Now that we’re only about a month away from pulling back the curtain on the Cleveland casino, you can already see what’s going to be on the menu for the next couple of weeks: sugary moral hysterics whipped into a fine foam by speculation and served with a heaping helping of the obvious.
We had a feeling this was coming. Considering the casino represents such a game change for the region – the legalization of a previous illegal activity, the defibrillation of Tower City, demographic groups who usually only read about each other in the paper now sharing the same blackjack table – it’s a stock newsroom move to ask WHAT IT ALL MEANS?; considering we’re less inclined to tune in, read, or click unless the tea leaves spell out possible bad shit, these pre-op assessments usually truck out worse case scenarios or potential disaster.
So we get this: the Associated Press (through the News-Herald) tells us “Experts: Casino will add to risks in Cleveland.”
What “risks” are we talking here? Crime? An overtaxed downtown? No, gambling addiction (not to gripe, but that’s a bit of newsmaker slight of hand: whereas the headline presents the risks in the general (“risks in Cleveland”), the actual article limits its discussion to people suffering from a clinical jones for games).
This article appears in Apr 4-10, 2012.
It is not as bad to be a gambling addict now as it was when gambling was controled by organized crime…not that the state and the super rich are not organized crime..but they adhere to most of the rules of punishment. They are less likely to have you beaten up for being an idiot and losing more than you have…and it is harder now with electronic accounting to lose what you can not pay. More bad checks will be cashed and more petty fights between people who have given personal loans to gambling addicts will happen and more advanced pay checks will create families to struggle more, but all in all things will be pretty much the same. We will continue to spend and lose more than we can afford and we will get sad and angry and drunk and go to work and piss and moan about how fucked we are.
I just hope there are better looking hookers available than what I currently have to choose from on Detroit Ave.
Now that I think about it, I have to wonder what kind of Fucked-Up back room deal/plan old Frankie “Trash Can Man” Jackson has concocted to have his Police increase the Free Jimmy Dimora Funds.
No matter WHAT occurs in this City, we may all be guarenteed “Clevelands Finest” will be out in force with ticket books, handcuffs and handguns and insure Mo Money for Frankie and his illegal hires.
Well…This ain’t gonna be Vegas…
Gambling in Cleveland…
Kinda like surfing at Edgewater, interesting novelty but not sustainable…
Well the homeless will have a place to congregate instead of Ohio City….