Editorials/ Chip on My Shoulder/Moving on Mena
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS Chip on My Shoulder by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Las Vegas M y travels have taken me through much of the industri- alized world. I have even vis- ited parts of the Third World. For...
...The annoying ping-ping sounds from dawn until the far reaches of the night...
...Wheelchairs were out in force...
...I was invited here to speak, and soon I shall be invited to leave...
...Given more opportunities to gamble, more foolish people will gamble, and who doubts that gambling is a passion that becomes more compulsive for people until bankruptcy cools them off...
...There are evocations of the exotic Orient...
...Yet in all my travels I have never been to a more horrible city than this...
...Many look notably dissolute...
...There was a mother carrying a week-old baby through the field of slot machines...
...Gambling, like pornography, is grim business...
...But elected officials need not expedite that ruin...
...Tobacco, alcohol, red meat, and chocolate may not be health foods...
...I suppose I can understand the grimness...
...I believe addicts belong in clinics where they can be treated...
...Unaddicted Americans visiting Las Vegas for whatever reason will recognize that they are in a weird place the minute they step out of the jetway...
...They are there at the airport just as you deplane...
...In the lobby of Caesar's Palace during one brisk five-minute reconnoiter, I saw not one healthy-looking American except for a few sober-faced dealers...
...State lotteries encourage a get-rich-quick mentality that corrupts a whole series of virtues necessary for a healthy democracy...
...Some are headed toward bankruptcy...
...No addict I saw seemed to be amused or to be taking much pleasure while indulging his vice—and both sexes seemed to be beset by the bug...
...A third of the unfortunates on my flight swarmed to these idiot contraptions first thing...
...I saw obesity that amazed,haggard features that no jogger or vegetarian would claim as healthy, a woman on crutches, a woebegone man with an oxygen tank...
...My deduction is that gambling does not comport with fitness...
...slot machines...
...All were intently feeding their slot machines or working the craps tables...
...Yet gambling is no mere recreation...
...This whole city has been created for addicts to indulge their addiction...
...but I know that they are not as harmful as gambling...
...It has always been considered a vice, and the desperation of the thousands of gamblers swarming these streets in casinos is a sobering reminder that until recently Americans tried to limit this vice...
...Like all vices, gambling preys on the weak...
...Casino towns such as Las Vegas belong far out in the desert...
...The addicts drop coins into them and stare blankly into their windows...
...Most have loved ones who are going to fare badly as a consequence of their profligacy...
...This is the sound of Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...With all the alarm about the health of the average American, I am surprised that neither consumerists nor environmentalists have sounded the alarm about gambling...
...Its ornate columns and cheap statues would sicken Mussolini...
...As a libertarian conservative, I would not think of shutting down the gambling dens of far-away Las Vegas...
...It is meant to evoke thoughts of the Caesar who conquered Gaul...
...They stand as testimonials to their clients' delusions...
...They see it as a means of increasing government revenue, but what about their concern about the citizenry...
...People should be free to realize their greatest potential as well as bring themselves to ruin...
...For instance, I covered a presidential inauguration in Mexico City a few years back, and I live right across the river from Washington, D.C.—talk about Third World...
...There is a Treasure Island monstrosity...
...After visiting this most horrible of American cities I am moved to wonder as to why mayors and state 12 The American Spectator May 1995 legislators throughout the country want to liberalize gambling...
...It is then that the traveler hears the first ping of a ping-ping noise that is hard to escape in this dreadful city...
...There are addictions that are more ghastly and insalubrious, heroin and crack to name but two...
...Perhaps the gaudiest and most imbecilic is Caesar's Palace...
...If gambling were a lucrative pastime, these tawdry casinos would not be so lavishly appointed and so numerous...
...All are losing money...
...Perhaps Chernobyl is a less healthy place than Las Vegas, and I suppose back in the days of Idi Amin there were cities in Uganda more horrible (if there are cities in Uganda), but this is the most horrible city I have ever been in...
...Of course, I speak of the gambling addict...
...They stand in fluorescent rows in all the hotels I have been in...
...Here in the lap of the desert there is a huge and stupendously ugly riverboat casino...
...The hordes of people rolling dice, playing keno and blackjack, do not look like particularly self-reliant, dignified, or even prosperous people...
Vol. 28 • May 1995 • No. 5
