Gambling–NO To Regulation! And YES To Expansion

While  taking a cross-country road trip, a colleague stopped in Las Vegas. Later, when asked by foreigners what they should see when first visiting America, he always answered “Las Vegas” without hesitation. What city could be more quintessentially American?  The glitz and cheap glamour; the ersatz experience of faux Paris, London, and Venice? The outrageously over-the-top, kitschy hotels? The anything-goes spirit that makes New Orleans feel like a backwater? There is absolutely nothing like Las Vegas.  It is Times Square, the Ginza, Hollywood, and the Lido all wrapped up in one flashy neon package. It is incomparable. 

Since my colleague had little money and no experience with poker, blackjack, or baccarat, he played the slots.  After about twenty minutes of nickels and small change payoffs, he said he hit the jackpot.  It was exciting; and nothing in that long, soggy trip through the cornfields, dry plains, and South could possibly compare. He was in the Great Temple of America, and he would never forget it. 

In the movie The Gambler James Caan plays a compulsive gambler, Alex Fried, who goes deep in debt to the mob, and yet cannot stop betting. In the final scene Axel provokes a ghetto pimp who slices him.  Axel looks in the mirror and sees the blood streaming down his face, and he smiles. Gambling is not about money, chance, or quick takes. It is about risk. The Paul Sorvino character tells Axel that he knows why gamblers gamble. “You all want to lose”, he says.

 

Axel does not want to lose, but knows that the highs of gambling and the pure adrenaline rush of risk are not only worth it, but are the only way to live.

At the same time, Axel understands the mystery of gambling – that there are moments of spiritual calm and certainty.  He can’t lose. In one of the most famous scenes of the film, Caan is standing at a blackjack table, shot from below, and backlit by the lights of the casino chandeliers. He has an aura. He is in a holy place.


In the years since the 50s heyday of Las Vegas, casino gambling has expanded to Atlantic City, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and to the Indian reservations of Connecticut.  Billions of dollars are bet every year, and state treasuries are enriched thanks to gambling.  Americans bet in every way possible, and while gambling is still highly regulated, we find ways around the rules all the time.  Betting is in our blood.  Golfers say that if they don't bet five dollars a hole, golf would be a boring game. Football pools, the NCAA brackets, stock market flyers, the ponies at Belmont, and the dogs at Hialeah all give extra juice to office life. While few of us get as hooked as Axel Freed, we would miss the safe risks of the betting table.

 

Which is why the persistent efforts to ban or restrict gambling are as senseless as Prohibition.  Gambling is in our blood, and no nanny state attempts to control it for ‘social good’ will succeed.  Reformers come in all stripes – progressives who claim that casino revenues come disproportionately from poor residents who live near casinos; religious zealots who still see gambling as a distortion of Christian values; free labor idealists who see gambling as detrimental to the tried-and-true American principle of working for a living.  They all have one thing in common – an idealism and ignorance of human nature.

Can gambling become an addiction? Certainly, but no more than alcohol or cigarettes. While betting the table does not give the jolt of nicotine or the rush of coke, it satisfies – as the Axel character attests – real psychological needs. There is also no doubt that gambling, whether at blackjack or Lotto, offers the hope of get-rich-quick – a lucky break, a way out of debt without working, a just reward for 50 years on the assembly line; but so what? 

Those who try to regulate gambling live in an unreal, abstemious, sterilized world; and have taken no more risk than switching from Tide to All. To them gambling is the worst personal failing, an unhealthy giving in to irrational hopes, a sickness, a crippling disease of the spirit.

Shortly after the fall of Ceausescu, international health workers in Romania were intent on undoing decades of unenlightened Soviet-era programs and changing the behavior of ordinary citizens. Romanians were drinking and smoking too much, got no exercise, and ate fat-laden, unhealthy diets, and a national campaign addressing these lifestyle issues seemed important and relevant.

“You don’t understand”, said the Minister of Health.  “We have suffered long and hard under the Communists.  Cheap cigarettes and alcohol were all we had.  They were our small pleasures.  Now we have meat to eat, and life is getting better.  It is not time to tell people to give it all up”.

