yep. It was powerful in

783
00:48:39,725 –> 00:48:43,220
its simplicity. And it was and it was it was

784
00:48:43,220 –> 00:48:45,700
simple because it was coming from the mind of a 6 or 8 year old.

785
00:48:45,700 –> 00:48:49,460
But, you know, to your point, but that’s where all the power came from. And

786
00:48:49,460 –> 00:48:53,165
you’re like, oh, damn. Like Mhmm. That

787
00:48:53,165 –> 00:48:56,765
was written very, very, very well. And and how

788
00:48:56,765 –> 00:49:00,460
how she pulled back a lesson she learned from him earlier in

789
00:49:00,460 –> 00:49:03,980
the book, he she basically used his own words, not against him,

790
00:49:03,980 –> 00:49:07,359
but she used his own words to teach him his own lesson.

791
00:49:08,125 –> 00:49:11,885
Right. I I just think, again, it was it was great. It was really

792
00:49:11,885 –> 00:49:15,710
good. I love this book. Let’s get

793
00:49:15,710 –> 00:49:18,590
back to the summary. So we’re gonna go through there’s only leaders part of the

794
00:49:18,590 –> 00:49:22,350
book. We’re bouncing around a little bit. But, in chapters 4 through

795
00:49:22,350 –> 00:49:26,075
7, school shows up for the kids.

796
00:49:26,075 –> 00:49:29,855
And, school is precisely what you would think that it would be,

797
00:49:31,115 –> 00:49:34,799
for a, for a, for an 8 year old and

798
00:49:34,799 –> 00:49:38,240
a, I think, I think Jim was, was probably,

799
00:49:38,559 –> 00:49:42,355
11 at the time. And scout was like 6. So Jesan

800
00:49:42,355 –> 00:49:46,115
scout worked their way through school. Those scout who can read and write at an

801
00:49:46,115 –> 00:49:49,235
unexpected level in the 1st grade, much to the chagrin of her teacher,

802
00:49:50,420 –> 00:49:53,640
does not value school highly. As a matter of fact, she

803
00:49:53,780 –> 00:49:57,619
almost equates it with being in a prison with a bunch of weirdo

804
00:49:57,619 –> 00:50:01,025
inmates that she has to deal with constantly.

805
00:50:01,405 –> 00:50:04,285
And by the way, one of the things that’s also interesting about this book in

806
00:50:04,285 –> 00:50:08,078
the early chapters is we do establish that scout is clearly a

807
00:50:08,078 –> 00:50:11,090
Tom. Oh, yes. She is clearly

808
00:50:11,950 –> 00:50:15,710
a little girl, and she knows she’s a little girl. She’s not confused that she’s

809
00:50:15,710 –> 00:50:19,515
a little girl. There’s no gender dysphoria going on about her being a

810
00:50:19,515 –> 00:50:22,975
little girl. She knows she’s a little girl, and

811
00:50:24,130 –> 00:50:27,890
and she could fight as good as her brother, and she will waylay you in

812
00:50:27,890 –> 00:50:31,555
a heartbeat if she thinks that you’re getting out of line. And, you

813
00:50:31,555 –> 00:50:33,954
know, if she thinks that her brother’s getting out of line, she go try to

814
00:50:33,954 –> 00:50:37,714
waylay him Tom. And the level of and it

815
00:50:37,714 –> 00:50:40,840
reminded me of being a kid. I will be honest. It did. It reminded me

816
00:50:40,840 –> 00:50:44,520
of being a kid in the nineties. The last time I

817
00:50:44,520 –> 00:50:48,255
do believe the last time children actually took care of

818
00:50:48,255 –> 00:50:51,935
things in between themselves where it didn’t escalate to like a weird

819
00:50:51,935 –> 00:50:55,075
level of psychotic violence,

820
00:50:55,375 –> 00:50:59,170
either, online or in Jesan.

821
00:50:59,240 –> 00:51:02,680
It was just, I’ve got, I’ve got these 2 hands. You want to come on,

822
00:51:02,680 –> 00:51:06,285
get some or what? Right. We can’t fix this now. And,

823
00:51:07,465 –> 00:51:10,765
you know, the siblings, Jesan scout,

824
00:51:11,305 –> 00:51:14,980
you know, were able to do that. And Harper Lee really described that childlike

825
00:51:15,040 –> 00:51:18,400
environment. Very not childlike that. Yeah. Well, yeah, that childlike

826
00:51:18,400 –> 00:51:22,240
environment very, very well. Both siblings also engage

827
00:51:22,240 –> 00:51:25,555
in the early chapters in all kinds of varieties of shenanigans,

828
00:51:26,575 –> 00:51:27,715
all the way from,

829
00:51:31,199 –> 00:51:34,920
turning to prank book Radley, the, the reclusive

830
00:51:34,980 –> 00:51:38,500
neighbor in town Jesan. And, and these

831
00:51:38,500 –> 00:51:42,055
shenanigans culminate in culminate in Jim losing his pants turning to escape over a

832
00:51:42,055 –> 00:51:45,815
fence, out of a out of a out of a yard full of

833
00:51:45,815 –> 00:51:46,795
collared greens.

834
00:51:49,730 –> 00:51:53,250
Harborleigh does a really good job in these early chapters of bringing

835
00:51:53,250 –> 00:51:56,855
around the neighborhood’s dark side and

836
00:51:56,855 –> 00:51:59,915
seeing again, how that’s perceived through the eyes of a child.

837
00:52:01,495 –> 00:52:05,150
As rumors begin to swirl. And again,

838
00:52:05,289 –> 00:52:08,170
the children are not paying attention to this as a level of a, that an

839
00:52:08,170 –> 00:52:12,010
adult would not even a little bit of teenager would. They’re they’re pre

840
00:52:12,010 –> 00:52:15,545
adolescents. They’re like they’re kids. And they

841
00:52:15,545 –> 00:52:19,385
start hearing about how Atticus is defending. And and

842
00:52:19,385 –> 00:52:23,030
by the way, they don’t even say Tom Robinson. Abbott’s Atticus is defending

843
00:52:23,030 –> 00:52:26,790
this, well, I’m gonna use the word here because it is in the book, this,

844
00:52:27,030 –> 00:52:30,305
well, this nigger. By the way,

845
00:52:30,605 –> 00:52:33,505
that’s why this book is on the banned book list

846
00:52:34,045 –> 00:52:37,760
because the word is

847
00:52:37,980 –> 00:52:41,600
used quite prominently. As a matter of fact,

848
00:52:42,300 –> 00:52:45,505
if I be so bold, Harper Lee,

849
00:52:45,885 –> 00:52:49,565
whom by the way, never took any heat as far as I’m aware for

850
00:52:49,565 –> 00:52:53,345
the usage of this word in the way that Ernest Hemingway did

851
00:52:53,610 –> 00:52:57,370
in the sun also writers. And he only used it. Like, I think like, like

852
00:52:57,370 –> 00:53:00,810
there’s a, there’s a whole passage in there where Mike is talking in the book

853
00:53:00,810 –> 00:53:04,355
about a writers, But because Hemingway is writing

854
00:53:04,355 –> 00:53:08,194
about adults, Hemingway gets run. Harper Lee is

855
00:53:08,194 –> 00:53:11,894
writing about children, so she’s okay.

856
00:53:13,460 –> 00:53:17,300
Interesting. Wasn’t there a a point, though, where Atticus even asks her

857
00:53:17,300 –> 00:53:21,135
not to use that word? Yes. He does. Yes. Yes. And he’s like he’s like,

858
00:53:21,615 –> 00:53:25,455
okay. Can we not? Can we pass on that? And Okay. And it’s just

859
00:53:25,455 –> 00:53:29,055
such a part of her existence, but he doesn’t but he doesn’t tell her

860
00:53:29,055 –> 00:53:32,720
why she shouldn’t use it. True. But I think but

861
00:53:32,720 –> 00:53:36,559
that might be why that Tom be one of the smaller reasons that Harper

862
00:53:36,559 –> 00:53:40,175
Lee never got vilified for it because there was a point in which

863
00:53:40,175 –> 00:53:43,935
somebody looked at her and said, can we please not? Can we please not

864
00:53:43,935 –> 00:53:47,245
use that word? Like Right. It’s I think there was a little bit of a,

865
00:53:47,960 –> 00:53:51,400
like, a, like, a gotcha moment for for for people reading it. You know what

866
00:53:51,400 –> 00:53:54,859
I mean? Like, so, like, people reading it and especially, I think today,

867
00:53:55,125 –> 00:53:58,885
in our oversensitivity version of the world, people reading

868
00:53:58,885 –> 00:54:02,600
it today, I don’t think they pick up that same nuance. No. Right? Oh,

869
00:54:02,600 –> 00:54:06,360
god. No. I think they they just see the word visually and they autumn they

870
00:54:06,360 –> 00:54:09,720
have a visceral reaction to it that that word shouldn’t be in books. We shouldn’t

871
00:54:09,720 –> 00:54:12,744
be reading it. And not to mention the fact that forget about, you know, if

872
00:54:12,744 –> 00:54:15,945
God forbid you’re in a classroom and you have to read it out loud. Right?

873
00:54:15,945 –> 00:54:19,565
So the teacher now has to make sure that she’s selecting students

874
00:54:19,785 –> 00:54:23,430
to read that are going to actually read the word. And now she’s

875
00:54:23,589 –> 00:54:26,869
he or she are hesitant to to we’re

876
00:54:27,430 –> 00:54:30,855
if you It’s nonsense. We’re we’re in a different kind of place. It’s nonsense. It

877
00:54:31,015 –> 00:54:34,615
well, I’m not sure if it’s nonsense or not because there’s still some uncomfortability in

878
00:54:34,615 –> 00:54:38,135
it. But but but my point to it is is that the nuance is

879
00:54:38,135 –> 00:54:41,910
gone. Like, that’s more important to me. Like, you you wanna skip over

880
00:54:41,910 –> 00:54:45,109
the word? Fine. I I get that. You you don’t wanna let the student read

881
00:54:45,109 –> 00:54:48,869
the word? I get that. Fine. But if you’re losing the nuance to

882
00:54:48,869 –> 00:54:51,365
that, you’re missing the bigger picture.

883
00:54:53,025 –> 00:54:56,785
If we’re not going okay. Nuance. I agree with you.

884
00:54:56,785 –> 00:55:00,250
I agree with you on the nuance piece, and I want to double down

885
00:55:00,870 –> 00:55:04,710
if I can’t read to kill. No, not even if I, if a

886
00:55:04,710 –> 00:55:08,395
13 year old kid in

887
00:55:09,494 –> 00:55:13,095
Evanston, Illinois, a 13 year old black kid at

888
00:55:13,095 –> 00:55:16,760
Evanston, Illinois, can’t read to kill a Mockingbird.

889
00:55:18,180 –> 00:55:20,680
Then they also can’t rebury my heart and wounded me.

890
00:55:23,375 –> 00:55:27,215
Sorry. No, they just can’t. Sorry. They can’t, they can’t read empire

891
00:55:27,215 –> 00:55:30,869
of a summer moon. They can’t read The Sun Also

892
00:55:30,869 –> 00:55:34,470
Rises. They can’t read, Huckleberry Finn. Oh, by the way, they can’t

893
00:55:34,549 –> 00:55:38,395
Huckleberry Finn Huckleberry Finn’s on that list, by the way. Oh, I know. Want to

894
00:55:38,395 –> 00:55:41,915
get, like Oh, I know. They can’t read the Rape of Nanking by

895
00:55:41,915 –> 00:55:43,695
Iris Chan. Yeah.

896
00:55:45,920 –> 00:55:49,599
Because you know what? The

897
00:55:49,599 –> 00:55:53,200
responsibility that falls on the people to teach the

898
00:55:53,200 –> 00:55:56,825
nuance is now being abdicated in

899
00:55:56,825 –> 00:56:00,265
favor of everybody being comfortable. Yes. Right. And you

900
00:56:00,265 –> 00:56:03,244
don’t grow and change in order to,

901
00:56:04,080 –> 00:56:07,520
let me be blunt, fight the things you think are

902
00:56:07,520 –> 00:56:11,300
wrong without knowing what exactly

903
00:56:11,440 –> 00:56:15,244
the hell it is you’re fighting and all the

904
00:56:15,244 –> 00:56:19,005
nuances of it. Like I’m

905
00:56:19,005 –> 00:56:22,690
one of those weird people that turning that and I’ll go for

906
00:56:22,690 –> 00:56:25,810
it. I’m one of those weird people that think selections from the Bible should be

907
00:56:25,810 –> 00:56:29,590
read as literature in school. That will never happen.

908
00:56:30,825 –> 00:56:34,515
We’re we’re not we’re not we’re not, what, 70 years almost

909
00:56:34,515 –> 00:56:38,345
podcast. You can’t pray in school? We’re 70 years past that. I mean, once that

910
00:56:38,345 –> 00:56:42,060
door opened, forget it. You’re done. You can’t you can’t bring in religious books. And

911
00:56:42,060 –> 00:56:45,840
by the way by the way by the way, bible, let’s read from the Quran.

912
00:56:45,980 –> 00:56:49,664
Let’s read from the Talmud. Let’s Let’s readers fourth. Let’s do the

913
00:56:49,664 –> 00:56:53,184
whole freaking thing. Because guess what?

914
00:56:53,184 –> 00:56:56,960
White light 15? You need not just a

915
00:56:56,960 –> 00:57:00,480
little bit of that. You need a range of

916
00:57:00,480 –> 00:57:04,240
that. Yeah. Because even more so than college and

917
00:57:04,240 –> 00:57:07,474
a humanities degree where you get to go specialize, let’s be blunt,

918
00:57:07,935 –> 00:57:11,695
in high school where 84% of the people

919
00:57:11,695 –> 00:57:15,390
in this country, when they graduate from high

920
00:57:15,390 –> 00:57:19,089
school, fourth. It’s been this way since the GI bill in the 19 fifties.

921
00:57:19,650 –> 00:57:22,585
fourth% of people who graduate from secondary education

922
00:57:23,445 –> 00:57:27,205
do not go to college. Been that way since 19

923
00:57:27,205 –> 00:57:29,785
fifties. That number has never moved.

924
00:57:30,890 –> 00:57:34,569
It goes up 1 goes up 1 or 2 percentage points when it’s economic

925
00:57:34,569 –> 00:57:38,170
downturn. It kinda goes down when things are good. 16% is the

926
00:57:38,170 –> 00:57:41,714
average since 19 fifties. So

927
00:57:41,714 –> 00:57:45,074
16% of the graduating population Goes to college.

928
00:57:45,394 –> 00:57:48,835
Goes to college. We haven’t moved the needle on that

929
00:57:48,835 –> 00:57:52,480
number. Do you know why? Because

930
00:57:52,859 –> 00:57:56,220
people, when they get through high school, you know what they essays? And they

931
00:57:56,220 –> 00:58:00,035
said, you said it. I said it. Get me the f out of

932
00:58:00,035 –> 00:58:03,815
here. What did I learn? Yeah. I wasted my damn time.

933
00:58:03,875 –> 00:58:07,619
Right. I I looked at it as I don’t want another 4 year sentence. Literally

934
00:58:07,640 –> 00:58:10,579
fourth that came out of my fourth. Because I felt like high school was like

935
00:58:10,579 –> 00:58:14,339
a like like a sent I I was sentenced to be there, and I

936
00:58:14,339 –> 00:58:17,635
had to finish it, and that was it. Like, it was like it was a,

937
00:58:17,635 –> 00:58:21,075
yeah, it was like it was a prison sentence for me. Sentence. That’s By the

938
00:58:21,075 –> 00:58:24,275
way, that’s how she’s writing it in this book. That’s how Scout looks at it.

939
00:58:24,275 –> 00:58:27,350
She’s like, I’m I’m doing time. I already know

940
00:58:27,890 –> 00:58:30,850
I already know how to read. Atticus taught me how to read. Well, your dad

941
00:58:30,850 –> 00:58:34,035
better not teach you how to read. And she’s like, what? I don’t even understand

942
00:58:34,035 –> 00:58:37,075
the words that are coming out of your mouth. Yeah. And and the other thing

943
00:58:37,075 –> 00:58:40,675
to to go to to circle this back around to the the word the word

944
00:58:40,675 –> 00:58:44,090
that started this whole thing. Uh-huh. Can I can I just remind people

945
00:58:44,230 –> 00:58:48,010
that words only have the power that we give them? Yep.

