Frankly, never a subject of enduring interest for me. But I was disgusted to see two more, ostensibly left-leaning celebrities—LeBron James and Larry David—pushing cryptocurrencies. I'd call them hypocrites, but we now seem to be in the Post-Hypocritical Age in America.
And I don't know that the candy ads were all that great for the kiddies, either. Or the cola ads.
Why, the Babe even did ads for whiskey and underwear...decades after he was dead! That's how great he was!
Even clean-cut Lou Gehrig did an ad for Camels. And for his wife's song-writing, which looks equally lethal.
But hey, all that stuff was considered good, clean fun back in the day. Scientists had not yet determined just how deadly the effects of sheet music and home piano sing-alongs could be.
But what neither the Babe nor Columbia Lou did was stand around and make newsreels where they said:
"Hey, Keed, c'mon down and put all your hard-earned wages into Wall Street stocks you know nothing about!
"Don't have a lotta cash? Don't worry! Why d'ya think those smart guys down there invented margin? Just take the $1.86 you saved this week from your 60 hours making steel, head to the Street, and fork it over to the first bucketshop operator you see!
"What could possibly go wrong? Trust me!"
Good points.
ReplyDeleteI'm waiting for Crypto Kings. Where Crypto and in game wagering meet.
"I bought 10 (Gerrit)Colepecks for $100. Then he struck out 12 and I doubled my money!"
Well . . . This hasn't officially been made public yet, but seeing that it's a full moon and a fairly light news day, I can spill the frijoles. Last Thursday Brian Cashman officially changed his name to Brian Crypto-Man. And honestly, I love the sound of it. You can almost hear Howard Finkel (WWE) call out his name, super hero-like as if the man formally know as CASH was being crowned the new heavy weight wrestling champion of the world! (that is of course if "The Fink" was still alive, which he isn't - may he rest In peace). So - take a deep breath, stand up and belt out his new name in your best ring announcer voice . . . Brian C R Y P T O - M A N ! ! ! !
ReplyDeleteBrian is always doing his part for the game!
ReplyDeletePro sports are crazy to jump into partnering with online gambling (I refuse to call it "gaming," a word the industry invented to make it sound more legitimate.)
ReplyDeleteThe fact that you can bet on anything actually makes it MORE dangerous.
The assorted noodniks who play these games will be all the more tempted to say, 'Hey, it's not like I'm throwing a whole game! I just struck out once to make sure my cousin Tommy could pay his mortgage this month.'
It's almost like the subprime crisis, in which the great minds of finance figured, 'What's it matter if a few of the mortgages in this tranche are bad risks? The whole package is still a good investment.'
'The games are on the level, but any individual play might be fixed.' Right.
Brain Crapto - (oh shit, I meant) Crypto-Man cares about all of us. And Horace, to your point, online and live, in-game ballpark gambling is really just going to screw up baseball even more. Last year in Oakland it appeared* that more fans were interested in buying in to the in-game lotto instead of pop corn, peanuts and cotton candy.
ReplyDelete*At the Yankee Games in Oakland - although I did take note of red ropes out pacing the lotto sales. Lotta Licorice sales in OakTown!
Money talks; Morality walks.
ReplyDelete