Where I Stand: Success of casino gambling makes it an easy target

Saturday, Feb. 8, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

HAS THE SUCCESS of gambling become a burden that the entertainment industry is finding heavy to carry? During the past five decades, we have watched the Nevada gaming wins and losses in the eyes of the public shift dramatically from time to time. Always, when all was said and done, the gamblers came out winners, no matter how bad the publicity wounds they suffered.

Since the expansion of casino gambling to New Jersey and then to several other states and Indian reservations, the gamers appeared to become almost invincible economically and politically. Only during recent years has this expansion appeared to create almost as many public relations and political problems as it has money returns.

Most recent attacks on gambling, coming from a wide spectrum of the public and media, have been shrugged off by many giants of the industry. The big guys are too busy to let a little political heat and outside attacks keep them from expanding to other areas or building bigger casinos in Nevada.

The demand by Congress to create a commission evaluating the good and bad aspects of the industry caused enough of a ripple to get the attention of some casino owners. They immediately put together enough money to form an organization to lobby Congress and provide access to politicians at all levels. This lobbying group has performed well enough for some of the owners to doze off again or feel secure enough to spend their time and effort taking over other gaming corporations.

Few people have the skill to make the big bucks large gaming owners have made and are making. They have the ability to obtain money and provide exactly the kind of entertainment that people are hungry to experience. Success breeds success, and dollars make dollars. That's if the dollars are in the hands of those special business types willing to risk them to make even more money. Combined with this risk-taking must be both the skill and foresight needed to succeed in any business.

Washington-produced heat in the past usually came from the Justice Department, nudged on by powerful politicians like Estes Kefauver and Bobby Kennedy. These were usually short-term confrontations that weren't always without justification. Because the attacks were usually aimed at Nevada, which had the minimum number of electoral votes, the crusaders seldom reached an interested national audience. Only when criminal activity in Nevada was related to a mob in another city did it receive much attention. Even then, it was usually confined somewhat to that city, Nevada and Washington, D.C.

Now, legal gaming activity by successful Nevada corporations reaches into many states and foreign countries. It also affects, both positively and negatively, millions of Americans who no longer must trek to Las Vegas to gamble legally. They must only catch a bus from New York City to Atlantic City or drive a short distance to a reservation or river to gamble in a casino.

The more consumers of a product, the more critics will appear. Churches believe that they are receiving less money, and social workers can point to more problems demanding their time and taxpayers' dollars. What some city fathers thought would help them financially now has critics pointing to what they believe is costing the government money. What worked in isolated Nevada doesn't always have the same glitter and financial results in other parts of the U.S.

Eventually, gaming will receive blame for problems entirely unrelated to it. This can only be counteracted by gamers participating in activities the communities deem beneficial to their culture and society. They must become an integral part of the entire community and not just promise a place for the middle and lower economic classes to lose their money and their upper-class friends to party.

A recent article in an internationally respected magazine, The Economist, took much of the glow off gambling with "A busted flush, how America's love affair with casino gambling turned to disillusionment." Even this article had to admit that the busted flush won the gaming industry $44.4 billion profits in 1995, which was 11 percent more than the prior year. Actually, little was said about Nevada that was derogatory to the casinos, but gambling that has spread into other areas drew heavy fire.

The National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling is boasting about winning 23 out of 24 major votes over gambling legislation and referenda last fall. Again, this is to be expected, because of the gamblers' attempt to spread even farther and faster than they have during the past decade. They know they can't win 'em all, but one out of 24 isn't too good.

Probably the biggest public slap gaming received was last Sunday on television's "60 Minutes" program that CBS brings into millions of American homes. That popular curmudgeon Andy Rooney told his audience that he is happy the New York state legislature voted against casino gambling. Rooney said: "I was plenty happy about that because I own a house near where they were going to put a casino. Casino gambling doesn't produce one damn thing in America except piles of cash for sleazeball owners."

Rooney concluded the program by hitting at the casinos on Indian reservations with "the so-called Indian casinos are a joke. Their management is often about as Indian as I am." Then he added: "There was a sad story this week ... about Indians in North Dakota who were starving and freezing because of cuts in federal benefits. Well, why don't the Indian casinos making hundreds of millions of tax-free dollars help their own people?"

I'll have to say that, nationally, the gaming industry has been taking some pretty heavy hits during recent weeks. As casino gaming grows and even larger faceless corporations take it into almost every nook and cranny of our country, the hits will come faster and heavier.

Gaming will survive these hits as it has past hits. The big question that only the gambling executives can answer is: In what form will it survive? Will it be seen as part of a vital community with the friendly face of a man like the late Sam Boyd overseeing it or will it be viewed as a cold industry that takes more from society than it gives?

Right now, the picture being painted for the public doesn't bode well for the gamblers.