SOURCE: "H. L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow: A Divine Alliance," in Menckeniana, No. 118, Summer, 1991, pp. 1-7.

In the following essay, Jezioro discusses the connection of Darrow and H. L. Mencken during the Scopes trial

During the sensational 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial," H. L. Mencken and Clarence Darrow formed an alliance—unknown to them—that may have been made in heaven. If a white-bearded-old-man God was out there directing events, then the Scopes trial surely was his handiwork. Not that God would have wanted any side to win—he's beyond simple popularity—but rather, to make a point, and to observe the spectacle cheerful in the knowledge the human race is always good for a laugh.

It is the comedy of human nature that people assume deathly serious positions on any side of a given issue, polarized—only—by the rhetoric describing it. In 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee, the issue concerned...