Gain Your Copy A Religious Orgy In Tennessee: A Reporters Account Of The Scopes Monkey Trial Written By H.L. Mencken Formatted As Paper Copy
is Mencken's complete reportage of the"Scopes Monkey Trial" in Tennessee, in which a teacher was tried for teaching the theory of evolution in a smalltown public school.
Mencken eloquently, methodically and brutally eviscerates the ignorant and intolerant fundamentalists most notably William Jennings Bryan who condemned Scopes, and science in general, Viewing the farcical nature of the Scopes Trial through Mencken's lens provides equal doses of hilarity and dismay, His unforgiving style and relentless hammering of the "mountebank" William Jennings Bryan brings a smile to the face of anyone opposed to the public dissemination of ignorance and willful stupidity.
Surprising at the selfcentered, arrogant reporting presented by H, L. Mencken in this book. He disparages "the other side" and, in particular, Williams Jennings Bryant, constantly, The book is a series of newspaper articles he wrote during the Scopes trial that challenged Darwinism and the concept of evolution in a fundamentalist culture.
I did learn a lot of new vocabulary though! Includes all the articles H, L. Mencken wrote during the Scopes Monkey Trial the basis for the play and movie Inherit the Wind, At the end of the book there's a transcript of Darrow's entire crossexamination of William Jennings Bryant, It's amazing to read, though not as intense as I expected, It's more amazing that the Creationism debate is still going on, . . Entertainingly spiteful.
“The meaning of religious freedom, I fear, is sometimes greatly misapprehended, It is taken to be a sort of immunity, not merely from governmental control but also from public opinionAny fool, once he is admitted to holy orders, becomes infallible.
Any halfwit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied to all the rest of us.
”
“Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights, He has a right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities as long as he pleases, provided only he does not try to inflict them upon other men by force.
He has a right to argue for them as eloquently as he can, in season and out of season, He has a right to teach them to his children, But certainly he has no right to be protected against the free criticism of those who do not hold them, He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred, He has no right to preach them without challenge, ”
While I was reading this book, I was wondering to myself, who is this generations H, L. Mencken
Someone with acerbic wit,
Someone fearless about calling out foolishness and superstition,
Someone who sees their purpose as exposing the lies of the powerful for the good of the country rather than protecting their own status and access to power.
Perhaps this person exists, If they do, we need more of them,
When Clarence Darrow eviscerated perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan on the witness stand near the close of the Scopes Evolution trial, many viewed it despite Scopes conviction as the death knell of creationism.
Mencken was not so sure, Present at the trial, Mencken talked to people from all walks of life in small town Dayton, Tennessee and found himself shocked by the superstitions and lack of basic education that informed their lives Bryan would state under examination from Darrow that he believed men were not mammals, to great cheers from the courtroom.
Mencken rightly surmised that people who believe in superstitions like that a man lived in the belly of a large fish would not be so easily dissuaded.
That they would in fact regroup and come back stronger,
That we are still discussing the teaching of creationism alongside evolution inis proof that Mencken was far more prescient than many gave him credit for.
I will add that Menckens writing is probably not for everyone, There is some casual racism and when he lays into someone, in this case Bryan, he is like a boxer who has knocked out his opponent but keeps pummeling him as he lies on the mat.
It is at times beyond simple criticism, it is savage,
Take this passage from his obituary of Bryan, who would die five days after the trial ended:
, “This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me, If the fellow was sincere, then so was P, T. Barnum. The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses, He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without any shame or dignity, What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition, the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes.
”
Or a more comparatively speaking gentle observation:
“The best verdict the most romantic editorial writer could dredge up, save in the eloquent South, was to the general effect that his imbecilities were excused by his earnestness”
Yikes.
If people thought some were too rough on Jerry Falwell when he died, those same folks should thank their lucky that Mencken wasnt around to give his opinion.
All that said, he was a brilliant at often humorous writer who didnt suffer fools gladly, America was lucky to have him and sorely needs someone like him now, This collection of articles by Mencken just skewers
the simpleminded Appalachians ofTennessee and their de facto leader, William Jennings Bryan, He paints them as a people who are proud of their ignorance and work hard at keeping any facts or knowledge from upsetting their faith in mythology it is the exact opposite of the scientific method that will come up with an idea based on present facts but change if new ones are discovered.
In which world would you rather live " Once he had one leg in the White House and the nation trembled under his roars, Now he is a tinpot pope in the CocaCola belt and a brother to the forlorn pastors who belabor halfwits in galvanized iron tabernacles behind the railroad yards.
