WEST SPRINGFIELD — In a glitzy ceremony replete with a live 1980s hair-band rocker and a dead pop star’s famous leather jacket, Hard Rock International joined the crowded field of applicants Friday competing for the sole casino resort license in Western Massachusetts.
The $700 million to $800 million Hard Rock project at the Eastern States Exposition fairgrounds joins three other casino resort hopefuls in the west, MGM Resorts, Penn National Gaming, and Mohegan Sun, and probably rounds out the field before Tuesday’s state application deadline.
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"State's gaming table"......"gaming"? It is fascinating to see a company in the communication business continuously using a term that is not only imprecise but a deliberate, rhetorical, gambit employed by a particular industry to mask the ugly reality of its source of revenue. Casinos don't provide "games" to people, they make their money on people who GAMBLE. How is that so hard for the Globe and other media to understand? A game is a contest that does not involve betting. There is no "game" in a casino where won can participate WITHOUT risking money. Therefore the business is gambling, not mere "gaming". Perhaps the Globe goes along with this corruption of the language with the need not to offend potential advertisers in the back of its mind. Perhaps. But isn't the mantra of the American press to "speak truth to power"? Are there anymore powerful economic interests in business than the wealth that is aggregated by casino and other gambling interests? So, if the Globe embraces the "truth to power" ideal how is it that it, apparently, is a willing participant in the rhetorical subterfuge that casinos employ to "soften" the fact that their business is GAMBLING?