The Media Love Gambling Puns When Covering the Casino Vote
Scenario: a question on casino gambling faces Massachusetts voters in a statewide ballot measure. If you’re a newspaper, website, or other publication covering the vote…how do you resist the call to make a gambling pun?
You don’t, that’s how. Let’s do a tour of casino puns that populated the stories about the rejection of Question 3, which represented a big jackpot for the casino industry.
Over at The Boston Globe:
Voters emphatically upheld the state’s three-year-old casino law on Tuesday, on a bet that the casino industry can change the luck of two struggling cities and put thousands of people to work.
And, separately, in an Election Night winners/losers Boston Globe column:
House always wins: Luck ran out on the Repeal the Casino Deal movement. The group succeeded in getting people to say no to a casino in East Boston.
From the very same column:
Big money: Cash is king in ballot petitions. Repealing the casino law felt like a bad bet, after gambling companies ponied up $12.1 million to fight it.
Voters dealt casinos the winning hand.
It was a big gamble, but one that paid off.
And, despite some tribulations, voters took a gamble and decided the law should remain in place, voting against a repeal.
WGBH:
For casino backers here in Everett, luck was a lady – and the will of the people was on their side.
The party is over in the Massachusetts governor’s office — at least for Democrats. But it’s just starting for supporters of the state’s casino gambling law, who won their high-stakes bid to keep it on the books.
The Cape Cod Times, using information from the AP, dabbled ever so lightly in the game of double entendres, by talking about the uncertainty surrounding the Mashpee Wamponoag tribe’s bid for the Southeastern Massachusetts casino license:
Bidders in the region are taking a risk that the tribe will win federal approval for its casino.
WBUR, The Boston Herald, and The Springfield Republican did not give in to the urge (though the Herald’s photo caption read: ‘CHIPS ARE DOWN’).
Oh, and of course, yours truly:
(Penn National Gaming) did not slow when the question that could have shut it down was approved for Massachusetts ballots in June. That’s now looking like a good gamble, if you’ll excuse the pun, and it plans to open in mid-2015.
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