His own speech was a grotesque performance and downright touching in its imbecility, Its climax came when he launched into a furious denunciation of the doctrine that man is a mammal, It seemed a sheer impossibility that any literate man should stand up in public and discharge any such nonsense, Yet the poor old fellow did it, Darrow stared incredulous. Malone sat with his mouth wide open, Hays indulged himself one of his sardonic chuckles, Stewart and Bryan fils looked extremely uneasy, but the old mountebank ranted on, To call a man a mammal, it appeared, was to flout the revelation of God, The certain effect of the doctrine would be to destroy morality and promote infidelity, The defense let it pass, The lily needed no gilding, " Super satisfying to read, though fairly one dimensional because most of the cast of characters are pretty much lost in time, Glad they included a transcript of the final exchange between Bryan and Darrow, . . You can really see how ugly things got in the courtroom, That, and Menken's hilarious depiction of the fundamentalists make this the best book i read all year, Mencken's vitriol is a wonderful departure from the current attempts at "objective journalism" in today's media, He's a pure bastard in all the right ways, turning himself into part of the struggle whether or not it's completely accurate and his opposition into empty demagogues whether or not it's completely warranted.
Without Mencken and the Scopes trial, we wouldn't have Hunter S, Thompson or Warren Ellis. The first work of Mencken I've read, and certainly not the last, His command of the English language and his dripping contempt for stupidity and bullshit were an absolute pleasure to read, Mencken brings an old school style of reporting, one quite free with subjective assertions and biased judgments, but entertaining and not without its charm, Hes right about the science but that is not an argument he is making because the science is a fact to him and arguing for its rightness would be a waste of effort.
No, hes on the attack against Fundamentalists, country yokels to him who have every right to their ignorance but shouldnt be allowed to rally behind mountebanks like William Jennings Bryan to enforce their superstition and ignorance on others.
As entertaining as his prose style is, a little of this goes along way, If he is right about both science and the law, his snobbish intolerance is undermining, A brilliant observation he makes about Bryan which could easily be applied to Rush Limbaugh and, say, Sarah Palin, and others who speak to an audience of “true Americans” that is narrow and sectarian and quickly boils with dismissive invective that sometimes inspires, or in Limbaughs case, fairly spits hatred, “There was far too much hatred in him for him to be persuasive,” doubles back on Mencken, albeit a little differently.
There is far too much condescension in him for him to be as persuasive as his case warrants, There is no respect for his opponents so this caustic serenading to the choir attempts no persuasion,
The book includes some of his posttrial writings on Bryans sudden demise in the trial's wake, In this case, Menckens writing goes beyond condescension and is brutal in its scorn of the dead man and his career, with no tempering courtesy or compassion toward the newly dead.
It also includes the entire transcript of Clarence Darrows examination of Bryan, the prosecuting lawyer who Darrow called as a witness and examined brilliantly, aided by Bryans eagerness to preen his philistine views before a courtroom loaded with two audiences, one of which local supporters in numbers as great as the town of Dayton, Tennessee, could hold he was in tune with and the other the larger world audience, present and future of whom he seemed totally unaware.
This one is for cultural historians and media buffs, "The native American Voltaire, the enemy of all puritans, the heretic in the Sunday school, the oneman demolition crew of the genteel tradition, " Alistair Cooke on H. L. Mencken
Fiercely intelligent, scathingly honest, and hysterically funny, H, L. Menckens coverage of the Scopes Monkey Trial so galvanized the nation that it eventually inspired a Broadway play and the classic Hollywood movie Inherit the Wind.
Menckens nononsense sensibility is still exciting: his perceptive rendering of the courtroom drama his piercing portrayals of key figures Scopes, Clarence Darrow, and William Jennings Bryan his ferocious take on the fundamentalist culture surrounding it allincluding a raucous midnight trip into the woods to witness a secret “holy roller” service.
Shockingly, these reports have never been gathered together into a book of their ownuntil now,
A Religious Orgy In Tennessee includes all of Menckens reports for The Baltimore Sun, The Nation, and The American Mercury.
It even includes his coverage of Bryans death just days after the trialan obituary so withering Mencken was forced by his editors to rewrite it, angering him and leading him to rewrite it yet again in a third version even less forgiving than the first.
