Inherit the wind? or Inherit the Myth?

By Aussiegirl

Don't miss the new post on Birdblog entitled "The Scopes Monkey Trial...Again". Tim Birdnow's brother, Dr. Brian Birdnow, tells us the real story of how it all happened. It's not the myth that has been promulgated by the press and the movie and play of that same name.

Birdblog: "Few events in American history have become as thoroughly propagandized as the celebrated 1925 criminal case of John Scopes v. Tennessee. In the popular imagination, spurred on by stage plays and movies such as 'Inherit The Wind' a brave band of free thinking schoolteachers, aided by an idealistic legal team faced down the forces of bigotry and ignorance in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of 1925. In this view of reality, Clarence Darrow demolished William Jennings Bryan in cross-examination and exposed Biblical theories of creation as scientific balderdash. The laws against teaching evolution were overturned. the 'creationists' slunk back under the rock whence they came, Jennings Bryan died, and the world lived happily ever! How do we know this is true? The popular culture tells us this, so it must be so!"