946
00:58:48,710 –> 00:58:52,495
So if you are that teacher in Illinois and you wanna read

947
00:58:52,495 –> 00:58:56,255
this book, that word is only gonna have the amount of power that

948
00:58:56,255 –> 00:59:00,095
you allow it to have. Like, I mean, I don’t know as a society

949
00:59:00,095 –> 00:59:03,920
that, like, we’re frowning on using that word in general, and I

950
00:59:03,920 –> 00:59:06,560
get that. Like, I I certainly get that. Like, I don’t I’m not sitting here

951
00:59:06,560 –> 00:59:10,000
thinking that we should go around using that word for everybody. That’s just

952
00:59:10,000 –> 00:59:13,205
asinine. No. But but when you’re talking about

953
00:59:13,585 –> 00:59:17,345
classic literature in times and the times

954
00:59:17,345 –> 00:59:20,660
were different, if we can’t you you listen. You and I have talked about this

955
00:59:20,720 –> 00:59:23,920
so many times now that I think maybe the listeners are gonna start getting bored

956
00:59:23,920 –> 00:59:27,600
with it. But if you’re not learning from that past and you’re

957
00:59:27,600 –> 00:59:31,265
not truthful to that past to Tom that past,

958
00:59:31,265 –> 00:59:35,025
then you are damned and bound to repeat it. So if we

959
00:59:35,025 –> 00:59:38,705
start scratching this these words and and again, there are other

960
00:59:38,705 –> 00:59:42,350
words that that not just that one, but there are a a plethora of

961
00:59:42,350 –> 00:59:45,230
these books and words that are in these books that people don’t wanna talk about

962
00:59:45,230 –> 00:59:47,570
anymore because they’re not politically correct and whatever.

963
00:59:48,994 –> 00:59:52,835
But if they’re taken in the framework of those book, we’re

964
00:59:52,835 –> 00:59:56,400
we’re doomed to okay. So it’s not gonna be that word, but that

965
00:59:56,640 –> 01:00:00,260
some other word is gonna be depicted as just as hurtful,

966
01:00:00,400 –> 01:00:04,079
and we’re gonna use that instead because we’re not learning from the past. We’re

967
01:00:04,079 –> 01:00:07,805
just repeating it. And, again, you and I have mentioned this several times Tom this

968
01:00:07,895 –> 01:00:11,005
podcast, and I’m I I don’t I don’t want our listeners to not listen to

969
01:00:11,005 –> 01:00:14,670
us anymore, but it is true. It is true. Words have

970
01:00:14,670 –> 01:00:18,350
the power that you give them. Take the power away from

971
01:00:18,350 –> 01:00:21,945
it. Take the power away from the word. The I

972
01:00:21,945 –> 01:00:25,785
I I highlighted in here. I’m looking for my highlight. Was as you’re as you’re

973
01:00:25,785 –> 01:00:29,065
talking, I’m looking for my highlight. I think it was when Heck was talking with,

974
01:00:29,305 –> 01:00:33,050
with Atticus. And he says, and I I actually

975
01:00:33,050 –> 01:00:35,470
paraphrased it to my wife the other day about something else.

976
01:00:37,609 –> 01:00:41,235
But people in general find what they’re looking

977
01:00:41,235 –> 01:00:44,915
for. If you go looking for

978
01:00:44,915 –> 01:00:48,730
something, they find it. So if you’re looking for bias in

979
01:00:48,730 –> 01:00:52,410
literature, congratulations. You’ll find it.

980
01:00:52,410 –> 01:00:56,225
You’ll find it. If you’re looking to be butthurt, and, yes, I’m using that

981
01:00:56,225 –> 01:00:59,985
term, on this podcast about a word, about

982
01:00:59,985 –> 01:01:03,790
the language, you’re well, guess what? You’re you’re gonna find

983
01:01:03,790 –> 01:01:07,630
that hurt for your butt. You just you are. You’re

984
01:01:07,630 –> 01:01:10,915
going to find it. If you are looking for

985
01:01:12,015 –> 01:01:15,535
revelatory or even maybe not even revelatory, if you’re

986
01:01:15,535 –> 01:01:19,300
looking fourth, like, Tom opened up with if you’re

987
01:01:19,300 –> 01:01:22,360
looking for meaning,

988
01:01:23,700 –> 01:01:27,220
and and a role model and

989
01:01:27,220 –> 01:01:29,674
hope, Guess what?

990
01:01:31,575 –> 01:01:35,335
You’re gonna find it in literature. You’re gonna find it in the great literature

991
01:01:35,335 –> 01:01:38,570
of the 20th 20th century and of the 19th century and of the 18th century.

992
01:01:38,570 –> 01:01:41,530
You’re going to find it in great western literature, hell’s bells. You’re gonna find it

993
01:01:41,530 –> 01:01:45,210
in great eastern literature. You’re going to find it. That’s why this is

994
01:01:45,210 –> 01:01:48,985
called the leadership lessons from the great book. And guess what? I get to

995
01:01:48,985 –> 01:01:51,645
decide because it’s my podcast. What’s great?

996
01:01:52,825 –> 01:01:56,569
I get to decide that. And, yes, we have talked about it

997
01:01:56,569 –> 01:02:00,089
repeatedly, but guess what? There’s always new people coming in who haven’t heard it

998
01:02:00,302 –> 01:02:03,535
fourth. They’re not gonna go back through all 100 and some odd episodes to find

999
01:02:03,535 –> 01:02:06,595
it out. So someone’s gonna wind it up, then it’s gonna it’s fine.

1000
01:02:09,270 –> 01:02:12,790
I get incredibly frustrated when I see books on a banned

1001
01:02:12,790 –> 01:02:16,430
list because Libby,

1002
01:02:16,525 –> 01:02:20,205
not lists, sorry. Books can jumpstart social reform, which is what

1003
01:02:20,205 –> 01:02:23,885
this book did. Sure. Just like I already

1004
01:02:23,885 –> 01:02:27,670
mentioned, knuckle Tom’s cabin cabin and, and

1005
01:02:27,670 –> 01:02:30,570
the time at which to kill a mockingbird came along.

1006
01:02:32,070 –> 01:02:35,915
You know, we were, we were kind of on the cusp because this book was

1007
01:02:35,915 –> 01:02:38,895
published in, 1960, I believe.

1008
01:02:39,355 –> 01:02:43,040
Yeah. So shortly after it was shortly after Brown versus

1009
01:02:43,040 –> 01:02:46,800
Board of Education to speak to Kansas. It was shortly before all

1010
01:02:46,800 –> 01:02:50,565
the, you know, MLK, Martin Luther King’s movements. Yep. It was

1011
01:02:50,565 –> 01:02:53,605
like that right it was right in the middle. So I’m not suggesting that this

1012
01:02:53,605 –> 01:02:57,420
was the catalyst, but I do think people reading this felt

1013
01:02:57,420 –> 01:03:01,100
a heck of a lot more comfortable moving fourth. Like, because

1014
01:03:01,100 –> 01:03:04,940
they Well well, in culture books are part of culture. Maybe a heck

1015
01:03:04,940 –> 01:03:08,395
of a lot more is probably not the right phrase. But it it gave people

1016
01:03:08,395 –> 01:03:11,915
a sense of what the past could have looked like.

1017
01:03:11,915 –> 01:03:14,795
Again, like, with Atticus and the way that he interacted with people and the way

1018
01:03:14,795 –> 01:03:18,619
that he treated people and the way that he his his moral compass, if the

1019
01:03:18,619 –> 01:03:22,240
past could look like that, then why the hell can’t the future look like that?

1020
01:03:22,460 –> 01:03:26,184
Right. Exactly. Well and and culture moves society. We talked about

1021
01:03:26,184 –> 01:03:29,704
this with Catherine and Porter with her book, with her short story, pale horse, pale

1022
01:03:29,789 –> 01:03:33,260
writers. The solo episode that I did, I would

1023
01:03:33,260 –> 01:03:36,940
recommend going back and listening to folks who recommend them to go back and

1024
01:03:36,940 –> 01:03:39,040
listen to that. Because I mentioned

1025
01:03:40,925 –> 01:03:44,765
particularly in light of COVID and sort of the moment that we’re

1026
01:03:44,765 –> 01:03:48,600
in now, at least in the United States where we have on the one

1027
01:03:48,600 –> 01:03:52,300
side writers in august magazines, like the Atlantic

1028
01:03:53,320 –> 01:03:56,565
and, and on, and on August

1029
01:03:57,025 –> 01:03:58,964
television stations like CNN,

1030
01:04:01,025 –> 01:04:04,750
proclaiming that. Well, you know, we

1031
01:04:04,750 –> 01:04:08,589
made mistakes were made during COVID. Of course we, when we say mistakes were

1032
01:04:08,589 –> 01:04:12,085
made to think about the language of that, There’s no accountability in that

1033
01:04:12,085 –> 01:04:15,925
sentence. Well, mistakes were made. Everybody should just get over it. My

1034
01:04:15,925 –> 01:04:19,700
bad. See you next time. And then

1035
01:04:19,700 –> 01:04:23,460
on the other side of that, you have the Patrick Henry resistance types, and

1036
01:04:23,460 –> 01:04:27,300
I’ll go ahead and sign up to be with with those folks who

1037
01:04:27,300 –> 01:04:30,315
look around and go, excuse me. What?

1038
01:04:31,735 –> 01:04:35,335
Now I’m not as far in it as some of

1039
01:04:35,335 –> 01:04:38,680
those types are where they’re calling for a reckoning and heads on

1040
01:04:39,060 –> 01:04:42,580
pikes. You know, I’m not calling for Doctor. Anthony Fauci to

1041
01:04:42,580 –> 01:04:46,420
like be publicly, you know, castrated or anything like that. And

1042
01:04:46,420 –> 01:04:50,085
they’ve never do that. Maybe he should

1043
01:04:50,085 –> 01:04:53,045
probably give back some of the money he got from like Pfizer that might be

1044
01:04:53,045 –> 01:04:56,690
helpful. That might lead people to have him, you know, believe he’s trustworthy,

1045
01:04:57,070 –> 01:05:00,910
maybe sell some of that Pfizer stock that he’s got. But, but, but, you

1046
01:05:00,910 –> 01:05:04,050
know, you know, Hey, I don’t get between a man and his money. Okay.

1047
01:05:04,585 –> 01:05:08,425
My point is if we want there

1048
01:05:08,425 –> 01:05:11,885
to be a cultural reckoning, the thing that moves

1049
01:05:11,945 –> 01:05:15,760
culture is, well,

1050
01:05:16,300 –> 01:05:20,140
literature and movies. It isn’t people

1051
01:05:20,140 –> 01:05:23,984
on social media. They think they do, but they don’t. They actually

1052
01:05:23,984 –> 01:05:27,505
follow culture. Culture is moved by the artifacts that we

1053
01:05:27,505 –> 01:05:30,565
create inside of it. Movies, books,

1054
01:05:30,956 –> 01:05:34,630
stories. These are the things that move culture. And

1055
01:05:34,630 –> 01:05:38,230
then guess what happens when culture moves? Laws are

1056
01:05:38,230 –> 01:05:41,835
passed after culture changes because number 1,

1057
01:05:41,895 –> 01:05:45,655
politics always politicians are always late to the game. And number 2, government’s

1058
01:05:45,655 –> 01:05:48,119
always a late a late bloomer. Like, they don’t even know what the hell is

1059
01:05:48,119 –> 01:05:51,720
going on until after everything’s already gone, ever after everything’s ever ever

1060
01:05:52,280 –> 01:05:55,960
after everything’s already happened, it has moved culture. This is why when you see things

1061
01:05:55,960 –> 01:05:59,505
in the culture that are moving a culture towards a particular way, if you

1062
01:05:59,505 –> 01:06:03,345
object to that, go fight it in the culture. That’s where you’ve gotta go

1063
01:06:03,345 –> 01:06:07,060
fight it. That’s why we have culture wars. That’s what that term means. Okay?

1064
01:06:07,600 –> 01:06:11,280
And Harper Lee and Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catherine Fourth and

1065
01:06:11,280 –> 01:06:14,715
Zora Neale Hurston, they all wrote books that

1066
01:06:14,715 –> 01:06:18,555
contributed to the foundation of cultural change in the 20th

1067
01:06:18,555 –> 01:06:22,369
century without one law being passed. And

1068
01:06:22,369 –> 01:06:26,150
by the way, they’re all female. Like, I want to bring up that point too.

1069
01:06:26,210 –> 01:06:29,810
This isn’t some like this isn’t some like

1070
01:06:29,810 –> 01:06:33,315
Smoky and the bandit racist white white guy writing some

1071
01:06:33,315 –> 01:06:37,075
book. You know? Like, I I saw I I’ve never I’ve never I

1072
01:06:37,075 –> 01:06:40,480
didn’t know what Harper Lee looked like in the in the Wikipedia article. Like, they

1073
01:06:40,480 –> 01:06:42,800
had one picture of her from, like, back in, like, I don’t know, maybe the

1074
01:06:42,800 –> 01:06:45,120
forties or fifties when she was a young woman, and then they had another one

1075
01:06:45,120 –> 01:06:48,640
where she got some presidential Jesan medal of freedom and fourth she passed away from,

1076
01:06:48,640 –> 01:06:51,825
like, Barack Obama or whatever. And, you know, she’s nice little old

1077
01:06:51,885 –> 01:06:55,265
lady, just like a little Christian grandma. Who’d be

1078
01:06:55,265 –> 01:06:58,385
like praying somewhere. Shouldn’t look like anybody

1079
01:06:58,605 –> 01:07:02,400
turning. And it’s it’s and and by the way,

1080
01:07:02,400 –> 01:07:06,080
when you go look at Harry Beatrice, she wasn’t threatening either. Same thing. Yeah. It

1081
01:07:06,080 –> 01:07:09,395
was the same thing. You know? Out of out of all the fourth names that

1082
01:07:09,395 –> 01:07:13,175
I mentioned, Katherine Ann Porter kinda book like a little bit like a model,

1083
01:07:13,315 –> 01:07:16,995
but even her, like, Spanish. Right? Zora

1084
01:07:16,995 –> 01:07:20,200
Neale Hurston, You know, the thing that she was not classically

1085
01:07:20,420 –> 01:07:24,100
beautiful, but she was a woman who when you look at

1086
01:07:24,100 –> 01:07:27,300
her picture and when you look at how she’s photographed, she’s always looking directly at

1087
01:07:27,300 –> 01:07:30,795
the camera. She’s coming for you. She was busy. This is how

1088
01:07:30,795 –> 01:07:34,555
culture shifts. That’s what I’m saying. Hurston, though,

1089
01:07:34,555 –> 01:07:37,760
like, I I I found it interesting that I was

1090
01:07:38,460 –> 01:07:41,820
she wasn’t classically beautiful, but I was drawn to her because I felt like she

1091
01:07:41,820 –> 01:07:45,420
was a bit more regal. Right? Like Yes. She has, like, a regal quality to

1092
01:07:45,420 –> 01:07:49,095
her, which which made her a bit more attractive than the

1093
01:07:49,095 –> 01:07:52,555
average. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. To Tom fourth point, not necessarily

1094
01:07:52,615 –> 01:07:56,220
classically beautiful. I I agree with that. I mean, she’s, you know

1095
01:07:56,920 –> 01:08:00,680
but but I she was definitely far from ugly. I like, I I

1096
01:08:00,680 –> 01:08:04,095
found her to be like I said, the the word regal comes to mind. She

1097
01:08:04,095 –> 01:08:07,695
had a poise about her, Tom your point, because all I’m seeing is

1098
01:08:07,695 –> 01:08:11,455
images from, you know, pictures. But so it’s like but she had a she had

1099
01:08:11,455 –> 01:08:15,270
this poise about her that came across from the camera. Like, it was anyway,

1100
01:08:15,410 –> 01:08:19,010
I thought she was she was she was that sucker. Yeah. She

1101
01:08:19,010 –> 01:08:22,655
was she was impressive in a different fashion, like, in a different

1102
01:08:22,655 –> 01:08:26,415
way than than some of the but, anyway So, I mean, I’m saying all

1103
01:08:26,415 –> 01:08:29,939
that to say this. If we want people to change the culture, we have to

1104
01:08:29,939 –> 01:08:33,060
allow them to use whatever words they need to use in order to change the

1105
01:08:33,060 –> 01:08:36,899
culture. And we used to kind of understand that. And now

1106
01:08:36,899 –> 01:08:40,705
we’re in this weird. And of course book because we’re

1107
01:08:40,705 –> 01:08:43,185
at the end of the 4th turning. We’re at the end of our, of our

1108
01:08:43,185 –> 01:08:46,865
latest seculum cycle. I understand why we’re here. It’s not weird to

1109
01:08:46,865 –> 01:08:50,470
me. And by the way, we are coming up on

1110
01:08:50,689 –> 01:08:54,450
our next the beginning of our next seculum cycle. I already mentioned that we’re

1111
01:08:54,450 –> 01:08:58,145
recording this podcast, the day after, D

1112
01:08:58,145 –> 01:09:01,125
day. June 6, 1944.

