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In This Issue

• Life After Graduation? You're Kidding!
• Touched By Tom Brokaw
• Mr. McLaughlin's Culturally Confusing Neighborhood
• Livejournal: Hardcore Gateway(TM) Drug
• Columbia Decompiled
• Looking Back At Evolutionary Monkey Business
• How Right You Are!
• The Fed Kidz Page
• Veganism Sucks
• iPod Shuffle Advisory
• The Great Debate: Tune In or Pass Out?
• Weapons of Ass Destruction
• Letters to the Feditor
• THEY WATCH
• The Blue And White

M. Theadore Holden

Bullseye! Hit Mr. Jennings Bryan in the nose with your feces and win a plushie chimp.

As part of The Fed's series on American jurisprudence, we bring you the following excerpts from the courtroom transcripts of 1925's Scopes Monkey Trial. The trial pitted prosecutor William Jennings Bryan against famed defense lawyer Clarence Darrow. Substitute science teacher John Scopes' monkey allegedly took advantage of Scopes' trip to the bathroom by locking the classroom door from the inside and teaching evolution to the class.  He was subsequently charged with teaching evolution in violation of state law.  The following is Bryan's cross-examination of the monkey.

WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN: Can you describe for the court your actions when Mr. Scopes left the classroom on the morning of the 17th?
THE SCOPES MONKEY: When John left the room, I went to the front of the class and continued the lesson that he and I had planned.
WJB: Is it not true that you attempted to impart to a roomful of defenseless children a Godless doctrine of treachery and heresy?
TSM: I lectured on the evolution of man over a period of millions of years into a derivative species whose branch juts out from that of the modern ape.
WJB: Sir, you yourself are a simian, no?
TSM: Yes, I am: a capuchin, more specifically.
WJB: Then how can you justify the wild, red-assed conflict of interest inherent in your commandeering the attention of two-dozen of this fine State's wide-eyed progeny?
TSM: What do you intend to say?
WJB: Sir, you are a monkey. Don't you find it suspicious that a monkey should claim to know that the entire race of humans is descended from his race of untamed brutes?
TSM: It is true that I am a monkey, but I taught those kids what I know. This is the cutting edge of monkey scholarship, and I'll be damned if I let this law keep me from fulfilling my position as a science teacher.
WJB: Where were you born, sir?
TSM: I came of age on a farm in the Congo.
WJB: So here we have a Tennessee schoolroom seized by this Congolese ape presuming to tell a different species about its own origins and-
TSM: I'm a monkey!  Frankly, I'm not sure how or why I was even hired as an educator, but the fact is that I was, and I intend to make the most of it. I know monkey business, and that is what I will teach.
WJB: No further questions.

The trial's climax came when defense attorney Clarence Darrow called prosecutor and anti-evolutionist William Jennings Bryan to the stand.

CLARENCE DARROW: Mr. Bryan, you are a Biblical scholar, yes?
WJB: Yes, I have spent many years studying the Bible.
CD: And you take literally the tales of the Bible, the story of Jonah being swallowed whole by a whale, et cetera?
WJB: I read some literally and others more abstractly, but denying their validity as you do is at the very least a calamitous misuse of public funds.
CD: All that I aim to deny, sir, is this State's contention that a qualified teaching monkey may not propagate his species' thoughts on the origins of man.
WJB: To a class full of defenseless children, certainly not!
CD: I had hoped, Mr. Bryan, that you would remain rational through this trial.
WJB: You start with evolution, and perhaps later in the day, your client could invite his comrades into the school to demonstrate the finer points of red-assed simian group fornication. Yes, I'm sure the sight of half a dozen phalli battering the feminine parts of an apish whore would also benefit this State's juveniles.
CD: My client's sexual practices are not the issue. The Bible states that God stopped the Sun in the sky at Joshua's request. Do you believe that the Sun revolves around the Earth?
WJB: No, I believe the Earth revolves around the Sun.
CD: How do you reconcile that belief with your attempt to bind and gag my client?
WJB: Your client is a monkey!
CD: My client is a teacher licensed by the State of Tennessee!
WJB: Your client lacks the wherewithal to tie his own shoes, let alone teach science!
[Scopes' monkey throws feces at the witness].
WJB: My God!  Did you see-
CD: Please repeat what you just said, Mr. Bryan.
WJB: That Congolese beast threw his stool at me!
CD: No, before that.
WJB: The monkey is an idiot.
CD: Why?
WJB: Clearly a creature dumb enough to throw his own feces lacks the mental development, enjoyed by humans across the ages, to teach a class of-damn.

Thus Clarence Darrow forced his adversary into a stunning admission that seemingly validated the doctrine of evolution. The courtroom gasped as Bryan let slip his Darwinian assessment of the "red-assed" target of his ire. John Scopes' monkey was nonetheless convicted, setting the stage for the animal-teacher trials of the 20th century.