I don't usually read Jezebel, but this is an interesting piece. My English teacher when I read To Kill A Mockingbird always maintained that Atticus was a genteel racist, and it seems she was right.
I don't feel qualified to argue with the article's author, and I haven't read Watchman (and haven't decided yet if I will), but couldn't you argue that Atticus is admirable exactly for the reasons the article is citing as flaws? A product of 'Southern genteel racism', he puts his life at risk for a cause he understands is all but lost from the outset. After all, Atticus understands the white people of Maycomb and at no point could you argue that he was acting under any illusion that the town would forgive him for arguing the defence of a black man accused of raping a white woman. I need to go back and read Mockingbird more carefully, but I'm sure the author is right - I'm sure there is evidence of racism in Atticus. But there is courage, and a sense of justice, and something that transcends racism as well. How, exactly, do you quantify the worth of a racist who stands alone between the mob and the jail?
I wonder if the film influenced how people see Atticus. Maybe book Atticus is supposed to be more racist than movie Atticus, and most people are remembering movie Atticus, not book Atticus.
In my case I don't remember the book well enough to remember most of it. I read* it more than half my lifetime ago in English class as a teenager, in a country that wasn't the US, without access to the dispersion of ideas (the 90s Internet was much less discoverable) we have today. I remember Scout in the early chapters far more than I remember Atticus because I too was broadly speaking a tomboy and thought of myself as smarter than my teachers. I identified with her. I imagine the whole "smarter than teacher" thing struck a lot of kids more than the big important message. However, I do still remember the jail scene and the gist of the closing arguments from Atticus. Around the same time, I saw A Time to Kill (I think at home on tv) and remember the closing arguments in that. And at some point, I think in history class, we also studied Mississippi Burning. These three things specifically stick in my mind when I think of race in the US^, and influence me even today. So perhaps the book did get lost to the movie version for some people, but as a non-US kid in the 90s, I think a lot of it went over my head. I think I'm going to go back and read it again.
* I'm pretty sure I didn't Cliffs Notes this one, but I can't remember for sure. I don't remember seeing the movie, we might not have.
^ I don't think we ever really got introduced to the other racisms that the US has, eg Hibernophobia (irish), Italophobia, anti-semitism, etc, but I did learn about these from TV http://strawburry17.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/maggie-simpson.gif