1113
01:09:02,465 –> 01:09:05,444
That’s 80 years ago as of yesterday.

1114
01:09:06,329 –> 01:09:10,029
80 years is a S that’s a, that’s a secular, that’s a cyclical

1115
01:09:10,250 –> 01:09:13,929
cycle in history. It’s an 80 year cycle in the west. We go through 80

1116
01:09:13,929 –> 01:09:17,715
year cycles. That means we’re done. It means, like, this is the last year of

1117
01:09:17,715 –> 01:09:21,395
the cycle. And by the way, the last 20 years of an 80 year cycle

1118
01:09:21,395 –> 01:09:25,179
are always chaotic, which as I said repeatedly on this podcast, we’ve had

1119
01:09:25,179 –> 01:09:29,020
nothing but chaos since the year 2001. We’re at the

1120
01:09:29,020 –> 01:09:30,239
end of chaos, kids.

1121
01:09:32,774 –> 01:09:36,375
The cultural tastemakers that are going to set the

1122
01:09:36,375 –> 01:09:40,189
next positive cycle for us in this country

1123
01:09:42,410 –> 01:09:46,250
had really better understand and be competent about what culture really

1124
01:09:46,250 –> 01:09:50,095
is and where culture really lies, particularly with our ability to self publish

1125
01:09:50,395 –> 01:09:52,795
our ability to do the kinds of things that you and I are doing right

1126
01:09:52,795 –> 01:09:56,555
now. Those, these are huge tools that we’ve

1127
01:09:56,555 –> 01:10:00,320
never had before. And so are we gonna get

1128
01:10:00,320 –> 01:10:02,820
really angry about language? Like, really?

1129
01:10:04,400 –> 01:10:07,825
Are we really gonna do that in order so we have because because we are

1130
01:10:07,825 –> 01:10:10,885
that we can’t move the culture. That’s my whole point. We can’t move the culture.

1131
01:10:11,105 –> 01:10:14,545
You know? Dave Chappelle I go back to words only have power that you give

1132
01:10:14,545 –> 01:10:18,280
them. Dave Chappelle infamously says the Jesan amendment exists. I love this

1133
01:10:18,280 –> 01:10:20,380
in case that first amendment don’t work out.

1134
01:10:25,225 –> 01:10:28,985
Okay. And he’s he’s and this is a man who he’s

1135
01:10:28,985 –> 01:10:32,364
got a whole bit about living in Ohio and going to Walmart

1136
01:10:32,744 –> 01:10:35,929
and buying a gun. Like, Hey, I gotta go Walmart by gun.

1137
01:10:37,590 –> 01:10:41,349
And the white guy at Walmart sold him a gun, sold him a

1138
01:10:41,349 –> 01:10:44,955
shotgun. I think it was, you know, it goes buckshot buckshot

1139
01:10:44,955 –> 01:10:48,335
buckshot buckshot.

1140
01:10:49,275 –> 01:10:52,139
He did a whole bit, whole bit about this. Oh, no. It was it was

1141
01:10:52,139 –> 01:10:55,500
buckshot buckshot rounds. That’s what it was. You know, you wanna pepper him up a

1142
01:10:55,500 –> 01:10:59,020
little bit first. And he goes Yeah. Yeah. You got anything on there that says,

1143
01:10:59,020 –> 01:11:02,765
I don’t want a white guy running through my backyard? The white guy the

1144
01:11:02,765 –> 01:11:05,985
white guy at Walmart goes, that thing right there.

1145
01:11:07,325 –> 01:11:11,030
That’ll do it. Welcome to America.

1146
01:11:11,250 –> 01:11:14,310
This is it. This is where we live. This is the

1147
01:11:14,930 –> 01:11:18,545
culture moves things here. Alright. Let’s

1148
01:11:18,545 –> 01:11:22,385
round the quarter on this. What is leadership let’s talk about leadership because

1149
01:11:22,385 –> 01:11:25,845
we should probably talk about that. What

1150
01:11:26,730 –> 01:11:30,489
what insights about leadership and competency can leaders gain from To Kill

1151
01:11:30,489 –> 01:11:34,030
a Mockingbird? Because we talked about Atticus. We talked about Harper Lee. We talked about

1152
01:11:34,090 –> 01:11:37,835
sort of scout a little bit, how she’s pugilistic. I mean, it’s

1153
01:11:37,995 –> 01:11:41,195
it is written as a no. It’s not written as a kid’s book. It’s not.

1154
01:11:41,195 –> 01:11:44,495
That’s the deceptive part. It comes off as a kid’s book, but it’s not.

1155
01:11:45,679 –> 01:11:49,119
So I think there’s I think there’s actually a lot to unpack there from a

1156
01:11:49,119 –> 01:11:52,775
leadership perspective, but I think 2 things come to

1157
01:11:52,775 –> 01:11:56,375
mind very, very quickly. Number 1, one of the one of

1158
01:11:56,375 –> 01:12:00,155
the more powerful lessons of the book talks about

1159
01:12:02,070 –> 01:12:05,909
seeing situations through somebody else’s eyes. Right? There’s there’s a lot of talk about

1160
01:12:05,909 –> 01:12:09,415
how when she comes out, when Scout, drops

1161
01:12:09,815 –> 01:12:13,094
when she walks Boo Radley home or whatever, she’s standing on his

1162
01:12:13,149 –> 01:12:16,695
podcast. Standing on Boo Radley’s porch, looking at the rest of the

1163
01:12:16,695 –> 01:12:20,460
community, she finally gets a sense of what it might must feel

1164
01:12:20,460 –> 01:12:23,900
like to him. Right? So from a leadership perspective, being able

1165
01:12:23,900 –> 01:12:27,665
to address a problem or a situation with the other person’s

1166
01:12:27,665 –> 01:12:31,505
thoughts and minds mindset in mind when you do so, trying

1167
01:12:31,505 –> 01:12:35,345
to look at the problem from their perspective could potentially be very very powerful

1168
01:12:35,345 –> 01:12:39,090
for you. Right? Number 1. The second one that comes across, we already

1169
01:12:39,090 –> 01:12:42,710
talked about it a little bit, was at the very end when Scout basically

1170
01:12:42,850 –> 01:12:46,435
sets Atticus’ mind at ease using his own his

1171
01:12:46,435 –> 01:12:50,275
own language and his own lesson, that that

1172
01:12:50,355 –> 01:12:53,635
I always talk let me back I’ll I’ll tell you this from a sales perspective,

1173
01:12:53,635 –> 01:12:57,409
strictly from a sales perspective because I find that sales leaders

1174
01:12:57,469 –> 01:13:01,230
sometimes forget that you can learn yourself as a

1175
01:13:01,230 –> 01:13:04,864
sales leader. You can learn something about sales from somebody who’s never been in the

1176
01:13:04,864 –> 01:13:08,705
industry before. They’ve never been a salesperson before. They’re brand new to it. So in

1177
01:13:08,705 –> 01:13:12,500
this case, they’re Scout. Because they

1178
01:13:12,500 –> 01:13:16,020
have an idea fourth thought or a does not mean you should just ignore them

1179
01:13:16,020 –> 01:13:19,675
because they have no experience. Listening to them and listening

1180
01:13:19,755 –> 01:13:23,535
and trying to learn something from somebody else’s perspective or

1181
01:13:24,155 –> 01:13:27,135
getting somebody who’s taking your lessons

1182
01:13:27,770 –> 01:13:30,909
from fresh eyes and regurgitating them back to you,

1183
01:13:31,850 –> 01:13:35,369
you may hear something different in your own words. Right? Like, so or you may

1184
01:13:35,369 –> 01:13:38,835
you may you may have a lesson to learn from that brand new person that

1185
01:13:38,835 –> 01:13:42,275
you weren’t thinking you were learning. It’s it’s all this

1186
01:13:42,275 –> 01:13:45,969
this reciprocal and circular thing that you think of, but I think

1187
01:13:45,969 –> 01:13:49,810
for me, from a leadership perspective and and, of course, I mean,

1188
01:13:49,810 –> 01:13:53,349
all of us should be taking Atticus’ lead when it comes to

1189
01:13:54,005 –> 01:13:57,845
moral compass, moral code, doing the job that you’re asked to

1190
01:13:57,845 –> 01:14:01,545
do whether you like it or not, being fourth being, you know,

1191
01:14:02,020 –> 01:14:05,780
I I go back to also when and, again, I know we’re we’ve got a

1192
01:14:05,780 –> 01:14:08,580
lot of spoilers here, people. So if you haven’t read the book yet and you’re

1193
01:14:08,580 –> 01:14:12,375
thinking, I apologize, but when Tom Robinson dies, the

1194
01:14:12,375 –> 01:14:16,135
way that Atticus responds to that to me was really he

1195
01:14:16,135 –> 01:14:19,530
was a community leader at that point. He wasn’t a white man. He wasn’t dealing

1196
01:14:19,530 –> 01:14:23,210
with the black community. When he goes back to that family to tell them there

1197
01:14:23,290 –> 01:14:26,885
that that that he is now dead, Again,

1198
01:14:27,345 –> 01:14:30,945
he he that’s a leadership role to me. Right? Like, he looked at that and

1199
01:14:30,945 –> 01:14:33,865
said because even the I forget who he was talking to at the time. Maybe

1200
01:14:33,865 –> 01:14:36,060
it was the sheriff that he was like, oh, now I gotta go tell the

1201
01:14:36,060 –> 01:14:39,662
family. He was like, I’ll do it. Let me let me tell them.

1202
01:14:39,662 –> 01:14:43,265
He took that ownership of that because he knew it was gonna happen.

1203
01:14:43,265 –> 01:14:47,045
Like, this and you could tell not so much in the writing of the

1204
01:14:47,045 –> 01:14:50,645
book, but the way that Gregory Peck depicts it at the courtroom at the end

1205
01:14:50,645 –> 01:14:53,840
of the court trial, you could just tell

1206
01:14:54,380 –> 01:14:57,580
why he wasn’t surprised when he got the knock on his door that Tom Robinson

1207
01:14:57,580 –> 01:15:01,425
was dead. Like, he knew it. He he just knew it and that he

1208
01:15:01,425 –> 01:15:05,185
took that burden on himself as the community leader to make sure

1209
01:15:05,185 –> 01:15:08,324
he was the one to go back and take ownership of that to his family.

1210
01:15:08,465 –> 01:15:11,530
So, again, I it’s like I think there’s a lot to unpack. I think if

1211
01:15:11,530 –> 01:15:15,369
you look at this from because because, again and there’s a couple

1212
01:15:15,369 –> 01:15:18,845
of interactions with the kids and a couple of the other

1213
01:15:19,085 –> 01:15:22,925
members of the community that kind of like, it’s

1214
01:15:22,925 –> 01:15:26,525
almost like one of those, like, like, you’re his kids. You didn’t know your dad

1215
01:15:26,525 –> 01:15:30,360
was this cool? Like, you didn’t know you didn’t know your you didn’t you didn’t

1216
01:15:30,360 –> 01:15:34,120
know your dad was like, everybody in the town looks up to him? You didn’t

1217
01:15:34,120 –> 01:15:37,915
know that? Because they’re so close to it that they don’t get it. Right? They’re

1218
01:15:37,915 –> 01:15:40,635
so close to him that that’s just their dad and he’s their dad and they

1219
01:15:40,795 –> 01:15:44,450
whatever. And they don’t and it takes a little bit of the book to

1220
01:15:44,690 –> 01:15:48,450
understand that Atticus is not simply a run of the mill

1221
01:15:48,450 –> 01:15:52,050
guy. He’s not simply just another lawyer. He’s not simply there’s a

1222
01:15:52,050 –> 01:15:55,865
reason that the judge specifically comes to him and says,

1223
01:15:55,865 –> 01:15:59,705
listen. I was thinking about asking you to take this case. How would

1224
01:15:59,705 –> 01:16:03,000
you feel about that? So instead of just throwing it down his throat going, oh,

1225
01:16:03,000 –> 01:16:06,440
by the way, you’re the court appointed attorney. You have to do this. He came

1226
01:16:06,440 –> 01:16:10,055
to him because he knew he was gonna do the right thing. Like, he he

1227
01:16:10,055 –> 01:16:13,895
he knew he presented it to him as a as an option, but it

1228
01:16:13,895 –> 01:16:16,935
really wasn’t. But he presented it to him that way because he knew Atticus would

1229
01:16:16,935 –> 01:16:19,560
do it. And he knew that he would do a good job with it. He

1230
01:16:19,560 –> 01:16:22,860
knew that Tom Robinson was only gonna have a shot in the dark

1231
01:16:23,320 –> 01:16:26,824
if Atticus was the guy because of his stature, because of his

1232
01:16:26,824 –> 01:16:30,585
leadership, because of his position in the town, all that other stuff. And

1233
01:16:30,585 –> 01:16:34,045
all that negativity that Atticus got from the town was

1234
01:16:34,185 –> 01:16:37,950
was superficial. Mhmm. It was superficial because ultimately people

1235
01:16:37,950 –> 01:16:40,750
respected him. Ultimately people knew that he was gonna do the right thing no matter

1236
01:16:40,750 –> 01:16:44,385
what they said. Ultimately, there’s just a lot of that that happened.

1237
01:16:44,385 –> 01:16:48,225
So I think I think there’s a lot. And I don’t know how I don’t

1238
01:16:48,225 –> 01:16:51,700
know how you felt about it or if you had additional commentary, but I I

1239
01:16:51,700 –> 01:16:55,540
felt there was a lot of really good leadership lessons in this book. Oh,

1240
01:16:55,540 –> 01:16:58,855
yeah. We’re gonna we’re gonna use this opportunity to take a turn and talk a

1241
01:16:58,855 –> 01:17:02,215
little bit about those leadership principles a little bit more in-depth, particularly around the

1242
01:17:02,215 –> 01:17:05,735
trial. I wanna talk a little bit about judge Taylor as

1243
01:17:05,735 –> 01:17:09,469
well, and the men in the town. So we’ve got judge Taylor, we’ve got sheriff

1244
01:17:09,469 –> 01:17:13,090
Hector Tate. Obviously, we got book Radley and then

1245
01:17:13,815 –> 01:17:16,074
I wanna talk about Bob Buell because I

1246
01:17:17,975 –> 01:17:21,114
think I think there’s a lesson there as well.

1247
01:17:21,639 –> 01:17:25,480
That is the minority report Jesan. So we

1248
01:17:25,480 –> 01:17:28,860
go to the lessons that make us feel good or make us feel morally right.

1249
01:17:30,045 –> 01:17:33,665
But you can learn leadership even from a negative

1250
01:17:34,525 –> 01:17:38,000
there’s things there’s things to be learned from Kim Jong Un or from

1251
01:17:38,000 –> 01:17:41,440
Fidel Castro. There’s things to be learned. Usually, what not to

1252
01:17:41,440 –> 01:17:44,420
do, but also

1253
01:17:45,040 –> 01:17:48,725
sometimes sometimes what to do. So,

1254
01:17:49,505 –> 01:17:52,385
yeah, let’s let’s talk a little bit about that. By the way,

1255
01:17:53,825 –> 01:17:57,480
the line that I was gonna quote earlier from the book, is actually from judge,

1256
01:17:57,640 –> 01:18:01,260
from judge Taylor when he’s correcting mister Ewell,

1257
01:18:01,960 –> 01:18:05,755
during his, during his testimony, during the,

1258
01:18:05,995 –> 01:18:09,755
during the trial. And the judge essays, and I quote, people generally see what

1259
01:18:09,755 –> 01:18:12,955
they look for and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to

1260
01:18:12,955 –> 01:18:16,670
subject their children to it. But I can assure you of one

1261
01:18:16,670 –> 01:18:20,270
thing. You will receive what you see and hear in silence, he’s addressing the

1262
01:18:20,270 –> 01:18:23,775
court, or you will leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it until the whole

1263
01:18:23,775 –> 01:18:26,035
boiling of you come before me on contempt charges.

1264
01:18:30,330 –> 01:18:32,510
And then to the point about Atticus,

1265
01:18:36,170 –> 01:18:39,785
and this is this is right after Atticus finds out about

1266
01:18:39,945 –> 01:18:43,645
Tom Robinson’s, death. Miss Maudie

1267
01:18:44,025 –> 01:18:47,705
says to, aunt aunt Alexandra. And so aunt

1268
01:18:47,705 –> 01:18:50,970
Alexandra is, Atticus’s sister.

