HERE’S HOW it works: Be sure not to call any Get Rich Quick scheme by its right name. That’s how gambling becomes gaming and the state’s role in it is titled the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery, a much more respectable moniker. By the time the wordsmiths get through, a smelly operation can come out of the wash sounding almost wholesome.
So step up, suckers, and place your bets—or rather buy your lottery tickets. You have nothing to lose but the rent money. And your accomplice in this shape-shifting, name-changing transformation will be the lottery’s chief promoter, the State of Arkansas. That is, We the People, for it’s the state that’s sponsoring this legalized scam, and whose officials sound as if they’re waiting to be congratulated on their “success.”
Bishop Woosley says the Arkansas Lottery did just fine during the Christmas season, raking in all kinds of money during December thanks to scratch-off tickets, a new $20 game and continued strong sales of $5 and $10 instant tickets. This is all strictly on the up-and-up, averred the Bishop of the Arkansas Lottery when a long-time critic of this state’s Holy Church of Gambling said he wondered “how many lottery tickets were given to children as Christmas gifts.” For these promoters can’t get ’em hooked too young.
In response, Bishop Woosley issued a straight-faced statement in writing: “We have no way of tracking tickets once they are purchased. That said, we run a responsible gambling campaign each holiday season with the specific intent to encourage responsible gambling and to remind players that it is improper to give lottery tickets as gifts to anyone under the age of 18.” Ah, yes, responsible gambling, which is our nomination for oxymoron of the month, for the concept of responsible gambling sounds about as sound as responsible speeding.
If the fair-labeling laws applied to politicians, could the current president of the United States have described himself as a statesman instead of the game-show host he was? And now there is talk of another entertainer—Oprah Winfrey—running for president of the United States. One poll shows her leading President Trump 48 to 38 percent. If you like those odds, maybe now’s the time to get your money down ahead of the next presidential election.
The beginning of wisdom in these matters is to call things by their right name. In the end, after all these distractions, we wind up calling gambling scholarship, entertainers statesmen, and, by the way, an order of nuns who just want to follow their conscience enemies of the state.
Welcome not to the new normal but the new abnormality. When anyone tries to point out how strange all these word games are, pay them no mind.
Recommended reading: “Trump, Oprah and the Art of Deflection” by Peggy Noonan in the Jan. 13 Wall Street Journal. It’s a sane overview of these crazy times.
So be strong and of good courage, Gentle Reader, especially when it comes to your convictions. Those practitioners of the art of distraction bring to mind the amateur magician who pretends to draw a silver dollar from behind your ear, having palmed it earlier in the show. He’s not offering anything of real value. There are a lot of such magicians out there, some of them in high office, or who want to be.