As an adult American and a recreational gambler, I want to ring in on the "Slots for Tots" issue.
As many of you already know, the controversy is over slot machines with themes that may appeal to children. Manufacturers are up in arms. Gaming opponents are once again accusing the industry of tearing apart the moral fibers of our nation. Casinos are pulling slots off their floors.
The logical rebuttal to this, of course, is that children aren’t supposed to be in the casinos in the first place. So even if there are Betty Boop or South Park or Three Stooges machines, they shouldn’t have access to them and therefore, cannot be enticed by them.
But there are deeper issues here. Issues of responsibility and misdirected blame. And they reach far beyond the casino floors. They are indicative of the national sentiment as a whole.
Somewhere along the way, we became a nation of finger-pointers. We are quick to seek out a scapegoat and lay blame for every social ill. Look at the headlines on any given day. Columbine? The fault of gun makers. Anorexia? Must be the fashion mags. Find any obscure act of random violence, and you’re sure to find a song, video game, or movie to pin it on. Yet what’s really interesting is that the scapegoats are always money-generating monsters who no one will touch and about which nothing is ever done.
Folks, there’s something really wrong with this picture.
I’m addicted to smoking. There’s no two ways about it. But do I blame R.J. Reynolds? Did Joe Camel make me do it? No. I did it to myself. And so did anyone else who started smoking after 1950. We knew the dangers. We knew it was a horrible habit that would be nearly impossible to give up. We did it anyway. None of us crawled out from under a rock, lit up a cigarette, and believed it was a good thing. We took responsibility when we started, and must continue to take that responsibility, even if it means we take it to our graves. The blame is ours and ours alone.
If a child is going to grow up predisposed to gambling, can we, logically, blame that predisposition on the belly glass of a slot machine? Is it not the responsibility of the parents to educate their children and to keep them away from things they may not yet be capable of understanding? Is it not the responsibility of that grown-up child to choose whether to place a wager on that game?
If gaming’s opponents are really concerned about the children—if they really want to make certain they are not being led down gaming’s evil path—shouldn’t they be targeting the blatant and perfectly legal pastimes that encourage children to gamble from the time they can walk?
Consider the Pog craze, for instance. Pogs are little round disks of different designs that have no value or use other than the way they look. Kids went nuts for them. It was the modern-day equivalent to marbles. They collected them and traded them with the intensity of a stock broker. And where did they get them? Many of them were available in arcades. In a game that closely resembles Flip-It, kids put in a quarter in an attempt to cash out with a fistful of Pogs. If that’s not gambling, I don’t know what is.
How about carnival midway games? You trade a buck for a one-in-100 shot at a stuffed toy.
What about Pokemons? Have you seen what kids will do for those?
The point is, if these moral guardians of our nation’s youth truly want to make a difference, it would appear there are several more appropriate battles to be waged.
It’s easy to say that it’s no big deal, that it doesn’t really matter whether Betty Boop can be on a slot or not. There are plenty of slots to choose from, and if Betty isn’t among them, no one will suffer the loss. But Betty’s removal from casino floors doesn’t address the issue that is supposedly at hand. It only means I can’t play a slot I enjoy.
And it won’t end there.