1269
01:18:51,450 –> 01:18:55,050
And, you know, their relationship is interesting the way that,

1270
01:18:55,210 –> 01:18:58,915
again, it’s perceived through scout’s eyes. It

1271
01:18:58,915 –> 01:19:02,514
is a it is a at least from her perspective, it is a tension driven

1272
01:19:02,514 –> 01:19:06,350
relationship. And I can remember thinking that way about

1273
01:19:06,350 –> 01:19:10,110
the relationship between relatives and my family, female relatives and male relatives, female

1274
01:19:10,110 –> 01:19:13,630
male relatives in my family, because I didn’t understand all the dynamics that had occurred

1275
01:19:13,630 –> 01:19:17,425
on the back end, that got them to where they were. Just like

1276
01:19:17,425 –> 01:19:21,185
I’m sure my kids look at my relationships with my siblings in a

1277
01:19:21,185 –> 01:19:24,860
certain particular kind of way because I can’t really explain it to them. It’s

1278
01:19:24,860 –> 01:19:28,699
just sort of like, this is how we were raised. But, and we

1279
01:19:28,699 –> 01:19:32,485
all have those kinds of dynamics. And so when a child observes this, you

1280
01:19:32,485 –> 01:19:35,814
know, it’s very interesting. And, and in the book,

1281
01:19:36,165 –> 01:19:40,005
after Tom Robinson gets shot and then Atticus goes out to go and

1282
01:19:40,005 –> 01:19:43,590
deal with the the challenge at the at the prison where he had wound up

1283
01:19:43,723 –> 01:19:47,530
Tom, miss Maudy says, have you ever thought of it this way,

1284
01:19:47,590 –> 01:19:51,335
Alexandra? Whether may comb knows it or not,

1285
01:19:51,335 –> 01:19:55,015
we’re paying the highest tribute. We can pay a man. We trust him to

1286
01:19:55,015 –> 01:19:57,275
do right. It’s that simple.

1287
01:20:00,910 –> 01:20:04,670
That’s it. That’s that’s leadership. We trust him to do

1288
01:20:04,670 –> 01:20:08,385
right. Speaking of

1289
01:20:08,385 –> 01:20:12,165
the book, back in the earlier writers. So

1290
01:20:12,445 –> 01:20:14,565
Jesan Atticus, have a conflict.

1291
01:20:16,280 –> 01:20:20,120
And it’s interesting because jam is not set up as

1292
01:20:20,120 –> 01:20:23,800
a male counterparts to Atticus. He set up as his

1293
01:20:23,800 –> 01:20:27,435
own character, Very often in coming of age stories,

1294
01:20:27,435 –> 01:20:31,035
which I guess this would kind of qualify as that as a buildos

1295
01:20:31,035 –> 01:20:34,580
roman, it would, typically,

1296
01:20:34,800 –> 01:20:38,560
when a story is told through the eyes of a child, the sibling is set

1297
01:20:38,560 –> 01:20:42,295
up as the adult stand in. And that’s not

1298
01:20:42,295 –> 01:20:45,815
quite how it works in Tom kill a Mockingbird. Gem is allowed to be his

1299
01:20:45,815 –> 01:20:48,315
own character. He’s allowed to develop and grow.

1300
01:20:49,540 –> 01:20:53,239
But he’s also, you can tell, in direct tension with his father.

1301
01:20:53,860 –> 01:20:57,080
And by the way, you know, one of my,

1302
01:20:58,435 –> 01:21:02,114
I shouldn’t essays, passions. It might be obsessions. And, again, this is

1303
01:21:02,114 –> 01:21:05,950
because of my previous life experiences, which I’ll talk a little

1304
01:21:05,950 –> 01:21:09,790
bit about here as we get around to the trial. One of

1305
01:21:09,790 –> 01:21:13,425
one of my obsessions is with fathers and sons, the relationship between

1306
01:21:13,425 –> 01:21:17,265
fathers and sons. I don’t think that merely gets talked about nearly enough

1307
01:21:17,265 –> 01:21:20,625
in our culture. A, because men don’t really

1308
01:21:20,625 –> 01:21:24,230
know. No. That’s not it. We’re not enculturated

1309
01:21:25,090 –> 01:21:28,929
in the last parts of the 20th century and the early parts of the 21st

1310
01:21:28,929 –> 01:21:32,345
century to actually talk about the

1311
01:21:32,345 –> 01:21:36,185
dynamics of being a son to a

1312
01:21:36,185 –> 01:21:39,750
father, nor are we incentivized as

1313
01:21:39,750 –> 01:21:43,510
men to talk about, at least extensively, to talk

1314
01:21:43,510 –> 01:21:45,850
about what it actually means to raise a son.

1315
01:21:47,665 –> 01:21:50,725
Women tell us very often what we should be doing

1316
01:21:51,585 –> 01:21:55,030
and how we should be behaving, but there’s

1317
01:21:55,030 –> 01:21:58,790
very little talk even on even on even in in the in the mountains and

1318
01:21:58,790 –> 01:22:02,309
mountains of videos and words that are on social media and on the Internet. There’s

1319
01:22:02,309 –> 01:22:05,765
very little practical talking about the nature of fathers and Jesan, really the

1320
01:22:05,765 –> 01:22:09,445
relationship between fathers and Jesan. And, this is

1321
01:22:09,445 –> 01:22:12,980
somewhat explored in the early chapters of, to kill a

1322
01:22:12,980 –> 01:22:16,340
mockingbird, by the way, which sets up what happens later on in the back end

1323
01:22:16,340 –> 01:22:20,065
of the book when, well, when

1324
01:22:20,065 –> 01:22:23,585
Jim does the only thing that Jim can do, when,

1325
01:22:24,225 –> 01:22:27,285
when Bob Yule decides that he’s going to follow through on his threats.

1326
01:22:30,010 –> 01:22:33,850
As I said before, breaking into boo Radley’s backyard doesn’t go so well. And,

1327
01:22:34,170 –> 01:22:36,970
Jim loses his pants because he is still a kid and he is still engaged

1328
01:22:36,970 –> 01:22:40,475
in shenanigans. And, there’s a fire with

1329
01:22:40,475 –> 01:22:44,155
questionable beginnings that’s never fully explained that burns down miss

1330
01:22:44,155 –> 01:22:47,810
Maudie’s house. And it’s kind of a narrative thread that kinda

1331
01:22:47,810 –> 01:22:51,570
hangs in the first part of the book, but Harper Lee does a

1332
01:22:51,570 –> 01:22:55,355
really clever job of, a, never really re referring it referring back

1333
01:22:55,355 –> 01:22:59,115
to it again, kinda like Anton Chekhov’s gun. She just leaves the

1334
01:22:59,115 –> 01:23:02,910
gun on the table. But, also, she uses it to set up

1335
01:23:02,910 –> 01:23:06,750
miss Maudie and uses that narrative or that thing happening to her in the

1336
01:23:06,750 –> 01:23:10,430
narrative as a way to set her up as a strong character, sort

1337
01:23:10,430 –> 01:23:13,804
of a sort of a female version of Atticus Finch.

1338
01:23:14,445 –> 01:23:18,284
But, again, removed from scout. Right? Because she’s over there and

1339
01:23:18,284 –> 01:23:21,940
and scout is over here. So let’s talk

1340
01:23:21,940 –> 01:23:22,880
about that trial.

1341
01:23:35,085 –> 01:23:38,810
In the Fourth, in the 1930s,

1342
01:23:39,190 –> 01:23:42,950
which is when this book is supposed to be set. Jim

1343
01:23:42,950 –> 01:23:46,150
Crow was alive and well, by the way, that term is, I think it’s only

1344
01:23:46,150 –> 01:23:49,895
used once maybe in To Kill A Mockingbird, and it might just

1345
01:23:49,895 –> 01:23:53,335
be me placing that term on the book. I don’t actually think she actually wrote

1346
01:23:53,335 –> 01:23:56,270
those words in the book. I don’t I don’t think I remember seeing those physical

1347
01:23:56,510 –> 01:24:00,270
those actual words. But yeah. Right. But everybody knew what Jim Crow was.

1348
01:24:00,270 –> 01:24:03,735
And for those of you who don’t know what Jim Crow was, Jim Crow was

1349
01:24:03,735 –> 01:24:07,195
a series of laws that, socially

1350
01:24:08,215 –> 01:24:11,790
separated black people from white people in the

1351
01:24:11,790 –> 01:24:15,390
deep south and also quite frankly in the north. Now in the north,

1352
01:24:15,390 –> 01:24:19,230
Jim Crow was informal. It wasn’t written down. It

1353
01:24:19,230 –> 01:24:23,065
was just something that quote, unquote knew, when,

1354
01:24:23,385 –> 01:24:26,905
when the writer, Ralph Ellison it was Ralph

1355
01:24:26,905 –> 01:24:29,485
Ellison or might have been James Baldwin. I can’t remember.

1356
01:24:30,650 –> 01:24:33,610
No, it was Richard. Writers? It was one of those 3 when Richard, right? Yes,

1357
01:24:33,610 –> 01:24:36,330
it was Richard. Right? That’s right. Yes. Because I remember when I was reading about

1358
01:24:36,330 –> 01:24:39,995
his biography for the, for the podcast episode we did on native sun, when he

1359
01:24:39,995 –> 01:24:43,534
was trying to find a, hotel

1360
01:24:43,915 –> 01:24:47,650
in New York City as a socialist, as part of

1361
01:24:47,650 –> 01:24:51,270
the communist party, the communist party

1362
01:24:51,330 –> 01:24:53,350
hotels in New York City were segregated,

1363
01:24:55,245 –> 01:24:59,005
which is insane to me because the entire ideology

1364
01:24:59,005 –> 01:25:02,685
of communism is about workers of the world United. There are no separations

1365
01:25:02,685 –> 01:25:06,350
between all of us. We’re all united against the man. And what could be

1366
01:25:06,350 –> 01:25:09,870
more of an more exemplary of being the

1367
01:25:09,870 –> 01:25:12,210
man than, I don’t know,

1368
01:25:13,395 –> 01:25:16,055
discriminatory practices in your hotel.

1369
01:25:18,435 –> 01:25:20,775
Like that’s the man, if I ever heard of it.

1370
01:25:22,030 –> 01:25:24,610
Well in the Jim Crow south,

1371
01:25:27,790 –> 01:25:30,210
Tom Robinson runs across

1372
01:25:31,615 –> 01:25:34,595
a set of people who are living in Macom,

1373
01:25:35,375 –> 01:25:38,655
are just on the other side of where the and the word is used in

1374
01:25:38,655 –> 01:25:42,320
the book, the Negro settlements are, where

1375
01:25:42,320 –> 01:25:45,140
the Yule’s live. Now the Yule’s live in,

1376
01:25:46,080 –> 01:25:49,594
from scout’s perspective, they basically live in trash. Right? They live in

1377
01:25:49,594 –> 01:25:53,335
the garbage dump, and they mine the garbage dump. And they

1378
01:25:53,335 –> 01:25:56,935
are poor. They are white, and they mine the

1379
01:25:56,935 –> 01:26:00,550
garbage dump. And so you put those three words together. And while that term

1380
01:26:00,550 –> 01:26:04,390
of poor white trash is never actually used, that is what

1381
01:26:04,390 –> 01:26:07,795
is meant by Scout’s description.

1382
01:26:08,015 –> 01:26:11,775
And from this description, you do get the idea

1383
01:26:11,775 –> 01:26:15,480
that the only thing that the Yules have is

1384
01:26:15,480 –> 01:26:19,260
the fact that they don’t share the same skin color

1385
01:26:19,560 –> 01:26:23,285
with, the the folks who are living in, well,

1386
01:26:23,285 –> 01:26:27,125
the black part of town. Now in the book, that’s

1387
01:26:27,125 –> 01:26:30,885
an interesting description because when Scout talks about it, she talks about how

1388
01:26:30,885 –> 01:26:34,309
basically the Yule’s live in trash. And then in the Negro

1389
01:26:34,309 –> 01:26:37,989
settlements, she talks about how they go down there with Christmas once a year to

1390
01:26:37,989 –> 01:26:41,625
help out the Yules. You could smell the good smells coming

1391
01:26:41,625 –> 01:26:44,985
of book, coming out of their little tiny shacks and everything was neat and as

1392
01:26:44,985 –> 01:26:48,185
as as neat as a pin. That’s how she describes it. And then the Yules

1393
01:26:48,185 –> 01:26:51,940
are living in this literal, literal shotgun

1394
01:26:51,940 –> 01:26:54,920
shack with 7 kids Yeah. And squalor. Right?

1395
01:26:55,380 –> 01:26:58,440
So, you know, a moral

1396
01:26:59,805 –> 01:27:03,645
and again, scouts, what, 7 years old? She’s not drawing a moral conclusion

1397
01:27:03,645 –> 01:27:06,864
from this. She’s just saying, this is what I saw. And

1398
01:27:08,400 –> 01:27:12,000
this is, this is this. Well, this creates a

1399
01:27:12,000 –> 01:27:15,760
dynamic where Tom Robinson, a, a

1400
01:27:15,760 –> 01:27:18,775
Negro farm worker, walks past,

1401
01:27:19,555 –> 01:27:22,775
the Yule’s every day and gets caught up with Mayella.

1402
01:27:24,355 –> 01:27:26,695
You will Bob Yule’s daughter

1403
01:27:29,190 –> 01:27:32,870
And, in the process of trying to do her some favors, which he probably

1404
01:27:32,870 –> 01:27:36,574
shouldn’t have done, I would have advised him to stay away from her.

1405
01:27:36,875 –> 01:27:40,715
Not because she was poor, not because she was white,

1406
01:27:40,715 –> 01:27:43,055
but because, well, she was a different class,

1407
01:27:44,340 –> 01:27:47,540
in all the ways that class writers. It doesn’t have anything to do with money

1408
01:27:47,540 –> 01:27:51,220
that doesn’t have any Hold on. There there there’s there’s another piece to this. Tom

1409
01:27:51,220 –> 01:27:54,845
Robinson was married. This was another I don’t care what color she is, but there’s

1410
01:27:54,845 –> 01:27:58,045
another woman asking you to help out in the no. You just don’t need to

1411
01:27:58,045 –> 01:28:01,805
give advice to yourself. That. Put yourself in that position in the first

1412
01:28:01,805 –> 01:28:05,630
place. Which which, I mean, the so that was brought

1413
01:28:05,630 –> 01:28:09,310
out at the trial. Yeah. And scout of again, this is a

1414
01:28:09,310 –> 01:28:12,725
7 year old. Right? So, like, it’s through the just sort of skipped

1415
01:28:12,725 –> 01:28:16,565
over. And I went back and I looked at that and I thought, what that

1416
01:28:16,565 –> 01:28:20,085
guy’s wife have to say? Yeah. Right. Well, you’re never gonna find out. You’re never

1417
01:28:20,085 –> 01:28:23,720
gonna know. Because

1418
01:28:23,720 –> 01:28:27,080
because she she whooped his ass on the way to the getting

1419
01:28:27,080 –> 01:28:30,895
arrested just for being in the vicinity. Never mind whether he was

1420
01:28:30,895 –> 01:28:33,075
guilty or innocent. She didn’t even care. Alright?

1421
01:28:34,655 –> 01:28:38,320
She she didn’t care he was guilty or innocent. The fact that he was

1422
01:28:38,320 –> 01:28:41,940
helping her. Forget it. She’s she killed she kicked his ass.

1423
01:28:42,559 –> 01:28:46,295
I’m not helping anybody. I don’t help anybody. I tell

1424
01:28:46,295 –> 01:28:49,175
my wife, I don’t even know other women’s names. I don’t know their faces. I

1425
01:28:49,175 –> 01:28:51,840
don’t I don’t know who they are. I have no idea. I don’t know. Do

1426
01:28:51,840 –> 01:28:54,920
you want me to? She goes, no. Exactly. I don’t know. I don’t know who

1427
01:28:54,920 –> 01:28:58,760
they are. I have no idea. I’m married. I walk over

1428
01:28:58,760 –> 01:29:02,475
here, which is what Tom Robinson should’ve done. Should’ve done. Right. The only women that

1429
01:29:02,475 –> 01:29:05,855
I know are people that are in my family. Yes.

1430
01:29:06,875 –> 01:29:09,520
I know her. I know her. I know her. I’m related to them. That’s it.