In other words, life for the poor is indeed harsh and difficult, and no one should judge their immoderate appetites, let alone the government.  Social reformers may be well-meaning, but they are like stern Calvinist preachers for whom there is only one absolute.

In a recent Opinion blog in The Telegraph Brendan O’Neill said:

Fundamentally, the Left today, unlike the radicals of the past, has no faith whatsoever in ordinary people, in humanity itself, and thus it constantly turns to the state and asks it to fix the alleged problems blighting society or giving Leftists a headache. The reason modern Leftists want state interference in the press is because they don’t trust the people, the rabble, the little folk, to be able to read and see things and rationally make up their minds about what is good and bad, right and wrong.

People should be left free to choose their diversions, pleasures, and addictions. We are not stupid, and although governed by impulses we may not fully understand, life is nothing if not figuring them out. 

Not only should all restrictions on gambling be removed, but it should be allowed to expand according to market demand.  Regulating morality - alcohol, drugs, prostitution, and gambling - has never worked.  People still drink, get high, frequent prostitutes, and gamble as much as they ever did if not more.  Decades of forced inhibition have done nothing to slow natural appetites.

Since the demand for these pleasures is normal, natural, innate, and homegrown, they should be accepted as a part of life as much as any more sedate and traditional satisfactions.  Gambling is us, and the sooner we accept the fact, the faster public treasuries will be filled, law enforcement can deal with serious crime, and we can all be freed from government intrusiveness.

Fashion In Fiction–What Did Gatsby Wear? Clothes As A Clue To Character

He wore a white suit, what else? Lee Siegel, writing in the New York Times (10.8.13) observes that modern authors rarely describe what characters wear, although in the past it was a common way of expressing who they were.

For nowhere is Daisy’s essential emptiness exposed more artfully — in the book, and in the movie — than when Gatsby showers her with his opulent shirts. “’They’re such beautiful shirts’ she sobbed.” In one sartorial instant, Daisy stands exposed as a cipher.

“Fitzgerald’s very deliberate portrait of Gatsby wearing ‘a white flannel suit, silver shirt, and gold-colored tie’ when he meets Daisy again after many years” is essential to the novel, for in that one simple phrase the author has portrayed the character as elegant, but a bit ostentatiously so; very middle class, showy, but attractive.  This portrayal, of course, is key to Gatsby’s intriguing character. 

Gatsby is wearing the novel’s themes: white as the fantasy of self-remaking without the blemishes of the past; silver and gold the currency-tinged colors of an impossible happiness.

He is graceful and at home in the old-moneyed environment of the North Shore of Long Island, but those who truly belong and have belonged for a hundred years know he is an impostor at worst, an unwelcome interloper at best.

Emma Bovary’s character is illuminated in tailored glimpses. “She wore no fichu,” Flaubert wrote, a fashion choice that revealed "small drops of perspiration on her shoulders". Next, she has to pick grass and weeds off her wedding dress, which is too long and trails behind her. In poor Emma’s future lie desperation and a sordid end to her illusions. We know that because her clothes tell us so.

Even the modernists, most of whom scorned realism, couldn’t dispense with clothing. In James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” after the word “peach” recurs several times as a leitmotif, Molly Bloom longs for " a peachblossom dressing jacket" in her famous soliloquy that concludes the book.

With that one reference to fashion, Joyce elevates Molly’s unpretentious desire, stamped by her eccentric romanticism, into the life-force itself.

In the novels of the 19th century descriptions of clothes, fashion, and appearance were as important to defining character as their physical characteristics. Physiognomy and Phrenology were popular during this time, and a depiction of how a character looked – especially the shape, cast, and dimension of his face and head – was a shorthand for suggesting moral stature, intelligence, and ambition. 

Edgar Allan Poe provided many physical descriptions to his readers in his texts as a way of emphasizing the supposedly innate connection between one's disposition and their personality…Many of the characters created by Poe often exemplified unstable mental conditions and other exaggerations of different personalities. Although there are hints towards the connection between the physical and the mental in almost all of Poe's works, "Ligeia" and "The Man of the Crowd" could be considered more directly associate with the sciences.

