No shortage of propaganda with lottery commercial

For many months now, I've found Missouri Lottery's Play it Forward ad campaign off-putting.

I don't hold a negative opinion that our state uses gaming revenue to support our schools. But the ads have used children and teenagers as marketing props to sell lottery tickets, which are limited to adults.

In one ad, an African American teenager dodges and avoids several social opportunities from friends through the school hallways to make his way to meet with a small girl whom he is tutoring in the library.

The message is simple: Your lottery purchases should make you feel good, even when you lose. So keep on playing! You've helped give billions of dollars to education!

More recently, I've seen another ad. The ad shows several adults talking about why they "play it forward." One adult says she plays it forward to help special education. That's taking it a step too far. Now a government entity is leveraging disabilities to sell lottery tickets.

The ad campaign has gone from disingenuous to distasteful.

But people appear to be buying what the lottery is selling here.

According to a news release issued in June by the Missouri Lottery, sales during the past fiscal year "generated record proceeds for public education, surpassing $288.8 million and exceeding last year's then-record by $8.8 million or 3.13 percent. Today's final transfer for the fiscal year was the second-largest ever at $30.2 million."

May Scheve Reardon, executive director of the Missouri Lottery, said, "The 'Play It Forward' campaign has helped us bring in $10 in sales for every $1 spent on advertising. That's amazing."

Congratulations, Missouri. What a resounding success.

I looked at the aforementioned ad a little differently in the context of what's happening in politics lately.

Last week, Holly Rehder, a Republican state representative from Sikeston, made a reference to Nazi propaganda to warn the public of what she saw as Gov. Jay Nixon's mind tricks. Rehder took some heat for referencing Nazi Germany, a faux pas in today's society, particularly with Jewish people. Nixon was touring the state warning of catastrophic consequences to schools and other emotion-invoking programs, should lawmakers override his veto of a tax cut.

I see Rehder's point. Nixon, as has been the case with Democrats at every turn, use elderly, the poor and children in order to bend minds in their direction. In this case, Nixon warned that if tax cuts were to be made, our children's education, autism services and other heart-string programs would be in peril.

This drives Republicans nuts, and they often react foolishly.

Politics has become the mastery of using fear tactics. OK, governor, you want to scare the schools and the elderly and the parents of autism? Well, that's not as scary as Hitler! Watch out, Sheeple! Don't believe in that fear, THIS is the fear that really matters!

Propaganda is defined by Merriam-Webster as "ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc."

It's hard to argue that Rehder isn't guilty of using propaganda in her very own statement on the topic. In this case, the governor won the propaganda war. The veto was not overturned, largely because local school districts pressured their representatives to not vote in favor of the override.

Any lawmaker who voted for the recent guns bill override (which fell one vote short in the senate), is a walking propaganda machine. Anyone who says they support the constitution and supported that bill is feeding you a line no less insincere than that lottery ad. That bill contained an outright attack on the First Amendment, and lawmakers who supported it didn't care, even though some acknowledged it would eventually be found unconstitutional. So when the gun bill supporters say they support the constitution, what they really mean is they support the Second Amendment. And that's only because they care about voting demographics and the NRA. They pander to a constituency's emotions, and leverage that fear to try to pass junk laws for political advancement. Propaganda.

What you do, on a personal level, with political propaganda is up to you. At the newspaper we tell you what your elected officials are saying, and we hope you come to your own truthful conclusions.

I would like to step down from this lengthy soapbox with this:

Dear reader, if you want to help children with disabilities, for goodness sake, don't buy a lottery ticket. For every dollar you spend on the lottery, only 25 cents goes to education. If you really want to feel good about helping education, specifically if you want to help children who have disabilities, use that $20 you're spending on a lottery ticket to give to any number of awesome charities. Donate to the Read to Succeed program. Locally, Melaina's Magical Playland still needs donations. If you know parents of a disabled child, buy a gift card for a movie and volunteer to watch their child for a night out. Those are safe bets, folks.

Let's be honest. You buy lottery tickets for an unreasonable chance to get rich. That's all there is to it. And if you lose, you've just wasted 75 cents on the dollar that could've gone to education. Lottery is what it is.

There's no good reason to feel good about a lottery ticket unless you hit it big. And that's not propaganda.

Bob Miller is the editor of the Southeast Missourian. He can be reached by email at bmiller@semissourian.com