1431
01:29:09,520 –> 01:29:13,120
No. That’s all that matters. Small anecdote. Went to chicken

1432
01:29:13,120 –> 01:29:16,800
process Tom process some chickens. We’ve talked about this off the air,

1433
01:29:16,800 –> 01:29:20,585
but I, heard processed some chickens a couple of weeks ago.

1434
01:29:20,725 –> 01:29:23,605
And another couple that we know is there, and,

1435
01:29:24,565 –> 01:29:27,844
I I said a variation of literally that. I don’t know any other women. I

1436
01:29:27,844 –> 01:29:31,480
don’t talk to them. And the woman standing there, she goes, well, I feel attacked.

1437
01:29:31,700 –> 01:29:34,120
And I go, listen. You’re not a woman. You’re his wife.

1438
01:29:35,884 –> 01:29:39,705
Writers, that’s like, we’re don’t pretend like you don’t understand what’s going

1439
01:29:39,705 –> 01:29:42,205
on. You’re here. Stop it. Come on.

1440
01:29:45,350 –> 01:29:49,030
Oh my god. So but but I I I found so

1441
01:29:49,030 –> 01:29:52,470
I I gotta tell you a small Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. We’re gonna you’re jumping

1442
01:29:52,470 –> 01:29:55,864
into it. Small tidbit of information too. This book

1443
01:29:56,965 –> 01:30:00,665
almost, almost changed my mind

1444
01:30:01,700 –> 01:30:05,540
to go to college and to go to and to go potentially to go to

1445
01:30:05,540 –> 01:30:09,205
law school and to go to, like I I

1446
01:30:09,445 –> 01:30:13,085
when I read this, I was like, I wanna be a lawyer. Like,

1447
01:30:13,085 –> 01:30:16,600
I Atticus had me so wrapped up in and again, the the

1448
01:30:16,640 –> 01:30:20,320
if you read if you read the transcript, or if you read the

1449
01:30:20,320 –> 01:30:23,865
portion of the book that is the trial. Mhmm. And I was like,

1450
01:30:24,185 –> 01:30:28,025
I I was like, well, he there’s no way that the that this guy is

1451
01:30:28,025 –> 01:30:31,780
innocent. He is Right. Clearly innocent, clearly innocent. Look

1452
01:30:31,780 –> 01:30:34,500
at the great job this guy did. I wanna be a lawyer like that. And

1453
01:30:34,500 –> 01:30:38,020
then to find out that there was no way on this God’s green earth that

1454
01:30:38,020 –> 01:30:41,815
a 12 person jury of all white men are gonna

1455
01:30:41,875 –> 01:30:45,715
let this poor guy walk away knowing damn well

1456
01:30:45,715 –> 01:30:49,290
he was innocent. No. There’s no way, shape, or

1457
01:30:49,290 –> 01:30:52,889
form that anyone in that jury could have possibly even thought that he even had

1458
01:30:52,889 –> 01:30:56,329
a shot in hell of doing it. But yet, there’s no way, to your

1459
01:30:56,329 –> 01:30:59,635
point, with Jim Crow and all that other stuff happening in the 19 thirties in

1460
01:30:59,635 –> 01:31:03,335
Alabama, the second he was arrested and put on trial,

1461
01:31:04,250 –> 01:31:07,630
they knew. And and I that’s kinda what I go back to with, like,

1462
01:31:09,050 –> 01:31:12,795
Atticus knowing he he knew from the start how it was gonna

1463
01:31:12,795 –> 01:31:16,315
end. He already knew that. There was no question in his mind, but he

1464
01:31:16,315 –> 01:31:19,770
still went through with the best defense possible for his

1465
01:31:19,770 –> 01:31:22,410
client, so to speak. Right? So I read that and I was like, oh, I

1466
01:31:22,410 –> 01:31:24,650
wanna I wanna be a lawyer. And then I met leaders, and I was like,

1467
01:31:24,650 –> 01:31:26,885
never mind. I’m not doing that. Never mind. I don’t wanna be a lawyer.

1468
01:31:36,800 –> 01:31:39,860
And he’s not he’s not out of constraint at all. No. Not even close.

1469
01:31:45,945 –> 01:31:48,765
Well, one of the challenges I had with the trial,

1470
01:31:50,025 –> 01:31:53,679
reading this as a person who

1471
01:31:53,679 –> 01:31:57,460
walks around in the skin of, you know, an African American in America.

1472
01:32:00,080 –> 01:32:03,645
And who has made without getting deeply into my

1473
01:32:03,645 –> 01:32:06,764
personal life here, but who has made certain choices about who I love and who

1474
01:32:06,764 –> 01:32:08,685
I marry and who I make children with and who I make a life with

1475
01:32:08,685 –> 01:32:11,505
and all this kind of stuff. There are

1476
01:32:13,950 –> 01:32:17,710
pieces of this where, to my point about

1477
01:32:17,710 –> 01:32:21,195
Tom Robinson, that you also

1478
01:32:21,195 –> 01:32:24,875
reinforced, you know, you could see the train wreck

1479
01:32:24,875 –> 01:32:28,635
coming. And the reason you could see the train wreck coming

1480
01:32:28,635 –> 01:32:29,375
is because

1481
01:32:34,000 –> 01:32:37,780
when you’re no.

1482
01:32:38,435 –> 01:32:41,475
When you’re in that kind of social environment, I’m gonna frame it this way, when

1483
01:32:41,475 –> 01:32:44,915
you’re in that kind of social environment, what power do you really

1484
01:32:44,915 –> 01:32:48,489
have? And by the way, not power to take someone’s

1485
01:32:48,489 –> 01:32:51,550
life, which is what Bob Yuall thought he had.

1486
01:32:52,845 –> 01:32:56,525
Not power to make a

1487
01:32:56,525 –> 01:33:00,305
social change, which is what Atticus Finch was trying to do. Right?

1488
01:33:00,845 –> 01:33:04,510
Not even power to influence a

1489
01:33:04,510 –> 01:33:07,570
family, which is what Alexander was trying to do. Right?

1490
01:33:08,670 –> 01:33:12,035
If you’re Libby Will, what power do you have? You’ve

1491
01:33:12,035 –> 01:33:14,295
none. You live in a garbage dump.

1492
01:33:16,995 –> 01:33:20,710
You are in a segregated society that tells

1493
01:33:20,710 –> 01:33:23,530
you that these people over here with this darker skin,

1494
01:33:24,230 –> 01:33:27,830
because of the fact that they have this darker skin are less than you,

1495
01:33:27,830 –> 01:33:31,485
and yet with your 2 eyes, you can see them living better

1496
01:33:31,485 –> 01:33:35,245
than you. There’s something here that, as we say

1497
01:33:35,245 –> 01:33:38,940
these days, the maths don’t math. Right. It doesn’t add

1498
01:33:39,560 –> 01:33:43,320
up then when you go to the welfare

1499
01:33:43,320 –> 01:33:46,135
office and by the way, this is during the depression. So So you not only

1500
01:33:46,135 –> 01:33:48,475
live in a garbage dump, but you live in a garbage dump during the depression,

1501
01:33:48,695 –> 01:33:52,475
which is even worse. K? And so you go to the aid office

1502
01:33:53,420 –> 01:33:57,260
and you don’t speak well. You don’t act well. You don’t

1503
01:33:57,260 –> 01:34:00,880
dress well. You maybe take a shower not even a shower.

1504
01:34:01,019 –> 01:34:04,785
A a a bath once a year. All your kids

1505
01:34:04,785 –> 01:34:08,465
don’t have a Tom, you don’t know where she is, you’re you’re basically hitting

1506
01:34:08,465 –> 01:34:11,605
all the rungs all the way down the ladder

1507
01:34:12,260 –> 01:34:15,940
of how to not be socially appropriate regardless, by the way, of skin

1508
01:34:15,940 –> 01:34:19,000
color, regardless of skin color, but you’re hitting all those rungs.

1509
01:34:19,885 –> 01:34:23,185
And and by the way, scout brings this up

1510
01:34:23,405 –> 01:34:27,005
and the people whose

1511
01:34:27,005 –> 01:34:30,820
color you share don’t wanna

1512
01:34:30,820 –> 01:34:34,099
have anything to do with you, weather. Yeah. They don’t like you. They don’t like

1513
01:34:34,099 –> 01:34:37,625
you. Jim

1514
01:34:37,625 –> 01:34:41,385
Crow fundamentally existed, and I’m going to say

1515
01:34:41,385 –> 01:34:44,845
something extremely controversial here. But

1516
01:34:45,560 –> 01:34:49,260
Jim Crow fundamentally existed to protect poor

1517
01:34:49,880 –> 01:34:50,780
white women

1518
01:34:53,765 –> 01:34:57,605
from poor black men. That

1519
01:34:57,605 –> 01:35:01,159
was what Jim Crow fundamentally existed to do because it

1520
01:35:01,159 –> 01:35:04,840
wasn’t actually about the race. It was actually about the

1521
01:35:04,840 –> 01:35:08,679
racial designations and the racial distinctions and the racial separations. Everybody

1522
01:35:08,679 –> 01:35:12,225
said it was, but it wasn’t really about that. It was about

1523
01:35:12,225 –> 01:35:15,525
making sure that people of a certain class

1524
01:35:16,145 –> 01:35:17,765
stayed where they were,

1525
01:35:19,670 –> 01:35:21,770
regardless of their skin color.

1526
01:35:24,070 –> 01:35:27,450
Bob Ewell may have thought that Jim Crow worked out for him when Tom Robinson

1527
01:35:27,510 –> 01:35:31,094
died, but it turns out

1528
01:35:32,195 –> 01:35:35,715
that actually it didn’t work out for

1529
01:35:35,715 –> 01:35:39,340
him because guess what? He held a grudge.

1530
01:35:39,960 –> 01:35:43,559
And that is one of the fascinating things about this book that I think

1531
01:35:43,559 –> 01:35:46,380
begs analysis, particularly from a leadership perspective.

1532
01:35:48,264 –> 01:35:52,045
He had no power. How was he gonna go out and grab that power?

1533
01:35:52,344 –> 01:35:55,645
Well, he was gonna go grab that power by harassing

1534
01:35:56,650 –> 01:36:00,410
the white man who embarrassed him and

1535
01:36:00,410 –> 01:36:03,230
made him look bad, made him lose face.

1536
01:36:04,515 –> 01:36:08,135
He got what he wanted. He got the structure

1537
01:36:08,515 –> 01:36:12,115
of the system to work for him in the way that it had worked for

1538
01:36:12,115 –> 01:36:14,790
him based on the laws that were set up by the system. He got the

1539
01:36:14,790 –> 01:36:17,610
outcome. He should have been happy, and yet

1540
01:36:19,110 –> 01:36:22,525
yet he was not. Explain Bob

1541
01:36:22,525 –> 01:36:26,365
Ewell to us because that’s one of the

1542
01:36:26,365 –> 01:36:29,505
more fascinating characters to me in this book.

1543
01:36:33,540 –> 01:36:36,100
It’s like the Amy Mann song from,

1544
01:36:37,265 –> 01:36:41,105
oh gosh, Magnolia, the Magnolia soundtrack book in

1545
01:36:41,105 –> 01:36:44,864
the day, you got what you wanted, but now you can hardly stand

1546
01:36:44,864 –> 01:36:48,489
it. And that’s

1547
01:36:48,489 –> 01:36:52,170
Bob. He got what he wanted. But the problem did he, though? Did he

1548
01:36:52,170 –> 01:36:55,745
really, though? Because by the by the verdict,

1549
01:36:55,745 –> 01:36:59,585
maybe. But what he wanted ultimately was

1550
01:36:59,585 –> 01:37:03,185
for everybody to be on his side and blaming Tom

1551
01:37:03,185 –> 01:37:06,820
Robinson. He wanted everybody to believe him. And the fact that

1552
01:37:06,820 –> 01:37:10,500
Atticus didn’t, that’s, like, that’s what

1553
01:37:10,500 –> 01:37:13,765
held the grudge. It had nothing to do with the verdict. It had to do

1554
01:37:13,765 –> 01:37:17,525
with the fact that that he it was it was almost like a

1555
01:37:17,765 –> 01:37:21,310
But at a material level, if if

1556
01:37:21,370 –> 01:37:24,730
if we and by the way, this book was written at at the tail end

1557
01:37:24,730 –> 01:37:28,505
of modernism. Right? So at the in modernist books,

1558
01:37:28,585 –> 01:37:31,625
which are typically books that are published between the end of World War 1 and

1559
01:37:31,625 –> 01:37:34,025
the beginning of the the end of the well, at the beginning of the middle

1560
01:37:34,025 –> 01:37:37,530
of 19 sixties. Everything from from the

1561
01:37:37,530 –> 01:37:41,369
Ford, Maddox Ford, and Ernest Hemingway, all the way to Joan

1562
01:37:41,369 –> 01:37:45,070
Didion. That’s modernism. Right? In modernist novels,

1563
01:37:46,574 –> 01:37:50,335
the villain gets what they want, but they don’t know how

1564
01:37:50,335 –> 01:37:53,715
to deconstruct it. In postmodern

1565
01:37:54,094 –> 01:37:57,659
novels, which is everything written since the 19 sixties, Don

1566
01:37:57,659 –> 01:38:01,420
Delilah, Charles Portis, not only

1567
01:38:01,420 –> 01:38:05,244
does the villain not get what they want, sometimes the villain gets justice, sometimes the

1568
01:38:05,244 –> 01:38:08,945
villain doesn’t. Other Tom, the villain gets punished, sometimes the villain doesn’t.

1569
01:38:09,005 –> 01:38:12,160
Sometimes it’s an antihero. We have no idea what the hell is going on. This

1570
01:38:12,160 –> 01:38:15,760
is where you get Patrick Bateman from Bret Easton Ellis, but you also

1571
01:38:15,760 –> 01:38:19,465
get, like, you also get, oh gosh, lucky net

1572
01:38:19,465 –> 01:38:22,764
pepper in, in, true grit. Like,

1573
01:38:23,304 –> 01:38:27,099
the postmodern novels are all over the map because we’ve deconstructed everything.

1574
01:38:27,159 –> 01:38:30,380
But modernist Sorrells? In modernist

1575
01:38:30,520 –> 01:38:33,974
writing, there’s still that Christian strain

1576
01:38:33,974 –> 01:38:37,815
of moralism that the villain gets what

1577
01:38:37,815 –> 01:38:41,440
they deserve. Well, well, that’s a different statement.

1578
01:38:41,820 –> 01:38:45,153
He definitely got what he deserved in the end of the book.

1579
01:38:45,580 –> 01:38:49,425
Sure. At the end. But but that that’s that’s a

1580
01:38:49,425 –> 01:38:53,265
different comment than a few seconds ago where you’re asking, like, he got what he

1581
01:38:53,265 –> 01:38:56,705
wanted. Oh, yeah. That’s that’s my point. I don’t think he got what he

1582
01:38:56,705 –> 01:38:59,260
wanted. Tom Robinson being convicted

1583
01:39:00,600 –> 01:39:04,200
was not the ultimate goal for him because he knew that was gonna happen. He

1584
01:39:04,200 –> 01:39:07,815
he again, everybody in the town knew that was gonna happen. Like, there was even

1585
01:39:07,815 –> 01:39:11,195
a, there was a a phrase in there somewhere that

1586
01:39:11,335 –> 01:39:15,160
before the trial started, I I can’t remember the, of fourth, it’s been

1587
01:39:15,160 –> 01:39:17,480
a while since I’ve read it and I and I know I’ve read it, but

1588
01:39:17,480 –> 01:39:20,920
there there’s there’s a there’s a phrase in there or or some a sentence or

1589
01:39:20,920 –> 01:39:24,745
2 in there that tells you that you know already that he’s going

1590
01:39:24,745 –> 01:39:28,585
to be convicted. There’s no doubt in your mind he’s going to be convicted before

1591
01:39:28,585 –> 01:39:31,725
the trial even starts, before you even start reading it. Right?

1592
01:39:32,760 –> 01:39:36,120
So but that’s not ultimately what Bob Ewell wants. What

1593
01:39:36,120 –> 01:39:39,955
ultimately Bob Ewell wants is validation and

1594
01:39:39,955 –> 01:39:43,795
vindication and and from the rest of the from everybody. So as

1595
01:39:43,795 –> 01:39:47,335
as people start understanding that they know he’s lying,

1596
01:39:48,550 –> 01:39:52,230
that he it it it that’s where the grudge lies. The grudge lies

1597
01:39:52,230 –> 01:39:55,750
with with somebody it’s not Tom Robinson. He doesn’t have the grudge against Tom

1598
01:39:55,750 –> 01:39:59,165
Robinson. He has the grudge against the person who was able

1599
01:39:59,165 –> 01:40:02,785
to essentially show the town who he really was.

