The final word on Bill Bennett
: From Ken Layne:
Millions of dollars on machines, with no human company beyond the wandering cocktail waitress and the oxygen-tank guy honking quietly a few seats down? That ain’t gambling. That’s masturbation.
3 responses to “The final word on Bill Bennett”
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I’m not sure I understand the point of this article. It would have been okay for Bill Bennet to gamble if he would have played blackjack? Hmmm. I ONLY gamble on slot machines (where I don’t have to count, keep track of cards played, etc.) and I never once considered it to be masturbation. The article is a huge what.ever.
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I would contend that it’s not possible to understand the difference if you only play slots. Go play blackjack for a half hour sometime and see the difference– you’ll be exhausted, not physically but mentally from trying to keep up with a fastpaced game. (And that’s blackjack, which is still essentially mechanical and antisocial compared to, say, poker, which is an actual form of human interaction.) Slots lull you into a stupor where it’s easy to be separated from huge sums of money over a long period. That’s why it resembles certain other forms of solo gratification (specifically the form practiced in places where you have to keep pumping money in to get visual stimulation).
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Gambling, per se, is not wrong.
I love blackjack.
As I told Ken (and said on my own site), I understand why Bill did what he did … alone.
That said, I love blackjack.
