On Jon Stewart and Online Poker; or, For Every Action There Is an Indignant and Opposite Overreaction

Seeing references the last couple of days from poker people responding to something Jon Stewart said on The Daily Show earlier this week regarding online gambling in New Jersey.

The Poker Players Alliance and others are mildly up in arms about what they’re saying was an unfair characterization of online poker by Stewart. However, looking back at the clip and statement, that itself sounds like an unfair characterization of what Stewart actually said.

It came up as a short postscript to a segment not about online gambling or online poker, but rather about the issue of legalizing marijuana (on the April 20 show, natch) -- one you can watch on the Comedy Central site here. Amid that discussion, reference was made to New Jersey Governor and potential presidential candidate Chris Christie saying he is opposed to pot being legal, noting also how states allowing its sale are in conflict with federal law.

“Marijuana is a gateway drug,” Christie says in a clip played on The Daily Show from a recent appearance by Christie on The Hugh Hewitt Show, a syndicated radio show. “We have an enormous addiction problem in this country.... Marijuana is an illegal drug in this country under federal law, and the states should not be permitted to sell it and profit from it.”

Stewart’s response to that position is to bring up Christie having signed into law the online gambling bill back in February 2013 that opened up poker and other casino games to online players in New Jersey. Actually Stewart doesn’t bring it up specifically, but rather plays another clip from another news show reporting that.

“There is a difference though, to be fair,” concludes Stewart via his usual deadpan. “If you smoke too much pot, no one comes to break your f*cking knees.”

It’s obvious that while Stewart did evoke a long legacy of gambling being associated with other criminal activity -- including violence -- to get a laugh, he hardly “attacked online poker” as Rich Muny of the PPA has tweeted out (and which others are also saying).

The point of the observation by Stewart is entirely muted by that response, actually. Rather than “attack” online gambling directly, Stewart is showing what appears to be an inconsistent position by Christie regarding the ability of states to pass laws that aren’t in accord with federal laws. Christie allowed legislation in New Jersey that goes against the feds’ legal stance on online gambling, Stewart and The Daily Show are pointing out, which seems to contradict what he is now saying about individual states legalizing the sale of pot despite federal laws making it illegal.

Those responding to this tangential reference to online gambling (and online poker) as though it were an “attack” are building it up into something it is not, thereby making it seem as though Stewart -- someone with a fair amount of influence -- is some kind of threat to the cause when he clearly isn’t.

Anyone remember way back in 2006 -- before even the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act was passed into law -- when Stewart joked about members of Congress arguing about legislating against online poker (and other forms of gambling) while permitting wagering over the internet on lotteries and horse racing? Again, there was an inconsistency worth highlighting and a source of some ready grins. (Here’s that clip on the Comedy Central site.)

In order to reflect on the absurdity of allowing some forms of online gambling and not others, Stewart evoked Alaska senator Ted Stevens’ much-derided characterization of the internet as “a series of tubes.” Aided by some hilarious animation, Stewart explained how poker chips clog up the tubes whereas horses can run through them easily and lottery balls blow through them without a problem.

When making that point about the inconsistency present in the bill being proposed (that would eventually become the UIGEA), was Stewart attacking gambling over the internet on horse racing and lotteries? Well, he wasn’t promoting those things, but he was hardly attacking them, either. In truth the observation implied support for online poker, although there, too, that would be reading something definite into the segment that was only implied at best.

Stewart didn’t “attack” online poker this week. I don’t think it makes sense to attack him as though he did.

The Real Reporters

Kind of a weird, unsettling confluence of events related to the reporting of news and journalism this week.

Much revered television correspondent Bob Simon died Wednesday in a car accident at the age of 73. Best known for his regular contributions on 60 Minutes and 60 Minutes II, Simon had a long, storied career reaching back to reporting on the Vietnam conflict and including covering the Persian Gulf War in in 1991, the latter assignment having involved him being imprisoned with his crew for nearly seven weeks. Read more about his incredible life and career over at CBS here.

Then yesterday New York Times columnist and author David Carr died suddenly at age 58, collapsing in the office not long after having just moderated a panel discussion earlier in the day about Edward Snowden. During his career Carr produced a lot of insightful commentary about the media and popular culture (including social media), and among the tributes being written today is a good, detailed one over at the NYT.