1600
01:40:04,179 –> 01:40:07,940
So what he what he ultimately wanted was for the entire town to be on

1601
01:40:07,940 –> 01:40:11,320
his side. They wanted them he wanted the town to view him

1602
01:40:11,695 –> 01:40:15,295
like they view Atticus because he was right and just and he was

1603
01:40:15,535 –> 01:40:19,140
but he wasn’t, and it and it came out in the trial. And that’s really

1604
01:40:19,140 –> 01:40:22,840
where his his, his His vindictive.

1605
01:40:23,300 –> 01:40:27,034
Yeah. He’s vindictive. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the only way he could do

1606
01:40:27,034 –> 01:40:30,795
it is to get because he knew he couldn’t confront Atticus face to face. There’s

1607
01:40:30,795 –> 01:40:34,475
no way. Well, and he he had multiple opportunities. He was offered

1608
01:40:34,475 –> 01:40:37,920
the opportunities to do so, and he declined. Declined? Because he I

1609
01:40:38,080 –> 01:40:41,360
we we get the vibe that Atticus would’ve whooped his ass. Right? Like, if we

1610
01:40:41,360 –> 01:40:45,185
get the vibe, Atticus was not somebody to mess with. Now they don’t

1611
01:40:45,185 –> 01:40:48,645
explicitly that’s the other thing Harper Lee does really, really well.

1612
01:40:48,945 –> 01:40:52,705
She says stuff without saying it. Writers, that’s the best part of it. Like, to

1613
01:40:52,705 –> 01:40:56,130
your point with the Jim Crow laws, with the the social reform piece, with Atticus.

1614
01:40:56,130 –> 01:40:59,570
Like, there’s a lot of things she says that without saying it, fourth white trash.

1615
01:40:59,570 –> 01:41:02,930
She doesn’t say those she doesn’t use those words, but you don’t you know damn

1616
01:41:02,930 –> 01:41:06,514
well what she means. So she did the same thing with

1617
01:41:06,514 –> 01:41:10,114
Atticus in the way that he has respect in the town. He just comes you

1618
01:41:10,114 –> 01:41:13,155
get the feeling that he was the guy that nobody wanted to mess with in

1619
01:41:13,155 –> 01:41:16,980
any way, shape, or form. So you went to

1620
01:41:16,980 –> 01:41:20,360
the direction that he felt he could hurt him, which was going after his children.

1621
01:41:20,900 –> 01:41:24,225
Okay. So there is a and we’ve talked about it briefly on this

1622
01:41:28,225 –> 01:41:31,880
hierarchy is. Women don’t, but men know. We, we all know we talked about

1623
01:41:31,880 –> 01:41:35,560
this fourth, you know, who’s the alpha, who’s the beta, who’s the Sigma, who’s whatever

1624
01:41:35,560 –> 01:41:39,080
in the room. Okay. And there’s some of us who don’t care about that. You

1625
01:41:39,080 –> 01:41:41,585
don’t care about that. You’re like, whatever the hell I’ll go in whatever room I

1626
01:41:41,585 –> 01:41:45,425
want. I don’t care. That was sets, makes you good at sales because

1627
01:41:45,425 –> 01:41:49,205
you have to be that guy. I’m that guy because I’m just,

1628
01:41:49,230 –> 01:41:51,970
I’m just pugnacious, and I don’t you know?

1629
01:41:53,150 –> 01:41:56,989
My own ego is fine. This is whatever. I

1630
01:41:56,989 –> 01:42:00,565
I got a healthy ego. I need a stomp on my chest to know I’m

1631
01:42:00,565 –> 01:42:03,385
a man. I’m I don’t yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, please.

1632
01:42:04,485 –> 01:42:07,840
But if you but but but but if you’re gonna come over here, like,

1633
01:42:08,219 –> 01:42:11,580
you know, like I’m not gonna, like, we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do some business.

1634
01:42:11,629 –> 01:42:15,360
Writers. Okay. The hierarchy of makeup

1635
01:42:15,575 –> 01:42:18,955
to your point is set up where Bob is at the bottom of the hierarchy,

1636
01:42:19,415 –> 01:42:23,255
of these characters. Atticus is considered to be at the top because he’s in the

1637
01:42:23,255 –> 01:42:27,070
legislature. And then you’ve got the sheriff, sheriff

1638
01:42:27,070 –> 01:42:30,850
Heck, and then you’ve got the judge, judge Taylor. Now

1639
01:42:30,910 –> 01:42:34,485
the judge in the trial runs

1640
01:42:34,485 –> 01:42:38,245
his courtroom like his own fiefdom, because

1641
01:42:38,245 –> 01:42:41,785
it is. Right? That’s where, like,

1642
01:42:42,020 –> 01:42:44,740
he could do what he wants. He could set his own rules. If he wanted

1643
01:42:44,740 –> 01:42:47,540
to move all the black people out the balcony and make them sit, what are

1644
01:42:47,540 –> 01:42:51,304
you gonna do? Like, bam. Gonna happen. Done. Y’all wanna

1645
01:42:51,304 –> 01:42:54,344
be in contempt or what? Or do you wanna sit here and be quiet? Like,

1646
01:42:54,344 –> 01:42:58,130
he he he makes the law there. Right? And by the way,

1647
01:42:58,290 –> 01:43:02,130
we see this interestingly enough in our current

1648
01:43:02,130 –> 01:43:05,844
political contra Trump, around well, a former

1649
01:43:05,844 –> 01:43:09,605
candidate who shall not be named, who’s a current candidate for president. You

1650
01:43:09,605 –> 01:43:13,364
know? And and and going through the

1651
01:43:13,364 –> 01:43:17,110
trial process, we are all being re

1652
01:43:17,110 –> 01:43:19,210
reminded of how much,

1653
01:43:22,230 –> 01:43:25,845
power a judge, even a district court judge

1654
01:43:26,225 –> 01:43:30,065
has in their own territory and in their domain and not even

1655
01:43:30,065 –> 01:43:33,605
a former president of the United States gets to overstep that.

1656
01:43:33,960 –> 01:43:37,800
Yeah. Okay. Interesting dynamic. It doesn’t work like that

1657
01:43:37,800 –> 01:43:41,560
in other countries. That is incredibly unusual in most other

1658
01:43:41,560 –> 01:43:45,165
countries. The judiciary is impotent

1659
01:43:45,385 –> 01:43:49,145
to say the least, or at least a rubber stamping of whatever the

1660
01:43:49,145 –> 01:43:52,710
dominant structure says is the way that we’re going to go, but

1661
01:43:53,010 –> 01:43:56,470
not, not in this country, not the way we’ve got things set up.

1662
01:43:57,105 –> 01:44:00,245
Okay. Judge Taylor.

1663
01:44:01,025 –> 01:44:04,625
Wasn’t gonna let Bob Yule get out of control. And by the

1664
01:44:04,625 –> 01:44:08,230
way, to back up your point, Bob Yule tried to get judge

1665
01:44:08,230 –> 01:44:11,770
Taylor, or at least that’s intimated in the book.

1666
01:44:11,990 –> 01:44:15,725
Yeah. So it wasn’t just is

1667
01:44:15,725 –> 01:44:19,565
that his ire was aimed at Atticus. His ire was aimed. And I

1668
01:44:19,565 –> 01:44:23,010
guess this backs up your point further. His ire was aimed at the entire

1669
01:44:24,110 –> 01:44:27,950
male hierarchical structure of makeup. He wasn’t

1670
01:44:27,950 –> 01:44:31,695
going to hurt no woman, but the dudes, he was going to try to like,

1671
01:44:31,695 –> 01:44:33,503
get, get those, get those dudes.

1672
01:44:33,503 –> 01:44:37,329
Writers.

1673
01:44:37,329 –> 01:44:40,309
Then we have the dynamic of

1674
01:44:41,170 –> 01:44:43,670
the false accusation of rape.

1675
01:44:45,010 –> 01:44:48,655
Now this one’s kinda touchy because

1676
01:44:50,554 –> 01:44:54,395
for me, anyway, because I have had people in my

1677
01:44:54,395 –> 01:44:58,010
family who have perished due

1678
01:44:58,010 –> 01:45:00,590
to false allegations

1679
01:45:01,690 –> 01:45:03,230
of right.

1680
01:45:05,045 –> 01:45:08,025
As recently as the 1990s,

1681
01:45:10,405 –> 01:45:13,860
a person in my family was lynched in the

1682
01:45:13,860 –> 01:45:17,620
south. I won’t say which state because of

1683
01:45:17,620 –> 01:45:21,295
a false accusation. And that

1684
01:45:22,315 –> 01:45:25,835
when the member of my family who was related to this

1685
01:45:25,835 –> 01:45:29,280
individual went and tried to go to the law about this because there’s no more

1686
01:45:29,280 –> 01:45:32,880
Jim Crow and we have equality. Right? Went to the local

1687
01:45:32,880 –> 01:45:36,420
sheriff. The local sheriff told my relative, and I quote,

1688
01:45:37,045 –> 01:45:40,565
everybody here knows what happened. Go

1689
01:45:40,565 –> 01:45:41,065
home.

1690
01:45:44,770 –> 01:45:47,590
And so I looked at this through that lens

1691
01:45:47,819 –> 01:45:51,490
Tom. Right. And I don’t talk about this ever. The member, this is the first

1692
01:45:51,490 –> 01:45:55,195
time I’ve ever been mentioned this publicly. I don’t write about it, talk about

1693
01:45:55,195 –> 01:45:58,555
it. It’s just one of those things that just Libby, one of those things just

1694
01:45:58,555 –> 01:46:02,095
happens to people, and you just sort of it is what it is.

1695
01:46:03,840 –> 01:46:07,120
And by the way, it hasn’t changed my view of like race relations or any

1696
01:46:07,120 –> 01:46:10,960
of that other kind of stuff. Like I’m able to have a principle and, and

1697
01:46:10,960 –> 01:46:14,705
I’ll, and have a position. And I’m able to hold 2 constricting TED thoughts in

1698
01:46:14,705 –> 01:46:17,765
my head at the same time and be okay. Like, I can do that. Right.

1699
01:46:21,240 –> 01:46:24,540
When we look at that false accusation and when we look at Mayella,

1700
01:46:25,720 –> 01:46:29,400
so the the the the the dynamic there of

1701
01:46:29,400 –> 01:46:33,105
her, She has even less power in the structure than even

1702
01:46:33,105 –> 01:46:36,945
Bob does. And there is some intimation in the story that Bob was

1703
01:46:36,945 –> 01:46:39,844
beating his daughter and may have even indeed been,

1704
01:46:41,490 –> 01:46:45,090
you know, assaulting her, sexually or

1705
01:46:45,090 –> 01:46:48,790
otherwise. And she is even trying to use the system

1706
01:46:48,965 –> 01:46:52,324
and use the testimony to serve her own

1707
01:46:52,324 –> 01:46:55,945
ends. As a matter of fact, when she talks to Atticus

1708
01:46:56,330 –> 01:46:59,930
in the cross examination, that’s one of the more fascinating parts of the

1709
01:46:59,930 –> 01:47:01,470
story to me because,

1710
01:47:03,610 –> 01:47:06,030
it’s a perfect example of a person who

1711
01:47:07,195 –> 01:47:10,955
literally is, she’s underneath Book. Even she is at the, she’s at

1712
01:47:10,955 –> 01:47:14,580
the bare, the bare bottom of the social structure. She

1713
01:47:14,660 –> 01:47:18,500
she’s she has nothing. She’s the only conception. She’s so far down. She

1714
01:47:18,500 –> 01:47:22,260
doesn’t have a conception of how far down she is. And yet, the thing that

1715
01:47:22,260 –> 01:47:25,905
she holds on to is her pride. And I think that was

1716
01:47:25,905 –> 01:47:29,585
Bob’s sin. His sin was pride. And I said all that to

1717
01:47:29,585 –> 01:47:32,110
say that. I think that that was the thing that got him. I don’t think

1718
01:47:32,110 –> 01:47:35,469
it was actually he wanted the respect of the town. I think he just had

1719
01:47:35,469 –> 01:47:38,850
pride. He just had pride.

1720
01:47:39,195 –> 01:47:42,795
Pride in what? Pride in what? Pride he was he was he was the

1721
01:47:42,795 –> 01:47:46,555
guilty party of beating his his daughter and and possibly, to

1722
01:47:46,555 –> 01:47:50,360
your point, possibly other things and pushing that guilt off on

1723
01:47:50,360 –> 01:47:53,640
somebody else. Where’s the pride in that? What do you that’s not

1724
01:47:55,080 –> 01:47:58,825
I’m saying that pride was the driver. He so

1725
01:47:58,825 –> 01:48:02,585
it’s people are weird, Tom. I got you know this. People are

1726
01:48:02,585 –> 01:48:06,350
weird. Their motivations are weird. Right? And I

1727
01:48:06,350 –> 01:48:09,450
look at a guy like Bob, and I go, okay.

1728
01:48:10,350 –> 01:48:11,650
He was a proud man.

1729
01:48:14,055 –> 01:48:16,775
What he had to be proud about didn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because it doesn’t

1730
01:48:16,775 –> 01:48:20,455
matter how how we look at that. It mattered how he looked at that.

1731
01:48:20,455 –> 01:48:23,929
And, again, we’re looking at this through scout’s eyes. So we’re getting a we’re getting

1732
01:48:24,010 –> 01:48:26,889
we’re looking at it through a narrow keyhole. We have to kinda be aware of

1733
01:48:26,889 –> 01:48:30,510
that. Right? And I think that

1734
01:48:31,425 –> 01:48:35,105
in and and maybe this maybe me putting more weight on this

1735
01:48:35,105 –> 01:48:38,910
character than this character can actually handle. But when I

1736
01:48:38,910 –> 01:48:42,290
look at Bob Ewell, I don’t see a person who’s just pursuing

1737
01:48:42,350 –> 01:48:46,105
revenge out of out of a

1738
01:48:46,105 –> 01:48:49,625
sense of I want these people to respect me. I see him

1739
01:48:49,625 –> 01:48:53,385
pursuing it as a sense of I have hurt pride. My pride has

1740
01:48:53,385 –> 01:48:57,210
been hurt. My pride has been damaged, and I’m

1741
01:48:57,210 –> 01:49:01,050
gonna go restore that. I don’t know.

1742
01:49:01,050 –> 01:49:04,795
I I I I’m not sure. I I

1743
01:49:04,795 –> 01:49:07,275
mean, I understand where you’re coming from, and I I definitely We could sit on

1744
01:49:07,275 –> 01:49:10,235
this. It’s okay. We could sit on this. I was saying I I I could

1745
01:49:10,235 –> 01:49:13,215
I could see where you’re covering. I I just don’t think he was that complicated.

1746
01:49:13,980 –> 01:49:16,860
I I like, I think he was more simple than that. I think it was

1747
01:49:16,860 –> 01:49:19,760
really that simple that, you know, Atticus

1748
01:49:21,074 –> 01:49:24,835
Atticus made him look bad, and now he’s gonna hold a

1749
01:49:24,835 –> 01:49:27,635
vendetta against him. And it’s that simple. I don’t think I don’t think he had

1750
01:49:27,635 –> 01:49:31,210
enough thought. I don’t think he had enough brain cells to realize that he

1751
01:49:31,210 –> 01:49:35,050
had pride. Like, that that’s the way they depict him anyway. Right? Like,

1752
01:49:35,050 –> 01:49:38,730
he’s Right. Like, that that I’m not sure he had an I’m not sure he

1753
01:49:38,730 –> 01:49:42,475
had enough self

1754
01:49:42,475 –> 01:49:46,075
awareness to be prideful of anything in particular about himself. Well,

1755
01:49:46,075 –> 01:49:49,480
okay. Alright. Let me ask you this question then because we’re we’re gonna we gotta

1756
01:49:49,480 –> 01:49:53,000
turn a corner here. We talked for a couple of hours. We book wait a

1757
01:49:53,000 –> 01:49:55,260
wait a we spent some time on this.

1758
01:49:58,595 –> 01:50:00,295
Would you say that Bob had principles?

1759
01:50:04,770 –> 01:50:07,730
I know. I know. I know. He’s a simple man. Lack of lack of principles,

1760
01:50:07,730 –> 01:50:11,489
maybe. He’s he’s a simple man with simple appetite. He’s he’s other

1761
01:50:11,489 –> 01:50:15,025
principles. That’s that’s that’s that food is too rich for Bob.

