Monthly Archives: March 2022

The Small Town In Indiana Boasting World-Famous Pie Is The Sweetest Day Trip Destination – Only In Your State

Posted: March 8, 2022 at 10:26 pm

Posted in Indiana Dining March 08, 2022by Tori Jane

Hey, so, quick question: what do you look for when choosing a place to go for, say, a day trip? Is it something about the surrounding natural beauty there, or is it the things to do in whatever town you end up in? Do you lean toward places where you already know people, or maybe places where you hope to make new friends? Okay, all of those are good starts, but what about pie? Yeah, pie. Hear us out: why not go somewhere that has a killer pie shop and simply expand your day trip from there? We think its genius. Well, it just so happens that Zionsville is the perfect place for this, and its home to a shop that might just have the best pie in Indiana. Once youre done with the pie, explore the rest of the town, too.

During these uncertain times, please keep safety in mind and consider adding destinations to your bucket list to visit at a later date.

We're not sure if it's all that love that goes into each and every recipe or what, but man, this place has got what it takes to be considered among the best pie shops in Indiana.

Good luck, however, figuring out what the heck you want. With more than 30 amazing flavors to choose from, we don't blame you for feeling a little overwhelmed (it's okay, we were too).

If cream pie isn't your thing, no worries - there's a huge selection of fruit pies, silk pies, seasonal pies, custom pies, and more. Pick up one (or 10, we don't judge) and indulge before checking out the rest of Zionsville.

It's got big-city spirit despite the fact it's a small town, and we think you'll love the sense of community shared here even with folks who are just visiting.

Head to the Zionsville Cultural District and enjoy local arts and entertainment, as well as eateries you won't find anywhere else but right here. For the more outdoorsy among us, did you know Zionsville is home to the largest land-per-capita parks system in Indiana? It's true - enjoy countless parks and lots of awesome natural attractions sure to keep you visiting every time you get a chance.

Zionsville is a little slice of utopia - or so it feels. Everyone here is just a little kinder, just a little friendlier, just a little more laid-back; you're sure to feel welcome and wanted here. It's definitely one of those places where everyone likes to learn your name.

We don't blame you; Zionsville is one of our favorite places, too.

For the full menu, as well as the most up-to-date hours and specials, be sure to check out the official My Sugar Pie website. Where do you find the best pie in Indiana? Tell us about your favorite spots in the comments!

Address: Zionsville, IN 46077, USA

Address: 40 E Pine St, Zionsville, IN 46077, USA

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The Small Town In Indiana Boasting World-Famous Pie Is The Sweetest Day Trip Destination - Only In Your State

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Eat your favourite breakfast and we’ll tell you if Dreamcatcher’s charming rapper Dami will join you – PINKVILLA

Posted: at 10:26 pm

Lee Yu Bin or simply known by her stage name Dami is a Korean artist under Dreamcatcher Company. She is also the main rapper, lead dancer and vocalist of K-Pop girl group Dreamcatcher and a former member of MINX. On September 18, 2014, she debuted as a member of MINX with the single Why Did You Come to My Home? On November 29, 2016, Happyface Entertainment announced that MINX would re-debut under the name Dreamcatcher, where two new members Gahyeon and Handong were added to the group.

In October, Dami, together with fellow members JiU, Siyeon and Yoohyeon, became contestants on the survival show MIXNINE. However, on December 10, it was announced that all four members would be leaving the show. With the third installment, the group announced their new comeback with their sixth EP, Dystopia: Road to Utopia and its lead single Odd Eye, which was released on January 26, 2021. Dami and Siyeon released an OST for the drama Black Hole in two versions, the original version debuted at number 1 on K-OSTs chart and on number 5 on the Rock charts.

On July 1, Dreamcatcher announced their management contract with Pony Canyon will end on August 31, 2021. On July 30, Dreamcatcher made their comeback with the song BEcause and the special EP Summer Holiday. In February 2022, it was announced that Dreamcatcher will release their second Korean studio album in April.

ALSO READ:SEVENTEENs The8 tests positive for COVID-19

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Is Dami eating breakfast with you? Let us know in the comments below.

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Eat your favourite breakfast and we'll tell you if Dreamcatcher's charming rapper Dami will join you - PINKVILLA

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How John Gunther’s ‘Death Be Not Proud’ Inaugurated an American Genre – The Atlantic

Posted: at 10:26 pm

The book was probably unpublishable. About that fact both the author and his longtime editor agreed. But the author was determined, and he had on his side a brilliant publishing record. For more than a decade, starting in 1936 with his Inside Europe, the reporter John Gunther had been a fixture on the best-seller lists. From the mid-1930s through the 1950s, no one, save the romance novelist Daphne du Maurier, had produced more American best sellers than Gunther.

