Casino Gambling and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendall

Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes, Casino Gambling and Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendall

For the people watching Leslie Stahl interviewing Governor Ed Rendell about the proliferation of casinos on 60 minutes Sunday night, it was quite a show. Ms. Stahl sat there, calm and collected and very professional as Ed Rendell raged at her, baring his teeth and sputtering about how un-smart she is for having the gall to ask serious questions about the negative effects the casinos are having on the citizens of the State of Pennsylvania. He told her, “You’re not getting it,” . . . Those people would lose that money anyway. Don’t you understand? You guys don’t get that. You’re simpletons. You’re idiots if you don’t get that.”

It was embarrassing. But, unfortunately, way too many of our elected public officials, the people who have a moral obligation to do right by us, feel the way he does: that the rest of us “just don’t get it.” The “it,” at least according to Rendell and others, is that casino gambling is a harmless form of entertainment, despite the increasing numbers of unsuspecting people who wander into these labyrinths, become addicted to machines that are designed to take as much money as they can from us in a matter of seconds, and then suffer badly, as did two of the women who were interviewed, my friends Marilyn Lancelot and Mary Sojourner (on 60 Minutes Overtime), as I did when I started going to Ho Chunk Casino in the Wisconsin Dells, about 45 minutes from Madison, Wisconsin, where I live.

I hope people who watched noticed that these gamblers look nothing like what we see in the movies. They are women. Their stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Women are becoming addicted to slot machine gambling in unprecedented numbers and many of us would never have started gambling if a casino hadn’t opened within driving distance of our homes.

Ed Rendell’s outburst really made me sick. It was so callous, so indifferent to the suffering these machines, indeed the entire gambling industry, but especially the casino industry, is wreaking on this country’s citizens. Leslie Stahl took the brunt of his outrage with the beauty and dignity that has made her one of this country’s most respected broadcast journalists. I just hope that this segment of 60 minutes will provoke some of the millions of people who watched the show to start thinking seriously about what’s happening to our country as a result of this very predatory industry. I hope they will go to their windows, open them up and shout, “We’re mad as Hell and we aren’t going to take it anymore.”

Sandra Adell, Author: CONFESSIONS OF A SLOT MACHINE QUEEN: A MEMOIR.