1762
01:50:15,405 –> 01:50:19,245
Okay. Let’s move up the hierarchy. Clearly, Atticus had

1763
01:50:19,245 –> 01:50:22,770
principles clearly. Clear clearly. Yeah. Dutch Taylor, very

1764
01:50:22,770 –> 01:50:26,610
principled, right, particularly in his courtroom. Right? The sheriff, which we’ve already

1765
01:50:26,610 –> 01:50:28,150
mentioned, clearly got principles.

1766
01:50:30,210 –> 01:50:34,054
Jem, right, the brother, not principled yet, but coming

1767
01:50:34,054 –> 01:50:37,094
along. Right? And actually You could see you could see them developing. You could see

1768
01:50:37,094 –> 01:50:38,474
them developing. Right. Okay.

1769
01:50:41,239 –> 01:50:44,239
Tom Robinson probably could have benefited from having some principles.

1770
01:50:44,940 –> 01:50:48,775
Yes. For sure. I think one of Oh, go ahead. Go

1771
01:50:48,775 –> 01:50:52,054
ahead. Sorry. Like, the principle of just not going to someone else’s house to whom

1772
01:50:52,054 –> 01:50:55,574
you’re not married. Even if you’re walking by on your way home from

1773
01:50:55,574 –> 01:50:58,800
work. Like, just go to work. Just go to work and go home. Yeah. Stay

1774
01:50:58,800 –> 01:51:02,180
on the other side of the street. Stop. Okay. Yeah.

1775
01:51:03,280 –> 01:51:06,875
The one the the one that surprised me, I think, was was Boo

1776
01:51:06,875 –> 01:51:10,554
Radley. When you talk about principles Yeah. That’s the one that stands

1777
01:51:10,554 –> 01:51:13,980
out that is like, wait a minute. We’re we’re let

1778
01:51:14,100 –> 01:51:17,640
we’re we’re turning down a path of belief about this character.

1779
01:51:18,179 –> 01:51:21,715
And now throughout the course of the book, you realize that

1780
01:51:22,034 –> 01:51:25,554
that legend is not true. I mean, that I’m not suggesting that we

1781
01:51:25,875 –> 01:51:28,514
it’s not an epiphany at the end of the book that he’s that he’s got

1782
01:51:28,514 –> 01:51:31,040
some Sorrells, But it is surprising

1783
01:51:32,700 –> 01:51:36,240
to see that his principles

1784
01:51:36,300 –> 01:51:40,125
still drive him even though he’s reclusive and he does not interact with anybody.

1785
01:51:40,445 –> 01:51:43,805
He he wants no part of the town. He wants no part of talking with

1786
01:51:43,805 –> 01:51:47,645
anybody. He wants no part of interacting with anybody, but his principles

1787
01:51:47,645 –> 01:51:49,905
still guide him to do the right thing

1788
01:51:51,469 –> 01:51:55,310
even though he’s still that recluse of that’s what surprised me. That was was

1789
01:51:55,310 –> 01:51:58,655
the part that was like, did I feel like he was gonna get involved some

1790
01:51:58,655 –> 01:52:02,015
way? Sure. Like, you you knew that there was something there because the book kinda

1791
01:52:02,015 –> 01:52:05,695
drags you along that way about, it’s like a it’s it’s almost like the

1792
01:52:05,695 –> 01:52:08,800
climax of a movie. Right? It, like, builds up, builds up, builds up, but I

1793
01:52:08,800 –> 01:52:12,560
wasn’t expecting that to be the climax of the movie, so to

1794
01:52:12,560 –> 01:52:14,900
speak, where Lou Radley really has

1795
01:52:16,245 –> 01:52:19,945
a keen sense of what’s right and wrong and what’s principled about

1796
01:52:20,805 –> 01:52:24,390
and and that protective nature that that comes across toward the end. So I I

1797
01:52:24,390 –> 01:52:28,230
think that one surprised me more than anybody, you know, whether Bob not having

1798
01:52:28,230 –> 01:52:31,590
principles or the sheriff having principles or Atticus, of course, having

1799
01:52:31,590 –> 01:52:35,025
a a a a gigantic moral

1800
01:52:35,025 –> 01:52:38,785
compass. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But Boo Radley

1801
01:52:38,785 –> 01:52:42,349
was the one that that I was pleasantly surprised about at the end of the

1802
01:52:42,349 –> 01:52:46,190
book that that that, and and, you know, to be honest, if you

1803
01:52:46,190 –> 01:52:49,805
think about it from a leadership perspective, Boo Radley is that

1804
01:52:49,805 –> 01:52:53,405
silent leader. Right? Like, that that guy that doesn’t cause a lot of ruckus fourth

1805
01:52:53,405 –> 01:52:57,219
that girl that doesn’t draw a lot of attention to herself, but yet

1806
01:52:57,219 –> 01:53:00,900
everybody seems to follow her or him. Right? Like, that’s, like,

1807
01:53:00,900 –> 01:53:04,465
that’s Book Radley’s character to me. Like, everybody kinda takes

1808
01:53:04,465 –> 01:53:08,085
a page out of his book because of something that he

1809
01:53:08,304 –> 01:53:11,744
is like, something he does, but he just kinda does it in in a way

1810
01:53:11,744 –> 01:53:15,500
that nobody really like, he doesn’t want people to notice. So

1811
01:53:15,500 –> 01:53:19,200
the there’s a line in the book that Atticus actually tells,

1812
01:53:20,220 –> 01:53:23,844
Scout and gem, when they get

1813
01:53:23,844 –> 01:53:27,125
guns for Christmas. Right? He tells them they can shoot all the blue jays that

1814
01:53:27,125 –> 01:53:30,740
they want. Yep. But it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. Right?

1815
01:53:30,740 –> 01:53:34,500
Right. Which I’d never okay. And I I’ve I

1816
01:53:34,500 –> 01:53:37,800
have been really dug deeply into sort of where that idea comes from.

1817
01:53:38,765 –> 01:53:41,905
It came from somewhere, and put it in the book.

1818
01:53:42,685 –> 01:53:46,190
Well, they do explain it a little bit in the book. Right? Because the the

1819
01:53:46,190 –> 01:53:49,650
crows and the blue jays destroy things. They go after they go after,

1820
01:53:50,270 –> 01:53:53,869
you know, farms, farmers, the seeds. Like, they destroy some of those crops. The

1821
01:53:53,869 –> 01:53:57,515
mockingbirds don’t harm nobody. All they do is

1822
01:53:57,515 –> 01:54:01,035
provide us beautiful sounds and music. Right. Or something to that

1823
01:54:01,035 –> 01:54:04,335
effect. Something to that effect. Yeah. So it’s a sin to kill the mockingbird because

1824
01:54:04,490 –> 01:54:08,330
it’s a defenseless creature that has no other purpose than to bring beauty into the

1825
01:54:08,330 –> 01:54:11,950
world. Right. Now the reference that Scout uses to Book

1826
01:54:12,010 –> 01:54:13,710
Radley. To Boo Radley. Right.

1827
01:54:16,265 –> 01:54:19,784
Except let’s be let me be clear here. Boo

1828
01:54:19,784 –> 01:54:23,560
Bradley knife demand. Okay. Come on.

1829
01:54:23,560 –> 01:54:26,940
With a kitchen knife. And

1830
01:54:27,640 –> 01:54:31,425
and then and then in the process

1831
01:54:31,745 –> 01:54:35,025
because he’s he’s sensitive and delicate, it doesn’t wanna have anything to do with the

1832
01:54:35,025 –> 01:54:38,324
town and da da da da, all these things that you mentioned. He’s

1833
01:54:39,620 –> 01:54:42,020
I’d have allowed to go back into it. This is, by the way, where I

1834
01:54:42,020 –> 01:54:45,540
agree with the sheriff even though he didn’t frame it this way. Boo Bradley was

1835
01:54:45,540 –> 01:54:49,035
already in prison. Yeah. Boo Radley,

1836
01:54:49,735 –> 01:54:53,415
because of his past experience with his father and the kinds of things that had

1837
01:54:53,415 –> 01:54:57,260
happened to him before he even showed up, or before any of this nonsense

1838
01:54:57,380 –> 01:55:00,080
or not nonsense. These shenanigans ever started.

1839
01:55:01,820 –> 01:55:05,280
He was already locked in a prison of his own mind. And sometimes

1840
01:55:07,485 –> 01:55:11,085
well, again, to paraphrase from the the the the great

1841
01:55:11,085 –> 01:55:14,525
movie Magnolia, the sheriff in there, the cop in there

1842
01:55:14,525 –> 01:55:17,640
says, you know, being a cop is hard. Sometimes

1843
01:55:18,739 –> 01:55:22,565
some people need to be listened to sometimes some people need

1844
01:55:22,565 –> 01:55:26,325
to take a beating and sometimes some people need to go to jail and

1845
01:55:26,325 –> 01:55:29,685
that’s a really hard call and I have to make those kinds of calls every

1846
01:55:29,685 –> 01:55:32,720
day And I don’t always do it well.

1847
01:55:34,700 –> 01:55:38,534
And that’s the case with book Radley. Right? Yes, for

1848
01:55:38,534 –> 01:55:42,135
sure. He, he had to be in his house. That was his

1849
01:55:42,135 –> 01:55:45,790
jail cell. And it might be a

1850
01:55:45,790 –> 01:55:49,410
sin to kill a mockingbird, but it’s not a sin to lock one up

1851
01:55:50,270 –> 01:55:53,570
apparently. And Tom just let it be a well,

1852
01:55:54,525 –> 01:55:58,045
let it be a caged bird. Right. The

1853
01:55:58,045 –> 01:56:01,425
moral compass piece as we round the corner here,

1854
01:56:02,320 –> 01:56:06,160
Atticus had a gigantic moral compass and it occurs

1855
01:56:06,160 –> 01:56:09,060
to me. And that was one of the big things I pulled from this book.

1856
01:56:09,715 –> 01:56:13,394
It occurs to me that just like when we, when we read about, Malcolm

1857
01:56:13,400 –> 01:56:17,220
Books, Malcolm X had a huge moral compass too. He did.

1858
01:56:17,700 –> 01:56:21,380
Now his moral compass, his moral authority came from religion.

1859
01:56:21,380 –> 01:56:24,760
That’s where his moral compass came from, from from Islam. Right?

1860
01:56:25,994 –> 01:56:29,695
Martin Luther King Junior had a moral compass. His moral compass came from Christianity.

1861
01:56:30,875 –> 01:56:34,350
We read Charles Fourth’ true grit. The

1862
01:56:34,350 –> 01:56:37,950
character in there, The, the female

1863
01:56:37,950 –> 01:56:41,625
character in there, her moral compass, came

1864
01:56:41,685 –> 01:56:45,525
from her Christian Pentecostal Pentecostal? Yeah.

1865
01:56:45,525 –> 01:56:48,005
It might have been Pentecostal. I can’t remember right now. I read a lot of

1866
01:56:48,005 –> 01:56:51,780
books on this podcast. You’ll remind me. But it came from from that her

1867
01:56:51,780 –> 01:56:54,840
her came from that Christian basis. Right? Her Christian moralism. Right?

1868
01:56:56,130 –> 01:56:59,545
Essays thing here. Right? Except

1869
01:57:00,725 –> 01:57:03,865
religion isn’t a powerful driver in here.

1870
01:57:04,910 –> 01:57:08,510
They talk about going to church, but it’s not the

1871
01:57:08,510 –> 01:57:11,985
the it’s not the the orbit

1872
01:57:12,045 –> 01:57:15,745
around which their lives turn as sometimes as satirized,

1873
01:57:15,885 –> 01:57:19,640
not as satirized, exaggerated or assured by about people in the south.

1874
01:57:20,180 –> 01:57:23,780
One thing I tell folks is that people in the south can be just as

1875
01:57:23,780 –> 01:57:26,775
unchristian as people in the north. Please give me a break

1876
01:57:27,735 –> 01:57:31,308
or there’s human beings. The church is full of writers.

1877
01:57:32,375 –> 01:57:36,116
There you go. That’s the point of it. And so, like, I think

1878
01:57:36,500 –> 01:57:40,260
We’re callers. Anyway Hey. Hey. Hey. You know what? Come right on, dad. We’ve

1879
01:57:40,260 –> 01:57:43,695
got room for 1 more. You

1880
01:57:43,695 –> 01:57:46,675
know, so we have to

1881
01:57:48,015 –> 01:57:50,435
understand as leaders, I think.

1882
01:57:52,099 –> 01:57:55,159
And this is it is something I really emphasized during the first

1883
01:57:55,940 –> 01:57:59,465
half of this year on this podcast. We have to

1884
01:57:59,465 –> 01:58:03,145
understand where our moral compass comes from. I

1885
01:58:03,145 –> 01:58:06,860
need you to have one. I I

1886
01:58:07,719 –> 01:58:09,800
I I I I I I can’t I think we’ve had enough of leadership in

1887
01:58:09,800 –> 01:58:13,640
our world that doesn’t have a moral compass. I just think we’ve had

1888
01:58:13,640 –> 01:58:17,445
enough, or at least I’ve had enough. You you need

1889
01:58:17,445 –> 01:58:20,565
to articulate where your moral compass is coming from. And if you by the way,

1890
01:58:20,565 –> 01:58:23,125
if your moral compass comes from, and I’ve said this fourth this podcast, if it

1891
01:58:23,125 –> 01:58:26,790
comes from ESG or DEI or some social thing

1892
01:58:26,790 –> 01:58:30,550
or whatever culture, fine. Say it. Say that that’s where your moral compass comes

1893
01:58:30,550 –> 01:58:33,625
from. Like, the CEO of Patagonia.

1894
01:58:35,365 –> 01:58:37,545
I think that guy’s moral compass is

1895
01:58:38,805 –> 01:58:42,230
not where I would put mine, but that’s

1896
01:58:42,230 –> 01:58:45,750
fine. No one’s holding the gun to my head saying I gotta go buy a

1897
01:58:45,750 –> 01:58:49,485
Patagonia sweater. Like, it’s fine. Go have your moral compass

1898
01:58:49,485 –> 01:58:53,248
wherever you want. That’s freedom. That’s what we have in America. Doesn’t impact Tom.

1899
01:58:54,685 –> 01:58:57,590
Go go do what you wanna do with your company. You, you know, you wanna

1900
01:58:57,750 –> 01:59:01,429
give away your entire company to save a bunch of trees and like Montana. Cool.

1901
01:59:01,429 –> 01:59:05,085
Knock it up. You built it. That’s your moral compass.

1902
01:59:05,325 –> 01:59:09,165
And by the way, be very clear with people when they come to work at

1903
01:59:09,165 –> 01:59:13,005
Patagonia, that this is what they’re getting. This is why I think

1904
01:59:13,005 –> 01:59:16,480
that companies like Amazon on the other end of that spectrum,

1905
01:59:17,420 –> 01:59:21,260
particularly underneath Bezos, not so much under, under this new

1906
01:59:21,260 –> 01:59:24,845
guy, but under Bezos, Bezos was very, very clear.

1907
01:59:26,045 –> 01:59:29,725
We are here to work. I don’t like human beings. They’re a

1908
01:59:29,725 –> 01:59:32,945
real problem. You could all be replaced with robots tomorrow.

1909
01:59:33,380 –> 01:59:37,139
So work Tom your highest level of productivity. I will pay you whatever

1910
01:59:37,139 –> 01:59:40,040
that highest level is, and then you can get the hell out.

1911
01:59:42,235 –> 01:59:45,515
Why are we objecting to this? Why does this make us feel icky? Well, it

1912
01:59:45,515 –> 01:59:49,360
makes us feel icky because so many leaders don’t clearly

1913
01:59:49,360 –> 01:59:53,119
articulate where their moral compass comes from, nor do they

1914
01:59:53,119 –> 01:59:56,665
have the capacity, I think, to defend it. And that’s just the

1915
01:59:56,665 –> 02:00:00,344
inadequacy. And the other

1916
02:00:00,344 –> 02:00:04,150
thing that I would take from this is that as my grandmother

1917
02:00:04,210 –> 02:00:07,730
might say, the child is the father of the man. Right. And so,

1918
02:00:07,730 –> 02:00:11,170
you know, pay attention to what’s happening with your

1919
02:00:11,170 –> 02:00:15,005
children. In particular, not as early as the shenanigans

1920
02:00:15,005 –> 02:00:18,685
they’re getting into, but in particular, the example you provide for them as the

1921
02:00:18,685 –> 02:00:22,400
patter familias is the, as the person who looms

1922
02:00:22,400 –> 02:00:26,239
large in their conscience. Like, I know I know that I loom large in

1923
02:00:26,239 –> 02:00:30,025
my kids’ consciences. I know that, Tom, you know, you loom

1924
02:00:30,025 –> 02:00:33,785
large in your child’s cut. You do in your children’s conscious. They you’re a big

1925
02:00:33,785 –> 02:00:37,550
mountain to get over. Like, that’s just that’s it. And you may not

1926
02:00:37,550 –> 02:00:40,690
think you’re that big, but guess what? Like

1927
02:00:41,869 –> 02:00:45,489
you are in their head. You are, and

1928
02:00:45,869 –> 02:00:49,315
that’s very, very significant.

