Stop Predatory Gambling

In what may have been the best TV ad of yesterday’s Super Bowl, Chrysler ran a powerful ad showing rap artist Eminem driving one of its sedans with visual images of the city of Detroit as a backdrop.  You can watch it below. Some of the shots include smoking factories, the Spirit of Detroit statue, the Diego Rivera murals, the Detroit skyline, downtown architecture and the skating rink at Campus Martius Park. The voice-over in the commercial emphasizes what differentiates Detroit from other large cities in the United States, notably including a reference to “Sin City” in spite of the casinos operating in Detroit. At the end of the commercial, Eminem arrives at the Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit, where a gospel choir is on stage in the empty theater, singing harmony to Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself.” Eminem approaches the choir and turns to face the camera, saying “This is the Motor City, and this is what we do.”

Predatory gambling interests and the public officials who support them repeatedly promote the false narrative that casinos are good for “jobs.” Yet the fact that there was not one image of the Detroit casinos in the ad speaks volumes. “This is what we do”  obviously does not include predatory gambling because we cannot build a city or a country on phony prosperity and nothing better symbolizes phony prosperity than casinos.