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While I believe deliberate falsehoods should be punished I just like Paraphrasing a Journalist at the Scopes Monkey Trial who was covering the Trial about why he was typing his story without even waiting to see what happened that day (Paraphrase only), "I know what my Publisher wants me to write".
This cause problems on people's understanding of the Scopes Monkey Trial, the Press had been attacking William Jennings Bryan for 30 years by the time of the Trial. The reason for this is Bryan tended to support the little guy, he opposed big Business, he wanted the Government to help people in need etc. The Republicans who owned the papers opposed all of this, and never lost an opportunity to attack Bryan.
Thus Bryan had been and even into the 1930s subject to all types of attacks. What Bryan did stand for had been forgotten by the 1950s but the attacks were remembered. Thus Bryan, as portrayed by his enemies (Which did NOT include the ACLU and in many aspects Darrow) became the model of Brady in the play "Inherit the Wind". Furthermore the play distorted the facts of the Scopes case to make a better piece against McCarthyism. What Bryan did and did not do during the Scopes trial was forgotten for the slander against him had been remembered and the truth forgotten. The GOP has practiced this for over 100 years and it works just compared your perception of William Jennings Bryan and the Monkey trail with his ending comments to the court on the trial:
“I don’t know that there is any special reason why I should add to what has been said, and yet the subject has been presented from so many viewpoints that I hope the Court will pardon me if I mention a viewpoint that has not been referred to.....
“Causes stir the world, and this cause has stirred the world. It is because it goes deep. It is because it extends wide and because it reaches into the future beyond the power of man to see. Here has been fought out a little case of little consequence as a case, but the world is interested because it raises an issue, and that issue will some day be settled right, whether it is settled on our side or the other side. It is going to be settled right. There can be no settlement of a great cause without discussion, and people will not discuss a cause until their attention is drawn to it, and the value of this trial is not in any incident of the trial, it is not because of anybody who is attached to it, either in any official way or as counsel on either side.
“Human beings are mighty small, your Honor. We are apt to minify the personal element and we sometimes become inflated with our importance, but the world little cares for man as an individual. He is born, he works, he dies, but causes go on forever, and we who have participated in this case may congratulate ourselves that we have attached ourselves to a mighty issue.
“Now, if I were to attempt to define that issue I might find objection from the other side. Their definition of the issue might not be as mine is, and therefore, I will not take advantage of the privilege the Court gives me this morning to make a statement that might be controversial, and nothing that I would say would determine it.
“I have no power to define this issue finally and authoritatively. None of the counsel on our side has this power, and none of the counsel on the other side has this power. Even this honorable Court has no such power. The people will determine this issue. They will take sides upon this issue, they will state the questions involved in this issue, they will examine the information — not so much that which has been brought out here, but this case will stimulate investigation and investigation will bring out information, and the facts will be known, and upon the facts as ascertained the decision will be rendered, and I think my friends and your Honor, that if we are actuated by the spirit that should actuate every one of us, no matter what our views may be, we ought not only desire but pray that that which is right will prevail, whether it be our way or somebody else’s.”
That is from the man who is accused by Inherit the Wind of trying to destroy debate, when in fact he is calling for Debate. That is the biggest slander ever made against a politician a complete flipping of his position. Only the GOP spin machine can do that and even then it took over 25 years, The Great Depression, WWII and the start of the Cold War. Such slander has to be addressed or the Democrats will end up like Bryan i.e. being defined by the GOP in way to make Americans hate him do to the attacks against him.
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