This reliance on external appearance whether physical characteristics or fashion gradually disappeared in the 20th century as writers chose to focus on the inner workings of the mind, the dramatic interplay between characters, or the influence of society, upbringing, and environment on character development.  The protagonists of Dreiser and Dos Passos were defined by class and society.  Clyde Griffiths (American Tragedy), for example, tries to escape his lower-class past, aims too high, and is brought down by overreaching ambition. 

Thomas Sutpen, in Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom comes to a tragic end because of the same social ambitions as Clyde Griffiths. For neither author were physical characteristics or clothes important.  Thomas Sutpen and Rosa Coldfield are caught up in Southern history, and their personal ambitions, frustrations, and demands are conditioned by it.

Arthur Miller was very much a product of WWII and the moral dilemmas faced by his characters are conditioned by the period.  Tennessee Williams created his characters, like Faulkner, within Southern tradition, culture and society; and although his lyrical imagery was far removed from the workmanlike language of Miller, he was very much concerned about environmental conditioning.

Writing turned dramatically inward and psychological after James Joyce and Faulkner who imagined the workings of the mind and described them through stream of consciousness.  More than ever descriptions of the physical characteristics or clothes of their characters were irrelevant.

Siegel suggests that the deliberate neglect of clothes in fiction is also due to the changing nature of fashion.  It is less an individual statement than a social one.  Mass culture dominates the middle class and its choice of clothes, and a more sophisticated, but still mass-derived fashion determines the choices of the wealthy.  Clothes are entry tickets to cultural subgroups, disguises rather than personal statements.

In the hipster neighborhoods of San Francisco there is almost no variation in what 30-something men are wearing – long-sleeve shirts worn out; tight but not pipe-stem jeans; and flat, colored canvas shoes. The conformity is uncanny, but Mission hipsters are not alone.  Shortly after the breakup of the Soviet Union, a private school in Washington arranged an exchange program with Russian students.  When they arrived in Washington they were socially inept and fashion clueless.  In less than a week they were indistinguishable from the American students. 

Clothes were their tickets to social entry, and the first and most important emblem of group membership. We all dress to conform, so what author today would ever describe what his San Fran hipster was wearing as a clue to his character?

As some of our best fiction writers have grasped, in this atmosphere of concealment and masquerade, clothes have very nearly ceased to be markers of identity. Perhaps that’s why the craving for self-exposing memoirs has become even stronger than the desire for fiction. We don’t feel we really know anyone until we’ve seen them naked.

Do Rich People Care Less?

Bashing the rich is sport these days.  Any with a lot of money is suspect.  One Percenters attained their wealth, say ‘progressives’, through devious and immoral means.  If you are gay, black, female, or fat you are protected by restrictive PC rules of engagement. If you are wealthy, God help you.

The latest in the attempt to disparage, demean, and dismiss the rich is the assertion that they are indifferent to people below them in social status – the Latino leaf blower, the painter, garbage collector, or mailman.  Poor people, again say ‘progressives’, are more attuned to social interaction and live in respectful cooperative communities.  They have developed a system of cooperation and caring that has eluded the arrogant, insular, and dismissive rich.

Daniel Goleman, writing in the New York Times (10.6.13), suggests that this social indifference is yet another symptom of the increasing inequality in America:

Turning a blind eye. Giving someone the cold shoulder. Looking down on people. Seeing right through them. These metaphors for condescending or dismissive behavior are more than just descriptive. They suggest, to a surprisingly accurate extent, the social distance between those with greater power and those with less — a distance that goes beyond the realm of interpersonal interactions and may exacerbate the soaring inequality in the United States.

This is of course nonsense.  People, no matter what their socio-economic status, pay attention only to those who can harm or benefit them.  The underclass may be more alert to those around them because they are poorly insulated from risk and always have to rely on the assistance of family, friends, and neighbors to survive. The rich can simply pay for protection, care, and support; and those who provide these services are off their social grid, non-persons who are needed only when the grass needs mowing. Otherwise the radar never picks them up.

I am not sure what Mr. Goleman is suggesting.  Perhaps he would like a wealthy businessman to invite Jose in for a beer after he has finished cleaning the gutters; or to talk football with Randy from Rockville after he has fixed the pipes.