Just this past Monday, Carr was writing about Brian Williams, the NBC anchor who found himself in an imbroglio after revelations came to light over his having misrepresented details of a story regarding his reporting on the 2003 Iraq War. Carr was highly critical of Williams in the piece, although expressed some sympathy for his plight as a 21st-century network anchor-slash-celebrity.

“We want our anchors to be everywhere, to be impossibly famous, globe-trotting, hilarious, down-to-earth, and above all, trustworthy,” concluded Carr, summarizing points he had made about Williams and his purported role. “It’s a job description that no one can match.” (Williams, as you’ve probably heard, has been suspended by NBC for six months, a move many think will serve as a means to remove him entirely as the network’s lead anchor.)

Also on Monday came Jon Stewart’s announcement of his intention to leave The Daily Show at some point later this year, the “fake news” show he has hosted since 1999. There was a point somewhere during the mid-2000s -- right around the time or just after the much-misreported Iraq invasion, I believe -- that you began to hear statistics reporting how more Americans were getting their news from Stewart’s satirical program than from “straight” news shows and networks.

I’m fascinated (and at times awed) by journalism and journalists, an interest that has been further fueled by all of the political reporting from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s that I’ve immersed myself in as I nurture my fixation with Richard Nixon (and JFK and LBJ). There is so much that is good to read -- and to watch, too, as practically everything you might be curious about when it comes to presidents, politics, and reporting on both is readily available online.

The work of those who helped chronicle those decades first-hand -- from whom I’m gathering information and knowledge and a true education -- is incredibly valuable. As is the work of those serving similar roles today.

While I’ve had many chances to play “reporter” over the years -- both in poker and in other contexts -- I’ve never considered myself a journalist per se, even if whenever I write for an audience I earnestly endeavor to adhere to standards recognized by actual journalists.

Being a journalist -- a good one, that is -- requires such a difficult balance of effort, energy, honesty, integrity, creativity, imagination, and intelligence. It also requires a kind of instinctive selflessness that helps one to know how a story is supposed to be reported (that is, what is correct and needful as defined by one’s audience) as well as how one can report a story (that is, what one’s own limits are, defined both personally and in terms of audience).

There are other ethics -- a whole, detailed “code” -- when it comes to journalism with which many aren’t necessarily familiar, the details of which I also find fascinating to contemplate sometimes as I read and respond to others’ reporting. The more I do -- and the more I am exposed to genuinely excellent reporting -- the clearer it becomes how those who become good, solid, actual journalists have not just made a commitment, they’ve chosen a particular way of life.

“If you want to be loved, journalism is a poor career choice,” tweeted Simon about a year-and-a-half ago, perhaps representing that sentiment somewhat. It’s a line that carries a faint irony in retrospect, given the love for his work many have expressed in the wake of his passing. It’s also one that reminds me that as much as I admire the real reporters, they’ve made a choice I have not.

McCain Under the Gun

An item that popped up last week while I was in Barcelona was this story about former presidential candidate and U.S. senator John McCain getting caught playing a poker game on his iPhone during a Committee on Foreign Relations hearing. Not that any hearing of such a committee is unimportant, but in this case the topic was the possible use of force in Syria -- still being considered and the subject of President Obama’s prime time speech last night -- thus exposing McCain to some censure for having allowed his focus to drift.

When I saw a few tweets and then followed a link or two to read about the incident last week, I initially thought it was a Photoshop-fueled hoax. But soon it became clear that the photo above taken by Washington Post photographer Melina Mara was exactly what it appeared to be. McCain was playing a play money game, VIP Poker, and it looks like he was calling from under the gun with Q-2-offsuit (click to enlarge).

Almost unseemly to use that term in this particular context. “Under the gun,” I mean.

I immediately thought of the first chapter of James McManus’s Cowboys Full in which he focuses a lot on poker-playing presidents, and in fact draws a pretty sharp distinction between Obama and McCain.

Tipping his hand (pun intended) in terms of his political leanings, McManus favorably highlights Obama’s poker-playing background both by noting the many correspondences between political tactics and poker strategy while also linking Obama to a long list of U.S. presidents who played the game.

Meanwhile McCain is contrastingly drawn as a lesser candidate in part because of what seems a willful turning away from poker. McManus tells of McCain’s father, John S. McCain, Sr., once advising his children “Life is run by poker players, not systems analysts,” then notes how John III “turned out to prefer craps, a loud, mindless game in which the player never has a strategic advantage and must make impulse decisions and then rely on blind luck.”

