And thou shalt put them in thine courthouses
You may wonder how we got to a place where state and local governments even wanted to display the Ten Commandments. Well,
according to Cracked.com, it was because Cecil B. DeMille thought it would be a good publicity stunt for his movie The Ten Commandments, and so he bankrolled the early displays.
Having Heston and Brynner on a faux religious tour was great publicity for the film, which grossed around $80 million. When the movie was out of theaters, the monuments stayed, and the group that helped the judge at the beginning of the story kept right on sending them out into the mid-'80s.
And now, legislatures across the land continue to push for public displays of old movie marketing props.
I want to make fun of it, but that's kind of cool, actually.
