Gamblers Unanimous
The Sun-Times sounded actually contemptuous of morality: “We also don’t see much room for making a case against casino gambling (not so long ago opposed by Daley himself) on so-called ‘moral’ grounds. What makes it different from horse race betting, Lotto, riverboat gambling, ‘casino nights’ for charity and other forms of gambling already legal in Illinois?”
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At any rate, before dismissing morality the papers could at least make a hard assessment of moral reality. Let’s phrase the papers’ argument a little differently: society has moved from casino nights to horse-race betting to Lotto to riverboat gambling and now to casinos in a squalid attempt to maintain its public institutions without paying for them, but by this point we’re all without shame so there’s no turning back.
Since the city’s growth strategy is clear, what the people of Chicago need now is a symbol of the joys of irresponsible speculation. Fortunately, we have one. If number 23 can coolly drop $57,000 on a golf-and-poker weekend, as federal investigators are suggesting, his fans can risk a sawbuck. Furthermore, there’s no reason why he should have to travel to South Carolina to find “rough-hewn, colorful entrepreneurs,” as the Tribune last Sunday described his pals “Slim” Bouler and the late Eddie Dow. Isn’t this species still being fabricated on the last assembly line in Chicago? Bet like Mike. And let’s give folks a chance to bet on Mike too. Parlors can be opened in every neighborhood so folks can back their hero whenever he goes 18 holes. Each time he loses, another music teacher gets hired.
Bassman dropped $4 million on Inside Chicago, which he founded in 1987. His former executive vice president, Darryl Reade, tells us he thinks the magazine might have made money on one issue in its lifetime. The recession was devastating; ad revenues in January, when Bassman halted publication, were down 50 percent from a year earlier.
Beyond displaying a sort of cheekiness, Inside Chicago never became especially interesting. Yet it died at a moment of promise. A new editor, Shane Tritsch, who’s 30, had rethought and redesigned the product–a “real, real shot in the arm as far as I’m concerned,” Reade said. The changes had been announced and were going to be introduced in the January-February issue. But Tritsch felt he wasn’t quite there yet, and the new look was pushed back an issue. This issue never appeared, and for that matter neither did January-February; Bassman had turned out the lights.
By all accounts, litigation does not frighten Bassman or make him repent. “I think threatening to take Gershon to court,” says someone who worked for him, “is like threatening to put a fish in water.”