A few years ago I noticed a police car always parked in front of a house in our neighborhood – far from the leafy, wealthy core that gives University Heights its character, but for administrative reasons included within it.  The car was not there on business but because the cop lived there.

“Isn’t it wonderful that we have a police family in our area?”, remarked a neighbor. She went on to say that economic and social diversity was what America is all about, and that it was good for us professionals and corporate executives to rub shoulders with the working class.  Not only was this an idealistic claim – the cop didn’t know shit from Shinola, was only in the house because he had inherited it from an elderly uncle, had a wife who did hair at Dot’s Beauty Parlor in Gaithersburg, and whose kids had never figured out how to get past third grade, but an unrealistic one.  Shortly after the cop finally moved out into a more appropriate neighborhood, the house was gutted, renovated, enlarged, and sold for a price consistent with the considerable market value of the area.  A lawyer with Smith, Lockwood, Paul, and Goldstein moved in.

The cop may have lived in University Heights, but he was no different from Jose or Randy from Rockville. He was a paid worker, an employee.  He fixed crime like Randy fixed pipes. No one ever invited him in for tea.

The fact that the rich are indifferent to those beneath them in social standing does not mean that they are not acute, perceptive, and savvy about human society.  If anything, they are more so.  Captains of industry did not make it to the top of the ladder by being nice.  They took the lay of the land and assayed all with canniness and self-interest. They set traps for the unaware, mined their perimeters against assault from corporate raiders, curried favor with potential allies, and deployed minions and underlings, and bought their loyalty with bagatelles.

The rich are unhappy in their fortified, dehumanized world, say the Occupy Left; but nothing could be farther from the truth.  Randy from Rockville would only have to catch a glimpse of Madame X carving the first trail down the mountain at Aspen, tacking in a brisk breeze off the Vineyard, or sipping a fine Sauternes with her foie gras to know that not only are the rich different from him, they have a far better life.

Mr. Goleman laments the rising inequalities in America:

Since the 1970s, the gap between the rich and everyone else has skyrocketed. Income inequality is at its highest level in a century. This widening gulf between the haves and have-less troubles me, but not for the obvious reasons. Apart from the financial inequities, I fear the expansion of an entirely different gap, caused by the inability to see oneself in a less advantaged person’s shoes. Reducing the economic gap may be impossible without also addressing the gap in empathy.

Ah, the empathy gap.  Putting oneself in the shoes of the less fortunate. A ‘progressive’ dream of one-world harmony.  However, Madame X does not have to put on the brogans of Randy from Rockville to understand how he functions in the socio-economic system of America.  Nor does she have to be shod like him to understand how his plight affects her economic interests.  It was fine for Marie Antoinette to prattle on at tea in the gardens of Versailles about the unwashed; but another thing entirely for her to ignore their concerns.  It was all well and good for the Shah of Iran to spend hundreds of millions on the 5000th anniversary of Persepolis and throw the grandest party since the days of Cleopatra; but another to neglect his starving people.

I really don’t need to know about the nasty life of a minimum wage waitress from Meridian, or the black cleaning lady from East Columbus, let alone empathize with them.  What I need to do is understand them as economic entities. Why are they un- or marginally employed?  Why are the schools in Mississippi so shitty?  Why do the poorest residents of the state, dependent on government for the only safety net they have, bang on like Tea Party zealots about getting Washington off their backs?

I don’t have to see their cracker shacks, drink cheap beer, tuck into butt ends and cornpone, or make Sunday outings to Walmart and McDonalds to figure out a way to improve their economic prospects.  I do not have to see them as individuals, love them as people, or enjoy their company to act in their behalf.

America may be a democracy, but it is still the world of Charles Dickens.  The tony enclaves of Georgetown, Spring Valley, or Cleveland Park have nothing at all in common with the double-wide trailer parks of Aberdeen, Caledonia, or Artesia.  There has never been a classless, uniform, and undivided society in human history.  The famous social harmony of the Trobriand Islanders, limned by Margaret Mead, was a figment of her imagination and a product of her idealistic academic whims.

So, Mr. Goleman, get over it.  Human nature rules; and the best we can hope for is using our brains a bit more, not our bleeding hearts.