David McKee

That’s pretty much what happened after the Caesars Entertainment CEO’s damp squib of a “keynote” (more like a footnote) address to the Global Gaming Expo faithful. The disorganized, sometimes incomprehensible jeremiad laid an Imperial Palace-sized egg. For instance, why aren’t casinos as omnipresent as McDonalds around the globe? (Loveman frequently raised the subject of Big Macs and why our consumption of them shouldn’t be regulated.) Because many Third World countries are cesspools of corruption and havens for money-laundering, just for starters. For the most part, Loveman flailed at anti-gambling canards that have fallen by the wayside. Just because some little old lady legislator in Massachusetts disrespected Loveman during a debate, that’s no cause for the rest of the industry to get its nose out of joint.

The only interesting moment was when Prof. Loveman rolled a TV spot that Penn National Gaming ran against Cordish Gaming in Maryland last fall — although its disingenuous text was straight from the Moral Majority playbook. Also, if you hadn’t followed the Arundel Mills controversy, you wouldn’t know who the antagonists were because Loveman didn’t name names (a gesture of faux-detente toward Penn, with whom Caesars is carving up the Ohio market?). Thanks to a production snafu, the story is running a week late, although the added layer of irrelevance is somehow appropriate to one of the bigger nonevents of 2010.