The eleventh hour for slots

by David Grand
March 24, 2005

That hour, defined as "the last moment" stems from the parable in the Bible where laborers hired at the eleventh hour of the 12-hour workday were paid the same as those hired earlier. Obviously, there weren't any unions in those days to negotiate contracts or submit grievances to.      

Coincidence or not, the armistice ending World War 1 in 1918 was declared on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. It also often appears in ads offering eleventh-hour sales and by the media, a la the newspapers reporting during the height of the Cuban missile crisis in October, 1962: "Khrushchev withdrawing Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba in an eleventh-hour concession to President Kennedy's ultimatum to remove them or else the U.S. will launch an invasion or a blockade."       

And as I see it, the eleventh hour for the possible passage of a slots bill in this legislative session came and went once the House's slot bill passed. For it was so unlike the Senate's slots bill in its contents and scope, that there was no way under the sun that the differences could be resolved in a conference committee, especially not when neither the Senate President Mike Miller and House Leader Michael Busch were willing to yield an inch of ground- a classic example of the "irresistible force meeting the immoveable object."      

So, in view of the  hopeless deadlock, there's no reason I can think of for me to delay my post mortem on the burial of slots for the third year in a row, with little or no prospect of it being disinterred for the fourth time. Only Dracula rose from his grave more times than that. And I can't say I'm surprises by the outcome. For from the first debate over slots in the 2003 session, the line of demarcation was clearly drawn between the opposing camps: the pragmatists, who  found it unconscionable that Maryland could continue standing idly by as hundreds of millions were being siphoned out of the state each year by surrounding states with slots; and the moralists, who opposed slots on moral and religious grounds. And who argue that  they're addictive, that they'd wreak havoc among the poor in particular, that they'd cause the the divorce and crime rates to soar, and that they'd lead the young down the road of degradation.      

Hogwash! The same was said about the dire effects that drinking booze could have by those who prodded Congress into passing the Prohibition Act in 1919; and how, as it turned out, only succeeded in vastly increasing the consumption of beer and liquor, and in the emergence of organized crime.  And as far as slots boosting the rate of divorces/crimes is concerned, it wouldn't be a blip on the radar screen in accounting for why couples split-up, and why people commit crimes, which is mostly to feed their dependency on illegal drugs.  Moreover, no type of gambling could be more addictive than the state-sponsored (and widely promoted) lottery games, the state's second largest revenue source. But apparently that's viewed by slots opponents as an acceptable and a less evil form of gambling.         

To me, that's a distinction without a difference. And their fears about the corrupting influence slots would create, amid all the other forms of gambling in Maryland, is analogous to a man up to his chin in quicksand cursing the bird lighting on his head for pushing him further down.       

Now, I've got a foot-high, splendidly-dressed, bejeweled model of the "Fat Lady," who as most of you know doesn't sing her melancholy song until something is absolutely, positively over, like the battle over slots undeniably is. And all it takes to activate her voice is to push her her right foot. There, I just did it. Oh, what a beautiful voice, with her easily hitting the high notes. Too bad you can't hear her.