All three versions are included, as is a complete transcript of the trials most legendary exchange: Darrows blistering crossexamination of Bryan,
With the rise of “intelligent design,” H, L. Menckens work has never seemed more unnervingly timelyor timeless, If Jon Stewart was a reporter covering the Scopes Monkey Trail, he might have written this series of articles calling out powerful people on their bullshit and mobs on their ignorance.
This was a bit of a surprise, I'd wanted to read some H L Mencken for some time, but it is not something that readily crosses one's path apart from references by other journalists.
This is not a cheap paperback so I didn't rush into buying it, but then I did, I was expecting a report on the infamous Scopes trial and that is what it is, What surprised me, was that this reporting fromcould just as easily have been written today, How little the USA has changed in almostyears, Faith, fundamental Christianity continues to dominate, one party wants to force its beliefs over another, facts and evidence, scientific or otherwise, are irrelevant or just simply wrong, not by counterproof, but counter belief.
William Jennings Bryan was onetime presidential candidate very similar to his modern counterpart, but certainly more learned, in a biblical way, and not someone who impressed Mencken, but yet carried the day in court to ban the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools in favour of a literal reading of the Bible.
Mencken's penultimate sentence in his reports on the trial, "It may help, indeed, to break up the democratic delusion, now already showing weakness, and so hasten its own end.
" Little has changed. The Sage of Baltimore completely evicerates the populist/progressive imbecile William Jennings Bryan, former Secretary of State, threetime Democratic Presidential candidate and bimetallist of "Cross of Gold speech" fame, while covering the socalled Scopes monkey trial.
One particularly searing example:
"Bryan was a vulgar and common man, a cad undiluted, He was ignorant, bigoted, selfseeking, blatant and dishonest, His career brought him into contact with the first men of his time he preferred the company of rustic ignoramuses, It was hard to believe, watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state.
He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things.
He was a peasant come home to the dungpile, Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not"
If Mencken's brutalizing of Bryan wasn't enough, defense attorney Clarence Darrow's questioning of Bryan is also included in full.
Darrow systematically picks Bryan apart, putting his ignorance of science, anthropolgy and the Bible itself on full display, Being that the trial took place inin small town Tennessee, however, Scopes lost anyway, and Bryan died five days after the trial ended before he could do any more damage to the world.
Despite what the tag says, I didn't finish this book, Mencken seems to be a little in the tone of what Mark Twain once said about Wagner: he has some great moments, but horrible quarters of an hour.
When vitriolic attacks against the pious and ignorant exhaust even me, then you know that something's going on, The religious factions who backed the antiDarwin law that inspired the Scopes trial certainly represent the worst in the American character, But so too do Mencken's tirades, which are often laden with classist bigotry and contempt for the people themselves, We shouldn't be afraid to call people fools when they are indeed fools, but what manifests in this book is more akin to an intranational xenophobia.
The one thing that is really fascinating about this collection though, is the appendix, which reproduces the transcript of Clarence Darrow's famous questioning of his opposing counsel, William Jennings Bryan.
Bryan's responses are masterpieces of obfuscation, and Darrow's questioning is likewise masterful in its relentless pursuit, hedging Bryan into displaying either his ignorance or his lack of intellectual curiosity as a result of slavish devotion to the literal truth of the Bible.
There is perhaps no more elegant demonstration of fundamentalism as a dead end for society and for thought, The transcript can also be found on the website of the sitelinkUniversity of MissouriKansas City, as well as other places, Below is an example:
QMr, Bryan, do you believe that the first woman was Eve.
AYes,
QDo you believe she was literally made out of Adams's rib
AI do,
QDid you ever discover where Cain got his wife
ANo, sir I leave the agnostics to hunt for her,
QYou have never found out
AI have never tried to find
QYou have never tried to find
ANo,
QThe Bible says he got one, doesn't it Were there other people on the earth at that time
AI cannot say,
QYou cannot say. Did that ever enter your consideration
ANever bothered me,
QThere were no others recorded, but Cain got a wife,
AThat is what the Bible says,
QWhere she came from you do not know, All right. Does the statement, "The morning and the evening were the first day," and "The morning and the evening were the second day," mean anything to you
A I do not think it necessarily means a twentyfourhour day.
QYou do not
ANo,
QWhat do you consider it to be
AI have not attempted to explain it, If you will take the second chapterlet me have the book, Examining Bible. The fourth verse of the second chapter says: "These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," the word "day" there in the very next chapter is used to describe a period.
I do not see that there is any necessity for construing the words, "the evening and the morning," as meaning necessarily a twentyfourhour day, "in the day when the Lord made the heaven and the earth.
"