Americans’ perceptions of the original Scopes trial in Dayton, Tenn., don’t necessarily reflect reality, this MSNBC article points out. But those perceptions survived in the public arena for 80 years. The historical details didn’t.
Members of the Kansas State Board of Education majority should have taken that into account before launching their own version of the Scopes trial this spring.
After all, the publicity from the original trial — which unfairly portrayed the local residents as backward hicks — “ended up besmirching the name of Dayton, Tenn., and making it a synonym for bigotry and ignorance for the rest of the century,” said Jeffrey P. Moran, an associate professor of history at the University of Kansas and author of the 2002 book “The Scopes Trial: A Brief History with Documents.”
The caricatures of Kansans that are showing up around the nation could, unfortunately, have the same effect here.
Posted by Melissa Cooley
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24 Comments
I have friends all over the country and almost without exception every time we talk I hear another story of someone they know making a negative Kansas comment about evolution and creation “science.” They send me links to articles from their local papers and anything else they can just to get a good laugh (I’ve got warped friends, what can I say). One even told me he does not feel so bad living in Arkansas anymore.
“Could have the same effect?” They DID HAVE the same effect.
That’s why I had to drop my subscription to the Eagle. Day after day, month after month, the flat earthers got their idiotic opinions aired in a public forum . . . have so many trees ever given their lives for such a specious argument?
If the Eagle wants to re-hash an issue that was pretty much settled in 1920, it has every right to do so. If it wants to give people that don’t know the difference between a zygote and a blastocyte the chance to spin their wacky psuedo-science to a credulous readership, it certainly can.
But I no longer am paying for it.
So when I see a post-script like this one about the big evolution flap being “bad PR,” I want to hit myself over the head to stop the dizzying sense of hypocrisy.
Who fueled this controversy more than The Eagle itself?
I have this funny feeling that life will go on as normal in Kansas after all of this.
Talk about blowing something way out of proportion.
Do you honestly think that people in this county have that much time to actually care about what the Kansas BOE is doing?
Nathan, it’s not about careing, it’s about laughing. You get laughed at a lot. As anon says, everybody has a Kansas joke. I could tell you a few myself.
Well, Nathan, you’ll find out what a laughingstock Kansas is when you leave the state . . . which aren’t you going to be doing soon since you said you signed up for the Marines or something.
When do you deploy, btw?
I hate to say it but Nathan could be correct. The vast majority of people don’t pay much attention to what is going on around them, but that is exactly why I applaud the Eagle for keeping the BOE in the lime light. People like Connie Morris with their attitude that public office is a forum for their hate and a feeding trough for their personal use need to be in headlines in order to get the voters motivated to make a change for the better.
No, I meant that no one will care.
It has been said that this is going to hurt Kansas, business will not come, people will make fun of us forever…etc…etc…
We might be the brunt of a few jokes, but that will be all.
I meant that no one will care after they have their few laughs.
Nathan–
Read this post very carefully.
You said that you had “signed up” for armed service.
When do you actually go to serve?
What hate is it that Connie Morris is using her office as a forum for?
Kansas has always been a laughing stock among liberal, elitist intellectualizers. You will never change Kansas any more than anybody will change Ed F.
If you care so much about your poor, damaged image, just go someplace like France or Lake Woebegone, where the enlightened elite feed sumptuously at the public trough and only the best of things happen?
“People like Connie Morris with their attitude that public office is a forum for their hate and a feeding trough for their personal use need to be in headlines in order to get the voters motivated to make a change for the better.”
I’ll ask the question as well, what “hate” are you refering to?
Kathy, it has nothing to do with liberals or conservatives, believe me. Kansas gets laughed at. Always has (Dorothy, Toto), and probably always will. There’s an image problem that has nothing initally to do with politics, but your politics sure doesn’t help the situation. And by the way, what you get laughed at for now never comes from liberals….It’s always something the conservatives are doing; Phil Kline, the BOE, ad nauseum.
Gracious, hammer. Get a clue. Of course, since the liberal media gets to define what’s a laughing stock, all you liberals fall in line and laugh. When conservatives try it,they get whacked with the PC stick.
Naturally, the PC stick only works one way. Families, Christians, conservative blacks, and security-minded democrats are expected to shut up and let the superior elitists laugh at them.
Talk about censorship!
Kathy, is Rush part of the “Liberal media”? How about the New York Post? Isn’t Fox news in the top of the ratings? You feel censored?
Kathy–I’m a Christian. Don’t lecture me about Christianity, okay? I go to church every Sunday so I really don’t care to hear about how Christians are some kind of “victims” in the most Christian country in the world.
Conservatives control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court (look who stopped the Florida re-count so Bush could “win”) and the White House. How you can spin that into victimization by the “liberal elite” shows little grasp of reality . . .
“Conservatives are supposed to shut up.” ARE YOU KIDDING ME! Three hours of Rush Limbaugh every day, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy, that Savage guy, Fox news . . . the media is chockablock with conservatives bloviating against the “liberals.”
Unbelievable . . .
When the Bible says, “I am the Good Shepherd” do you think that means that you are a sheep and you’re covered in wool?
No, you see it as a metaphor. Same way with Genesis.
Darwin was the son of an Anglican priest and he studied to be a priest himself. He and millions of other Christians saw then and see now no conflict between evolution and the Genesis creation story.
The essence of the creation story is true, just like the essence of the Good Shepherd image is true.
The arrogance of the religious fundamentalists in claiming that they know the ineffable mind of God never ceases to astonish me. It’s the “gnostic” heresy . . .
Mistertwister,
Why are you as a Christian attacking my service as a Marine?
What have I done to make you do this to me?
Mistertwister,
Since you don’t believe in creation, how did man fall to sin?
Twister, in this blog you say you go to church every week. In another blog you say you don’t go every week. Changing “facts” to suit your argument makes you less than credible.
Twister, Looks like they’re ganging up on you.
Conservatives, you spout religion like you have a mainline from God. You think that repeating Bible verse will get you into heaven. But Christ says that the way to His Father is through Him.As a good friend said in these pages reicently:
The Bible isn’t what YOU say it is. It isn’t what I say it is. It’s what GOD says it is.So which of you claims to know the mind of God? Which of you is so pure as to defame Twister’s church attendance? I don’t think another person’s church attendance is any of your business. Who do you precieve yourself to be? God’s avenging angel?
Twister, I agree with you…”The arrogance of the religious fundamentalists in claiming that they know the ineffable mind of God never ceases to astonish me. It’s the “gnostic” heresy . . . ”
Well put.
Nathan, I most certainly DO believe in creation. I believe that we were created by God just as it says in Genesis. One process God could use is evolution. Since God is omnipotent, he could evolve all life from matter if he wanted to, couldn’t he.
“God does not play dice with the universe.” Einstein
BTW, the scientific “big bang” theory of the creation of the universe is essentially the same as the Genesis story.
Simon–I don’t go to church every Sunday. But sometimes I slide over the qualifiers in my haste to post a point. I go most Sundays.