Morality? What Morality?
Sheldon Duecker, Methodist bishop of northern Illinois, who’s also met with the editorial board of Courier News in Elgin: “It’s been almost as though they haven’t had respect for the opposition forces. I asked one board if they could give me studies they have read which convinced them gambling would be a good thing economically and for the quality of life, and they had nothing to offer. They had no awareness there were other times in our history when gambling was very prominent and was voted out in almost every state. It’s not a new panacea. It’s something that’s been tried and hasn’t worked.”
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“There is not unanimity on the board about this. There is a recognition that we’re quite far down the road already. The question becomes not whether the state of Illinois will make some new departure, but whether there’s some rational basis for denying to Chicago this means of revenue provided to others in the state.
But instead of hand-to-hand combat, there’s only the occasional puff of snipers’ smoke. A Tribune editorial last year began like this: “Illinois is already in the game. The question is: Do we play to win? That’s the only pragmatic way to think about the prospect of legalized casino gambling for Chicago. It’s no longer a question of whether gambling is desirable or moral.”
Not that the editorial was friendly. It made the easy point that churches that object to riverboat gambling shouldn’t sponsor bingo nights. But as Dobmeyer put it to us, “I thought it was a cheap shot, but if you abide by the idea any press is good press it may not have been so bad.”
The Reverend Fred Milligan of Fourth Presbyterian Church wrote the Tribune complaining that Kass had “treated a grass-roots movement as nothing more than a campaign stump speech for David Orr.” A fellow Presbyterian, the Reverend William Brauer, called Kass’s story “a cheap political hatchet-job on David Orr.”
Moral tale number two. Tribune editor Howard Tyner’s last big call as top dog of the features department was to snuff a comic strip. What stuck in Tyner’s craw was Berkeley Breathed’s Outland of July 25. Opus, Bill the Cat, and Milquetoast were cracking wise about womenfolk, and a delegate from that gender approached and sniffed, “Men should pause for one moment and take another long hard look at the very thing that brings meaning to their meaningless lives.” The boys looked down their pants.
