Growing up as a young boy my father was of the Mad Men generation; he viewed his principle duties to our family as providing us with all the fruits his labor as an attorney could bestow, and being a protector and intimate partner to my mother. Standard stuff for his peer group. Spending off hours with his first born was not a priority for him. My brother John – two years my junior – and I enjoyed my father’s attention far less often than we would have liked, except when he was doling out discipline, which comprised a measurable portion of our dad-time allowance. Years later my youngest brother Alex would benefit from my dad’s post 60s enlightenment about “quality” time and perhaps some shame he felt for ignoring John and I, but we were beggars and couldn’t afford to be choosers.
One weekend night when I was perhaps 8 or 9 years old, my mother went out with an old friend visiting from out of town. Aside from the glee of getting a ten spot to run over and pick up some KFC for our dinner, the best part of the evening to me would be sitting on the couch with my dad as he attended to his Hamms (plural) and watched television. I didn’t much care what was on, hanging with him was enough. As it happened, that night I sat down licking my grease-stained fingers just in time for the start of To Kill A Mockingbird. When I asked my father what it was about, he mentioned something about kids growing up in the south, and upon reflection, grew more enthusiastic about me watching it with him. You’ll like this, he said with sincerity before ordering me to get some napkins for my hands!
I will always remember the experience of that night’s showing. Please understand, I was just a young boy with no idea or appreciation of any subtext that movie classic offered. To me it was just a story I was riveted by. Sure, Dr. King had been shot, and I got the broad strokes of what prejudice was, but institutional racism and injustice were not things I had any ideas about. And so I sat glued to the set, overwhelming my father with questions during the way too many commercial breaks. “Billy, just watch the movie!” still rings in my ears decades later.
I was horrified when they came to lynch Tom Robinson. “He’s supposed to get a trial, right,” I beseeched my dad. And I cheered on Atticus Finch as he laid waste to the prosecution’s case, finally getting Tom’s accuser to break down and replace details of the supposed attack with nonsensical gibberish that merely confirmed she was lying. When Atticus finished his closing argument I had a new hero to go along with Ernie Banks! But nothing prepared me for the verdict; it devastated me, made no sense at all!
Whether my father embraced the moment we shared that night, appreciated the enlightenment I received, I’ll never know. Perhaps he was heartened and proud seeing me agonize about racism’s cruel realities. Maybe he was just as glad to get me off to bed so he could pop open another brew… whatever. I do know that my education about the chasm between sanitized versions of America my elementary schooling provided and our actual civic deficiencies began then and there. Somehow I had to reconcile both sides of the equation: the trial of Tom Robinson I watched with the ridiculous conclusions of the jurors who found him guilty. Tough sledding for a wee lad.
Listening to Adam Schiff and company dutifully carry out the thankless work of presenting, not only an airtight case for impeachment against Donald Trump this week, but the historical landscape for assessing how unprecedented his actions were, memories of my first viewing of the Hollywood classic came rushing back. Just as Gregory Peck brought life to my still nascent sense of justice more than 50 years earlier, Schiff’s steadfast recitation of the facts reinforces a clear understanding of right and wrong, validating how overtly corrupt Trump and his toadies have acted throughout this entire affair. It’s all there for anyone to see and hear; there is nothing to the imagination. To deny its specifics is to embrace the essence of corruption they embody.
A nine-year old boy, unsullied by the relentlessly false counter narrative Fox/AM continuously recites, and the full GOP Senate caucus shamelessly embraces, would come to the same emphatic conclusions I reached after Atticus’ closing argument 50 years ago. A naïf not yet coarsened by MAGA’s relentless gaslighting of truth would surely be shocked by the case Schiff’s team has laid out, appalled a President could pursue such a scheme, and then disdainfully refuse to cooperate in the subsequent investigation of his malfeasance. Surely, as I was a half century ago, the youngster would be rapt by Schiff’s final entreaty to the Senate that:
“Here right matters. … If right doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the Constitution is…..It doesn’t matter how brilliant the Framers were. It doesn’t matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn’t matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost.”
In his innocence the kid could be certain of the verdict jurors would reach. After all, they’re Senators who swore an oath, right? They’d have to be criminals engaged in a blatant cover up to sit through such an hours-long litany and let the scoundrel off the hook.
Sadly, we adults, like my father decades past, can only look with knowing resignation at a child’s reasonable naïveté, aware of the incomprehensible disappointment coming his way. After all, we know this GOP all too well. Rand Paul would have thrown spit balls Schiff’s way if not limited by decorum. Marsha Blackburn openly flaunted the rules and left the chamber to grant an interview for MAGA consumption. Later, she tweeted scurrilous libel against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a Purple Heart recipient, whose high crime to Trumpie sycophants consisted of following the law and obeying a Congressional subpoena. The talk track none will veer from is they’ve heard nothing new, even as every single one votes not to allow additional witnesses and documentation. Circular obstruction.
Whatever passions and outrage Schiff could incite from those watching the proceedings on television, a decisive bloc of jurors are merely bored and indifferent, like children at church. After all, as most made clear before the trial began., their minds are made up. House manager Hakeem Jefferies was spot on today when he said with a hint of resignation in his voice, if we can’t hold Trump accountable for this sorry episode, “God help us all.” Tragically, his plea fell on way too many deaf ears. Tom Robinson wouldn’t have stood a chance with this bunch. BC