Games people play

So, half the blogging world is enjoying a quiet chuckle over revelations that Virtue's Champion Bill Bennett has spent a net $8 million feeding his monkey. The other half is busy explaining how this is, y'know, different. Myself, I can't get terribly excited about it. Perhaps that's because I've always thought Bennett a pompous posing windbag, so he didn't have very far to fall.

In the spirit of anglospheric solidarity, Iain Murray is wielding England's Sword in Bennett's defence. It's not so bad what Bennett did, thinks Mr Murray. In a way he's right. All a matter of perspective, I suppose. For real vice, you'll have to look beyond the bounds of America's Party of Morality. I mean, it's not like Bennett is an Enron exec or a spy for the Chinese. For heaven's sake - he didn't even serve his first wife with divorce papers while she was in hospital for cancer surgery. No, his sins are, relatively speaking, minor. But then, as I say, he hadn't far to fall.

With admirable candour, Mr Murray reveals that he himself used to drop a few coins into fruit machines a long time ago. With respect, I think he's missing an important point. This is a bit like saying, 'Well, back in my student days I sometimes had a pint or two more than was good for me. So let's not attack the Rev'd Mr Turgid of the Society For Promoting Goodness because he sucks down three litres of voddie very night'. Still, inspired by Mr Murray's example of full disclosure, I'd better pull the veil off my own dark and ugly gambling history. I was in California once, and on a whim bought a $1 lottery card (the sort with silvery patches to be scratched off with a coin). And what do you know, I won! Two whole dollars, in fact. One I kept, the other I, ahem, invested in a second card. Alas - a loser this time. Happily, I managed to free myself from the claws of the gambling demon, and I suppose I should count myself lucky that, over the long term, I broke even.