Inherit the Wind...

Hurrah!  As we pass through London in a few weeks, we’ve snagged a couple of tickets to see Kevin Spacey in the new Old Vic production of “Inherit the Wind the play about the so-called “Monkey Trial of 1925.

I played Meeker in an American Community Theatre production of this play here in Hong Kong in 1995.

It’s one of the most popular American plays of all time, first performed on 10 January 1950, then a 1960 movie with Spencer Tracy, and a 1999 TV version.

As I get this booked, I learn that Geert Wilders is to stand trial for "hate crimes" in the Netherlands on the same day, 10 January 2010.  The “crime” of this awful, racist, right-wing Islamophobic Dutch Parliamentarian?  To link Islam with violence.  Actually, he didn’t do the linking; the Islamists he shows blowing things up make the linkage, but who cares?  He reports the bad stuff done by others, so he must be a baddie.  He’s on trial for racism and hate mongering.  It seems he’s been thoroughly horrid to Muslims.  He reports on the crimes they commit in the name of their religion –  how dare he?  Actually, I’m pretty offended by Wilders myself; I’m offended by his bouffant hair style.  And he’s so damn white; he must be a racist.

The two cases – the Scopes monkey trial and the Wilders muselman trial –  are similar, though.  Both are about religious fundamentalism and both are about free speech (the threat thereto).   Playwrights Lawrence and Lee say of the issues raised in Inherit: "It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.”

How right they were!  It is tomorrow; and yet we move to a yesterday.  Sixty years later we look as if we shall again “inherit the wind” of repression, the baleful outcome possible in this Wilders trial, the battle of fundamentalists vs free thinkers, of real hate vs the "crime" of reporting it.

See Spencer Tracy below in the 1960 production, esp 2:00 minutes on.  "Fanaticism and ignorance are forever busy and need feeding...”