Back in 1955 there was a movie called Night of the Hunter. It was about a duplicitous preacher/serial killer who preyed on widows and killed them. It was based on the book by Davis Grubb, which was based on a real killer. That character’s and killer’s name was Harry Powell.
The movie was a film noir classic, and through extensive use of shadows and expressionism created a sense of dread and fear that was like no other in cinema to that date.
Reverend Harry Powell talked a good game as a preacher, using religion to win the trust in depression-era West Virginia. He had “LOVE” and “HATE” tattooed on each hand to demonstrate the duality of good and evil. His his preferred weapon was a switchblade.
Flash forward to today, and in Alabama you have Roy Moore running for Senate. A fundamentalist Christian, he is openly racist, homophobic (he wants sodomy to be a felony again,) and a Christian Dominionist who wants the US to follow biblical law, not the constitution. He gained fame by fighting to keep a statue of the 10 commandments on the courthouse grounds.
It is coming out that his piety is just an act: he is a pedophile who had sex with minors. Several women have come forward accusing him of inappropriate acts, one of them claims he had sex with her when she was 14. This is called statutory rape.
Yet this man claims he is a paragon of virtue. What kind of virtuous man is a sexual predator who preys on children?
His supporters are either denying it, or excusing it by citing the bible — saying Joseph was in his 30s when he married a teenage Mary.
On the other side you have Democrat Doug Jones who also resembles a character from Southern Gothic lore, only a far more redeemable one — Atticus Finch.
Atticus Finch should need no introduction: he was the hero of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. A Southern lawyer who defended a black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman. This tale also took place during the depression but closer to the election in Alabama.
“A bible in the hand of one is worse than a whisky bottle in (another)” is one of the timeless quotes from this book that still speaks to us today.
Like Atticus, Doug Jones is an American hero. Jones prosecuted Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry, two members of the Ku Klux Klan, for their roles in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. Unlike Finch, Jones won the case and both were convicted. This is a man who has always stood up for what is right, despite public opinion.
When one sees Jones speak, through the right like you might almost mistake him for Gregory Peck, who played Atticus in the 1962 film. The cadence is there, and the spirit of justice is definitely there. You see a good man, fighting for justice, against an insurmountable task: running as a Democrat in 2016’s Alabama.
His words give you hope that we might just win — that good might just prevail against evil. This is hope in a hopeless world, the kind of salve a leper might have felt at the feet of Jesus Christ.
So we’re left at what should be a very easy decision for Alabamans: do you choose good or evil?
Do you choose the pedophile with a bible, or the man who has fought the good fight against evil?
Make the right choice Alabama.
