Online gambling interview makes for truly terrible television

A Fox Television current affairs program hosted by former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee plumbed the depths of biased and perhaps deliberately misleading television this week when anti-online gambling campaigner Blanche Lincoln aired her views, which are startlingly similar and equally questionable as those espoused by land casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson in his big-money efforts to outlaw internet gambling.

Huckabee, himself reportedly a friend of Adelson and a possible 2016 presidential candidate for the Republicans, quickly showed himself to be supportive of former Arkansas senator Lincoln, pandering to her at times wildly inaccurate and ignorant comments on the industry.

Setting the theme for the hopelessly unbalanced six-minute segment, the network screened one of the misleading CSIG advertisements funded so generously by Adelson and showing a sub-teen on a bus indulging in some mobile poker, “easily” using his father’s credit card.

Reviewing the interview, respected industry journalist Steve Ruddock aptly characterised the interplay between the two Razorbacks as “….a grand old time flinging out wild, uncontested, accusations about online gambling, in what appeared to be little more than an attempt to one-up each other to see who could make the more outlandish / inflammatory / frightful claim.

“The interview is a thing of beauty, if you consider misinformation, ignorance, and patently false statements beautiful.”

Knowledgeable poker blogs were quick to agree with Ruddock’s assessment and publish detailed rebuttals on some of the outrageously inaccurate comments and assumptions made by Lincoln – see the full arguments here:

http://www.uspoker.com/blog/blanche-lincoln-segment-mike-huckabee-show-full-nonsense/9194/

http://njpokeronline.net/3276/huckabee-fox-news-lie-about-online-gambling/