Some might recall how in the run-up to the 2008 election both Obama’s poker background and McCain’s preference for craps were briefly highlighted, most particularly in a Time feature by Michael Weisskopf and Michael Scherer appearing in July and titled “Candidates’ Vices: Craps and Poker.” Going further than McManus does in his chapter, the article vigorously searches for all sorts of meaning in the two gambling games to discover ways they might reflect personality and indicators of leadership ability.

It was the memory of these stories about McCain and craps that probably added to my skepticism when first seeing the story last week. Wait, I thought... he was playing poker? But that’s not his game...?

Shortly after Mara’s photo whipped around the web, McCain deflected the incident with a jokey tweet that shruggingly tried to make light of its significance. “Scandal!” tweeted McCain. “Caught playing iPhone game at 3+ hour Senate hearing - worst of all I lost!”

Well, of course he lost. I mean really, limping queen-deuce UTG?

Op-eds since have mostly fallen into two categories -- Sheer Outrage and No Biggie. Late night comedians have all taken their shots, too. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show used more acid than others in his treatment:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

David Letterman was relatively tame with his top ten:

And over on Conan O’Brien’s show came a sorta inspired clip from a newly imagined C-SPAN show, The Senatorial Hearing Poker Challenge:

However one responds to the story, it is safe to say “poker” doesn’t come off all that well here, once again playing the role of troublemaker.

I suppose the story wouldn’t have played too differently had McCain’s chosen game had been Words With Friends or Plants vs. Zombies. But there’s something about poker and the ready application of the game, its vocabulary, and its strategies to the world of politics that made the incident all the more enticing. And made it all the more likely to be passed around the web by the rest of us, similarly distracted by our phones.

Funny Business

All grins here at Hard-Boiled Poker just now. Had some SNG successes today -- something I haven’t really even tried in months -- which is always fun. (Will write about that in the next post.) Also in the past few weeks I’ve come across some poker-related raillery I thought it might be time to share. The yuks begin paragraph after next, so get ready to start laughin’ . . . .

A little while back I finally found Pocket Fives, a website devoted to online poker that’s been around since early 2005. They host a very active forum, post articles containing strategy advice and other items of interest, and produce a highly-listenable weekly podcast. Even though the site has been up and running for less than two years, Pocket Fives has already built up a significant presence not just online but in the poker world at large. Several regular contributers to the Pocket Fives’ forums achieved major success at this year’s WSOP, including three who won bracelets: Jon Friedberg (Pokertrip) in the $1,000 NLH event (Event No. 17), Ian Johns (Ian J) in the $3,000 LH event (Event No. 23), and Scott Clements (JRAvila) in the $3,000 Omaha 8/b event (Event No. 24). Also, back in April there was a bit of a dust-up when Full Tilt Poker sent out one of its regular “Tips from the Pros” containing material plagiarized from a Pocket Fives post. The pro in question was Clonie Gowen, and her tip about playing re-buy tourneys contained an entire paragraph taken almost verbatim from a post by jsup on Pocket Fives. (Here’s a well-written summary of the sordid affair posted on the poker blog O-Town.)

The July 20th episode of the Pocket Fives podcast features a couple of interviews. One is with WSOP bracelet-winner Friedberg (who sounds like an intelligent, likable guy). The other is with someone introduced as “one of the funniest posters ever to grace the site,” a fellow who goes by the name of “BigHems.” His post “OMG?!?! YOU LIKED THE LAST ONE THIS ONE IS 83957894x WORSE!” won the site’s award for funniest post of 2005. Here’s the post followed by all the responses. Check it out.

Here are a few other funnies I’ve come across lately (via forums and blogs): Click here for undisputable proof that online poker is rigged. Click here to read a list of ways to know when you’re running bad. Click here to see one of those hilarious online poker videos by TuffFish (the guy who rants himself into a stupor while playing NL online at Party). Click here to read an old thread on the 2+2 Forums begun by a enterprising young man soliciting advice about starting his own home casino. And finally, click here to see Jon Stewart of Comedy Central's The Daily Show explain H.R. 4111, that version of the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act passed by the House last month.

Hope them links all worked for ya. Remember, when in doubt, do like BigHems and go all in to see where you’re at.