r/baseball • u/_HGCenty Seattle Mariners • 11h ago

Players Only Dodgers' Alex Call blasts controversial Sydney Sweeney ad

https://www.thebiglead.com/dodgers-alex-call-sydney-sweeney-novig-commercial-soft-porn/

Since the last post about this got deleted because it contained a X screenshot, hopefully this one actually stays for comment.

2.6k Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.7k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

46

u/bantha42 Los Angeles Dodgers 10h ago

Kind of insane the 180 we did on gambling as a society seemingly overnight.

18

u/RogueModron Milwaukee Brewers 9h ago

I'm guessing there was some policy or policies that were quietly dismantled.

You ever wonder why televangelism and the associated scams got big in the 80s? Like why specifically then? There used to be a law that television stations had to give up a few hours of air time on Sundays (or it may have been the weekend) for cheap/free religious programming, that wasn't allowed to profit from this. Reagan did away with that. So the wolves swooped in and started in with the prosperity gospel and made tons of money on it.

This is obviously a paraphrase and honestly it's half-remembered from when I read the excellent book Sleepwalking Through History by Haynes Johnson about the Reagan years, but it's correct in the broad strokes.

The point is, it's usually some small and boring policy change that has huge consequences.

2

u/Artistic_Bit6866 Milwaukee Brewers 8h ago

The administration’s favorable policies towards prediction markets, which their family members are invested in, has accelerated this. Things were already trending towards more gambling, but it’s been supercharged

1

u/jimihenderson New York Mets 8h ago

there's really no "we". there's a commission of people who decided that money is more important than protecting people who are weak and vulnerable to this specific thing. most people tend to have the same beliefs on it, freedom is a good thing and overregulation of how we spend our money isn't the government's business, but much like cigarettes we don't need to see ads rubbing our noses in it at every corner and the degree to which it is predatory towards children should probably have some regulation. at least that's how everyone i know looks at it and has always looked at it