Scopes’ Scoops, and Yankee Legal Brain Trusts

Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan

Gregg Jarrett like all of the “journalists” on Fox Cable writes a book and, apparently, as part of remuneration, can market the book through the cable broadcast (marketing is the backbone of selling books). In this case, he has written something called The Trial of the Century.

This version of such a thing which apparently (in Jarrett’s mind) rises above the Trials of Nuremberg, or of the Rosenbergs, or even O.J.'s loosely extra-legal extravaganza-“dream-team" brouhaha—which is really the bottom line on the law today—showmanship, is, of course, the Scopes “Monkey” Trial. 

That is John Scopes, the Tennessee teacher in 1925  who was tried for violating a Tennessee law named the Butler Act, which was really a promotion for the ACLU, Clarence Darrow (he who held no law degree), and a show for the blowhards of the Yankee North who of course with their Puritanical self-love are the nation’s shining-light-happy-city-on-a-hill, or some such Yankee bile spewed by the flaggers of truth; like their (Yankee) monstrous tales and lies of the old Southern Confederacy and its flags of St. Andrew. 

But: The truth in the Butler Act:  

“Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals, and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals. (my emphasis).” 

The law did not prevent the teaching that there was, in fact, a conception (there was no theory proper—not by the scientific method, in any event)*devised by Charles Darwin called Evolution and he expounded at length via subsequent thoughts and writings on the subject. Darwin’s own literature was in the schools and was not disallowed. The law BANNED nothing. 

Tucker Carlson was banned. Charlie Darwin was not. Go figure, Fox! 

The law simply said that Darwin’s theory could not simply deny, as a fact of science, on Monday what Sunday School teachers had taught on Sunday.  

Jarrett, like most of the wisdom wannabee wags at Fox Inc., has offered the usual decades-old silliness of (I suppose his assumption is of a national government with God-given rights assigned by Himself through the Northern “Civil War” national priest concept) we the people of Tennessee were crucifying the First Amendment.  Jarrett doesn’t seem to bother (haven’t read the book—have only heard him describe contents several times) with the First Amendment’s inclusion of religion i.e. the Monday judges can eradicate the Sunday blather, so to speak. But Sunday school teachers on Monday must go to hell (sorry, couldn’t resist reading judges’ minds). 

Besides marketing means selling books not defending them.  

As to the ACLU and/or Clarence Darrow? If such is your taste in intelligent thought, then it begs the question regarding intelligent thought.     

Each time Jarrett appears on Fox he has his book in hand. And carrying his traditional media-sissy and sad drooping facial lines, he declares some savior, like agnostic Darrow, has saved us from hell or high water and his book proves it. 

Perhaps. But probably not. A better text on the subject as a single example would be Edward Larson’s Summer for the Gods (Pulitzer Prize, 1998). This I did read. 

Darrow had no law degree but read for the law; something acceptable at the time, and possibly more useful than today’s law schools which like most schools have become a clown show for pretend academicians and their pretend students. Socrates and his method rot in the earth. 

Even Lincoln followed this method (reading for the law) and while he was tagged with the misnomer, “Honest” he did acquire a modicum of shrewdness that serves him well in politics, even if he did spill buckets of American blood and bare publicly lie after lie for a cause he knew was a lie. But, like Darrow, he could find the courthouse and “promote” rather than persuade. Bottom line: The agnostic Lincoln made money, gained office, and spilled others' blood. 

This is the same place today’s media comes in. It is the same position held in abeyance to the virtually lawless and Godless. Uneducated rubes who live by the cliché and historical histrionics. 

And they are useful scribblers only to modernity and its decadent social order (or disorder). They can, in fact, read and write. They just have few ideas and less interest in what they write. 

Once schools carried the message that “God is the law.” Today, the schools carry the message that “The Law is God.” 

*The scientific method has five basic steps, plus one feedback step: 

1. Make an observation. 
2. Ask a question. 
3. Form a hypothesis or testable explanation. 
4. Make a prediction based on the hypothesis. 
5. Test the prediction. 
6. Iterate: use the results to make new hypotheses or predictions. 

Numbers 4 and 5 have never survived Darwin’s theories.  ​