The Abomination Known as the Lottery

The lottery is legal because it can’t be won. There’s a beautiful certainty in it for the house, and even though $40 million or whatever it is seems like a healthy carrot to be chasing, the facts are that doesn’t even scratch the surface of the profit made by the state. You can’t set your watch by a roulette wheel, because one in 36 times, you’re going to win.

The odds of winning the lottery are laughably slim. The chances of the particle collider (which is making its screen debut in Angels & Demons, but don’t blame the product, it’s got a bad agent) creating a black hole that would destroy the world are BETTER than yours at winning the SuperJackpotPowerBallBooyah. Scientists around the world are that certain you won’t win the lottery. The other criminally disingenuous part of the lottery is that the proceeds go directly to the public school system. The districts in which you would not demand a refund are few and far between. Watch season four of The Wire and find out where your lotto dollars are headed.

The evil nature of the lottery doesn’t end with the lie. It sends a horrifying message to America’s lower class (and the kids in every class): you need a miracle to make it. The country that embraces hard work, earning what you get, and six Rocky movies is telling their citizens to throw a nickel into a fountain then pick it back up and smudge off a cartoon money bag to see if you win another penny.

The NFL is simply an example of compartmentalized morality that exists all across the levels of our government. If gambling is wrong, then it’s wrong. The lottery is like making heroin legal if it didn’t get you high, prostitution legal if you just talked about Joel McHale’s new sitcom and left sexually frustrated, and murder legal if you used to play football at USC. The NFL and the rest of the nation needs to decide if they’re really going to lean on a Jenga stack of shaky fake morality or if they’re going to continue to prey upon stupid people with state-sponsored dreams and a lucky quarter.

I’ll give you six to one odds it’s the latter.