What’s with all of the cheaters all the sudden? In Ohio, two Walleye fishermen were caught wet-handed stuffing lead weights and other fish (yes, I said other fish!) into their fish to cheat out their competitors.
Just days before, I used to be shocked, shocked to find cheating can have been happening during a Hustler Casino Live Texas Hold ’Em tournament in Los Angeles, and even the often tortoise-paced world of skilled chess was startled right into a near eyebrow-raise by escalating suspicions that a 19-year-old American grandmaster could also be a cheater, pumpkin eater as well.
It’s almost like there’s something baked into American culture that encourages this form of thing. To be fair, briefly, investigations are continuing into allegations of cheating on the poker table in Los Angeles and on the earth of chess. I’d say after reviewing the unbelievable reveal on the Walleye tournament that there isn’t any doubt that the 2 fishermen in query were properly hooked.
How lots of us know real-world cheaters who’ve just plain gotten ahead, not despite their short-cutting but due to it?
The query is, what number of other tournaments did they cheat their way through to get to the highest of the rostrum (assuming they use podiums in fishing competitions)? No joke, seems there’s numerous money involved and greater than just a few amateur anglers ready with pitchforks and torches.
We’ve got been told by sages across the ages that cheaters never win, and it looks like in these recent cases that will prove true. The Ohio guys in reality barely got out of their cheating scandal alive once the opposite fellows discovered what they were as much as.
But sadly, how lots of us know real-world cheaters who’ve just plain gotten ahead, not despite their short-cutting but due to it? That guy who lifted answers over your shoulder in freshman yr, or the opposite one who bought a few term papers that landed him in an Ivy? Still waiting for his or her comeuppance? Nah, they’re leading major American corporations today.
“Aquinas said a bit gambling was a superb thing, actually, since it contributes to ‘eutrapelia,’ the virtue of knowing the way to have a bit harmless fun.”
Cheating is as American as Thomas Alva Edison. Just ask the unique tenants of the island called Manhattan. How long will or not it’s before this rant is lifted off the America Media website and published, shamelessly, elsewhere? (Yeah, I’m taking a look at you “Catholic News” aggregators!) The Jesuit world has known its cheaters too. The Boston College basketball scandal of 1978-79 comes, painfully, to mind.
Fortunately, Catholic Americans can turn to the next authority for guidance on cheating. The great old Catechism attends to the issue in paragraph 2413: “Unfair wagers and cheating at games constitute grave matter, unless the damage inflicted is so slight that the one who suffers it cannot reasonably consider it significant.”
[Online gambling is here. And it’s going to be a disaster for sports and fans alike.]
I assume losing greater than 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 dollars in a single hand of poker could also be significant to a few of us, but I do admire the emphasis here on “unfair wagering.” The preceding instruction notes: “Games of likelihood (card games, etc.) or wagers usually are not in themselves contrary to justice.”
My compadre James Keane, who offers no quarter to cheaters, long may he prosper, tells me: “Aquinas said a bit gambling was a superb thing, actually, since it contributes to ‘eutrapelia,’ the virtue of knowing the way to have a bit harmless fun.”
Gambling, the Catechism warns, becomes morally unacceptable when it deprives someone “of what’s mandatory to supply for his needs and people of others.”
So go right ahead and gamble and wager, fellow Catholics! Enter that chess or Walleye tournament! Why not each? Have some harmless fun. Shout “Bingo!” to the rafters.
Catholics wish to have a superb time, and the church reminds us on occasion that it’s O.K. to have a superb time, and what’s more fun than the minor thrill experienced going mano-a-mano on a small wager or in a good-natured competition? I really like “shooting the moon,” especially once I don’t understand how I did it.
It’s only once we go too far to win all of it, doing an injustice to friends, family or fellow competitors, that the games and tournaments are not any longer life-affirming diversions but darker exercises that gnaw away at something essential. Gambling, the Catechism warns, becomes morally unacceptable when it deprives someone “of what’s mandatory to supply for his needs and people of others.” A passion for gambling “risks becoming an enslavement” that offends human dignity.
The American ethos to win in any respect costs, get ahead in any respect costs, downplays such cautions, but they’re value keeping in mind whether you’re playing on the Hustler Casino (and if that’s the case, get out of there!) or across the kitchen table.
Perhaps these cheating players and competitors and heads of major corporations might need to drop in on paragraph 2413 sometime. We average schmoes may not know what scam or shortcut they applied to get ahead, but they surely do. And I even have bad news for them: The next power than a tournament judge does, too.