1929
02:00:50,335 –> 02:00:53,875
And Atticus was a gigantic

1930
02:00:54,015 –> 02:00:57,610
mountain that scout couldn’t even begin to

1931
02:00:57,610 –> 02:01:01,370
understand, you know, and as she’s

1932
02:01:01,370 –> 02:01:03,630
writing the book, looking back on her life,

1933
02:01:06,495 –> 02:01:09,635
I get a sense that she appreciated that more,

1934
02:01:10,255 –> 02:01:12,835
obviously, the older and older she got. So

1935
02:01:14,610 –> 02:01:18,230
how do leaders stay on leadership path with To Kill A Mockingbird?

1936
02:01:18,449 –> 02:01:22,255
How do we how do we do that? Well, I think I think

1937
02:01:22,255 –> 02:01:24,815
we already talked about that a little bit. I think I think it I think

1938
02:01:24,815 –> 02:01:28,370
part of it is, like, being open to learning lessons from

1939
02:01:28,450 –> 02:01:32,290
from a multitude of layers and levels and not being not

1940
02:01:32,290 –> 02:01:35,890
sitting on your high horse thinking I’m the CEO, so I know everything. Like, being

1941
02:01:35,890 –> 02:01:39,575
able to, again, listening to your own words being regurgitated to

1942
02:01:39,575 –> 02:01:43,415
you and take, you know, taking, you know, taking a a spoon

1943
02:01:43,415 –> 02:01:47,200
of your own medicine, so to speak, on occasion being it

1944
02:01:47,200 –> 02:01:50,820
it also shows it shows that

1945
02:01:50,880 –> 02:01:53,460
portion of the book shows Atticus’

1946
02:01:54,905 –> 02:01:58,665
humility. Like, he’s humble enough to know that when Scout repeats

1947
02:01:58,665 –> 02:02:02,265
this back to him, she’s right. It’s not, oh, you learned the

1948
02:02:02,265 –> 02:02:05,769
lesson I taught you. Oh, it’s not it’s not, oh, see?

1949
02:02:05,829 –> 02:02:09,670
You you you got it. No. No. No. It’s you are right. Like,

1950
02:02:09,670 –> 02:02:13,435
he didn’t he doesn’t go into that. Like, and I think that’s part of sometimes

1951
02:02:13,435 –> 02:02:17,275
what we lose as leadership, is not allowing somebody else

1952
02:02:17,275 –> 02:02:21,090
to be right. Just let them be right and learn that lesson back

1953
02:02:21,090 –> 02:02:24,630
for fourth yourself so that you can become a better leader. Yeah.

1954
02:02:27,570 –> 02:02:31,215
Yeah. How do we anchor

1955
02:02:31,275 –> 02:02:35,035
that kind of leadership to social reform? Because there’s all

1956
02:02:35,035 –> 02:02:37,935
these kinds of things that we would like to see fourth. Right?

1957
02:02:38,475 –> 02:02:42,019
From bias at various places

1958
02:02:42,019 –> 02:02:45,580
all the way to social inequalities. I mean, we’ve had an

1959
02:02:45,580 –> 02:02:49,175
endless outpouring, particularly over the last 5th

1960
02:02:49,335 –> 02:02:53,175
10 to 15 years of just, like, this is

1961
02:02:53,175 –> 02:02:55,915
the endless parade of problems.

1962
02:02:57,800 –> 02:03:01,500
And yet we have not had an equally

1963
02:03:01,560 –> 02:03:04,700
endless outpouring of an endless parade of solutions,

1964
02:03:05,665 –> 02:03:09,425
much to my frustration, by the way. How do

1965
02:03:09,425 –> 02:03:12,565
we tie this you have to know moral leadership

1966
02:03:13,170 –> 02:03:16,469
or you have to have a moral compass in order to lead to

1967
02:03:17,409 –> 02:03:20,210
fixing some of these problems that we’d like to see fixed. And by the way,

1968
02:03:20,210 –> 02:03:22,705
we could pick any problem. Libby, we don’t have to even pick a big one.

1969
02:03:22,705 –> 02:03:26,545
We could pick, book, picking up trash in your neighborhood. Like, how do we how

1970
02:03:26,545 –> 02:03:30,310
do we get leaders to get a community to

1971
02:03:30,310 –> 02:03:33,050
place their trust in them?

1972
02:03:34,550 –> 02:03:38,175
Because I’m not worried about I’m not worried about changing the environment at a global

1973
02:03:38,175 –> 02:03:41,775
level. I’m worried about picking up trash on my street. Yeah. Jesan. Listen.

1974
02:03:41,775 –> 02:03:45,239
I’ve always been a huge advocate. I I I don’t know the

1975
02:03:45,239 –> 02:03:48,699
answer to this question. I’m gonna be I’m just gonna be very clear and

1976
02:03:49,000 –> 02:03:52,360
say, I don’t have the answer to this question other than to

1977
02:03:52,360 –> 02:03:55,855
say that every leadership role that I have ever had,

1978
02:03:56,315 –> 02:03:59,995
there’s not a single person underneath me that could say that

1979
02:03:59,995 –> 02:04:03,500
I didn’t experience everything they did because I was right there with

1980
02:04:03,500 –> 02:04:07,260
them. I I would go I would I was in the, you know, when I

1981
02:04:07,260 –> 02:04:10,435
was in the restaurant industry, I would wash dishes as a general man I I

1982
02:04:10,435 –> 02:04:14,034
ran the restaurant. I would still wash dishes. So the dishwasher could never say that

1983
02:04:14,034 –> 02:04:17,715
I didn’t understand what they were going through. When I was in as sales management

1984
02:04:17,715 –> 02:04:21,440
and sales leadership, I was the one on the ground floor selling the stuff before

1985
02:04:21,440 –> 02:04:24,320
I ever got there, so the sales rep could never tell me that I didn’t

1986
02:04:24,320 –> 02:04:27,060
understand the plight that they were going through. For me,

1987
02:04:27,875 –> 02:04:31,255
the only thing that I have in my in my power

1988
02:04:31,954 –> 02:04:35,795
is to lead by example. Right? Is to be shoulder to shoulder with

1989
02:04:35,795 –> 02:04:39,429
them, elbow to elbow with them so that they know that

1990
02:04:39,429 –> 02:04:42,790
I’m never going to throw something at them that I

1991
02:04:42,790 –> 02:04:44,730
wouldn’t be willing to face myself.

1992
02:04:47,085 –> 02:04:50,545
Outside of that, I don’t have an answer for any of this.

1993
02:04:51,645 –> 02:04:55,360
Because my my answer is always going to

1994
02:04:55,820 –> 02:04:59,260
be, I’ll do it first. If you don’t think that that’s

1995
02:04:59,260 –> 02:05:02,914
doable or it’s workable or I’ll do it first. And

1996
02:05:02,914 –> 02:05:06,755
then once I do it, I’ll teach you how to do it. And

1997
02:05:06,755 –> 02:05:09,474
then you’ll lead me when I tell you you’ll listen to me when I tell

1998
02:05:09,474 –> 02:05:12,620
you that this can be done and here’s the numbers that we wanna hit and

1999
02:05:12,620 –> 02:05:16,220
all this stuff. You’re gonna there’s gonna be buy in there because they know that

2000
02:05:16,220 –> 02:05:19,635
I’m not just blowing smoke up their keisters. Right? Like,

2001
02:05:19,635 –> 02:05:23,235
it’s so for me and believe me, I’m I am a

2002
02:05:23,235 –> 02:05:26,880
100% aware and positive that there are better ways. I just don’t

2003
02:05:26,880 –> 02:05:30,239
know of any other than to roll up my sleeves and do it. I that’s

2004
02:05:30,239 –> 02:05:33,460
that’s the only that’s the only shit that’s the only leadership

2005
02:05:35,415 –> 02:05:39,255
material that I have. Mhmm. Like and you could talk about, like, there’s difference

2006
02:05:39,335 –> 02:05:42,855
you know, there’s conflict resolution in how you can read this book and get better

2007
02:05:42,855 –> 02:05:46,460
at that, and there’s the, sure. I’m not downplaying any of that.

2008
02:05:46,600 –> 02:05:50,360
I’m just saying when it comes to who do I want to follow, I

2009
02:05:50,360 –> 02:05:53,640
wanna follow somebody that I know for a fact has been there, done that, and

2010
02:05:53,640 –> 02:05:57,225
they’re not gonna lead me astray just because. So if you want

2011
02:05:57,225 –> 02:05:59,864
people to if you want people to pick up trash in your neighborhood, go pick

2012
02:05:59,864 –> 02:06:03,239
up trash. I’m gonna go pick up trash. Go pick up trash. If you want

2013
02:06:03,239 –> 02:06:06,680
people to treat people better in your

2014
02:06:06,680 –> 02:06:10,300
workplace, start doing it yourself. I’m gonna start treating you better. Exactly.

2015
02:06:10,415 –> 02:06:14,255
Exactly. Want, if

2016
02:06:14,255 –> 02:06:17,715
you want income income inequality to be

2017
02:06:18,210 –> 02:06:20,550
overcome, well, give up some of your income.

2018
02:06:22,210 –> 02:06:25,650
And and by the way, one of my I I had this conversation, some with

2019
02:06:25,650 –> 02:06:29,344
somebody recently. One of my favorite things about being in sales Mhmm.

2020
02:06:29,705 –> 02:06:33,145
Is that the salary Mhmm.

2021
02:06:33,225 –> 02:06:36,820
Doesn’t care what color you readers, doesn’t care what gender you are.

2022
02:06:37,040 –> 02:06:40,560
You earn your book you earn your your actual money on your own

2023
02:06:40,560 –> 02:06:43,985
merits. It’s about who you are and and how good of a salesperson you are.

2024
02:06:43,985 –> 02:06:47,505
So that pay inequality, I never had the real

2025
02:06:47,665 –> 02:06:51,409
I’m not suggesting it’s not real by any means or it’s not there. I just

2026
02:06:51,409 –> 02:06:55,250
personally have never had to I’ve never had to deal with it in that

2027
02:06:55,250 –> 02:06:59,090
level because now as people are getting promoted and stuff like

2028
02:06:59,090 –> 02:07:02,735
that, you know, and let’s just let’s say a woman woman gets promoted to

2029
02:07:02,735 –> 02:07:06,575
a to a sales manager, you better damn well know that I was

2030
02:07:06,575 –> 02:07:10,280
not allowing our company to offer her less money than the sales manager I

2031
02:07:10,280 –> 02:07:14,040
hired 6 months ago that was a guy. That wasn’t gonna happen. I was

2032
02:07:14,120 –> 02:07:17,960
because to me, the a sales manager gets paid the

2033
02:07:17,960 –> 02:07:21,225
same that the last sales manager got paid. Why would why would we offer her

2034
02:07:21,225 –> 02:07:24,665
less money? Now if that if that puts me in a light of

2035
02:07:24,665 –> 02:07:28,350
being sensitive to that that pay inequality, then sure.

2036
02:07:28,350 –> 02:07:32,110
I’ll I’ll I’ll gladly say thank you. But to me, it wasn’t. To me,

2037
02:07:32,110 –> 02:07:35,550
it was just I was looking at the job, the

2038
02:07:35,550 –> 02:07:39,255
role. I didn’t care if it was male, female, black, white,

2039
02:07:39,255 –> 02:07:42,695
Hispanic. None of that mattered. This is the role. This is what it pays, and

2040
02:07:42,695 –> 02:07:46,469
there you go. And in sales, that’s a lot easier to do. So I I

2041
02:07:46,469 –> 02:07:49,670
will say that that’s a lot easier to do because there’s not because in other

2042
02:07:49,670 –> 02:07:53,355
facets of business, there’s all the the KPIs are so different.

2043
02:07:53,415 –> 02:07:56,855
What you judge people on is different. It’s it and it

2044
02:07:56,855 –> 02:08:00,455
becomes very gray, and I don’t like gray, which is why I love

2045
02:08:00,455 –> 02:08:04,240
sales. It’s it’s very clear. You’re a great salesperson. We’re

2046
02:08:04,240 –> 02:08:08,000
gonna you’re gonna get paid because you’re great. It’s that simple. If

2047
02:08:08,000 –> 02:08:11,844
you suck, you’re fired. It’s that it’s that it’s really that

2048
02:08:11,844 –> 02:08:15,684
simple. I’ve never fired a minority person

2049
02:08:15,684 –> 02:08:19,199
and had them look at me and go, that was because I’m a girl, that

2050
02:08:19,199 –> 02:08:21,840
was a a woman. Sorry. That was because I’m a woman fourth that was because

2051
02:08:21,840 –> 02:08:25,119
I’m black or that was I’ve never had that happen. When I’ve every time I’ve

2052
02:08:25,119 –> 02:08:28,915
ever fired somebody, it’s been like, look, you suck. That’s it. The

2053
02:08:28,915 –> 02:08:32,515
paper the numbers say that you’re not very good. Now there

2054
02:08:32,515 –> 02:08:36,275
have been rare occasions where somebody said, well, I didn’t get the training

2055
02:08:36,275 –> 02:08:40,020
I expected. Okay. Let’s back the truck

2056
02:08:40,020 –> 02:08:43,219
up for a second. Let’s talk about your training. Did you get this? Did you

2057
02:08:43,219 –> 02:08:46,295
get that? Did you get this? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Whatever. Okay. Well, then you got

2058
02:08:46,295 –> 02:08:49,915
the same training everybody else did. So you’re fired.

2059
02:08:50,215 –> 02:08:52,935
So you’re fired. So you gotta go you gotta go as good. Answer is if

2060
02:08:52,935 –> 02:08:56,750
the answer is no, you know, again, because certain roles I

2061
02:08:56,750 –> 02:09:00,270
I I play, I I’m hiring different levels. Right? So certain roles I

2062
02:09:00,270 –> 02:09:04,025
go, what did you you got the same turning? Well, I didn’t get I got

2063
02:09:04,025 –> 02:09:07,784
this one, but didn’t get the next 2. Alright. Let’s talk about, you

2064
02:09:07,784 –> 02:09:11,580
know, a improvement plan. Right? Let’s talk about a

2065
02:09:11,580 –> 02:09:15,280
a a production improve improvement plan, a PIPA a PIPA or whatever. So

2066
02:09:15,420 –> 02:09:18,155
then maybe they don’t get fired that that day, but they’re gonna have very clear

2067
02:09:18,155 –> 02:09:21,275
expectations that they’re going to get that training, and you have now 60 days to

2068
02:09:21,275 –> 02:09:24,570
turn this around fourth you’re fired. Or you’re fired. Yep. But again, that has nothing

2069
02:09:24,570 –> 02:09:28,330
to do with race, color, sex, none of that. It’s just clear. It’s

2070
02:09:28,330 –> 02:09:31,710
very clear. So Yeah. Anyway. But to your

2071
02:09:31,930 –> 02:09:35,275
original question, yes. I I if the trash needs to be going to pick up,

2072
02:09:35,275 –> 02:09:38,315
I I’m gonna at least get it started. I might ask for help. I I

2073
02:09:38,395 –> 02:09:42,230
I’d be the Tom Sawyer of that. Mhmm. Right? Like, look how much fun I’m

2074
02:09:42,230 –> 02:09:44,390
look how much fun I’m having picking up this trash. And if you don’t wanna

2075
02:09:44,390 –> 02:09:48,010
join me, go on. Join me. And then I might back away into the trip.

2076
02:09:48,150 –> 02:09:51,905
He’s He’s gonna he’s gonna sell it. He’s gonna sell

2077
02:09:52,065 –> 02:09:55,685
it. He’s gonna sell it. Well, with that, I’d

2078
02:09:55,685 –> 02:09:59,460
like to thank everybody for listening today to, the leadership lessons

2079
02:09:59,679 –> 02:10:03,460
from the Great Book Pad podcast. Almost flipped that at the end.

2080
02:10:03,679 –> 02:10:06,340
And, with that, well,

2081
02:10:07,226 –> 02:10:07,726
we’re

2082
02:10:10,987 –> 02:10:11,432
out.