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Gunthers unpublishable book was a memoir: an account of the death, in 1947, of his 17-year-old son, Johnny, from a brain tumor. Gunther had started writing while the experience of Johnnys illness was still raw, finishing the book in a few weeks, six months after his sons death. Hed set out with the idea of a privately circulated memoir, the sort of volume of remembrances printed in a few hundred copies that parents of soldiers killed in action sent to friends and relations. But as he finished the manuscript, he began to think it should be published for a wider audience.

Surely the book was too personal, Gunthers publisher, Harper & Brothers, objected. Who would want to read such a dismal book about a complete stranger? And wasnt it indecent to broadcast an intimate story of suffering in public? But Gunther prevailed. He and his editor came to an agreement: The book would be published with a notice on the jacket that neither Harper & Brothers nor Gunther himself would take any profits from its sale; all the proceeds from the book would go to fund cancer research for children. And with that disclaimer, a title borrowed from a John Donne poem, and a dignified buff jacket ornamented only by a small drawing of a dove, Harper & Brothers published Gunthers Death Be Not Proud in February 1949 in a modest print run.

Larger print runs quickly followed. By the time that I first read the book, in 1981, it was a mass-market paperback that had sold hundreds of thousands of copiesa publishing success well beyond anything that either Gunther or Harper & Brothers could have imagined. It had been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Hindi, and Portuguese, among other languages. For decades, Death Be Not Proud was required reading in many American high schools. In 1960, my mother read it in her tenth-grade civics class in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the only one of Gunthers books that has remained continuously in print.

In our time, when the intimate memoir has become commonplace, Harper & Brothers queasy reaction to Gunthers project is a reminder of an era when stringent rules of reticence still reigned. The publics unexpected embrace of the book is disorienting too. The usual assumption is that the modern, unguarded memoirs origins lie in the narcissism of the 1990s, or the self-revelatory zeal of the 70s. But Gunthers surprise hit points to a different genesis: the anti-fascism of the 30s and widespread revulsion at the dehumanizing horrors of World War II. The predominance of the genre todaywhich we think about as a celebration of Ihad its beginnings in an attempt to heal the collective we.

By the mid-1930s, the rules about what couldand couldntbe discussed in public were changing. The First World War had toppled hierarchies, fraying parental authority and upending rules of propriety. The popularization of Freudian ideas helped make talk about familial dynamics and sexual urges at least semirespectable. The newly founded tabloid papers took advantage of the publics interest in private lives, inaugurating I Confess! competitions that stoked a market for tales of infidelity, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and other misdeeds. Send in the best confessionanonymously, of courseand the cash prize was yours. In Akron, Ohio, the first Alcoholics Anonymous group met in the summer of 1935, propelled by the idea that sharing, either for confession or for bearing witness, was a first and necessary step on the road to sobriety.

The agents provocateurs of this new culture of openness were people born, like Gunther and the AA co-founder Bill Wilson, in the couple of decades around the turn of the 20th century. They were members of the so-called Lost Generation, who, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald (a banner member of the club), had grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. Many of them had lived for a spell in Europe, either as soldiers or as expatriates. Collectively, this generation went on to produce a landmark tell-all book about alcoholism and institutionalization (William Seabrooks Asylum) and the frankest account of a marriage ever published (Vincent Sheeans Dorothy and Red), as well as Gunthers pioneering Death Be Not Proud.

Even in rarefied literary circles, though, self-exposure was still risky. Take Fitzgeralds 1936 excursion into self-revelation: the three essays he published in Esquire magazine, later collected under the title The Crack-Up. By todays standards, Fitzgeralds account of his nervous breakdown, eloquent as it is, hardly registers on the confessional scale. He likened himself to a cracked plate, claimed (untruthfully) that hed quit drinking, and expressed his despair about the future of the novel after the advent of the talkies. His account of self-immolation was impressionistic and evasive, written as if from behind a veil. He avoided entirely the subject of his wife, Zelda, and her mental illness. Still, his longtime editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt he had committed an indecent invasion of his own privacy. Fitzgerald himself ended up fearing hed damaged his reputation permanently.

The fact that so many of the taboo-shredding American memoirists had lived in Europe wasnt a coincidence. They had seen up close the battle among fascism, communism, and democracy playing out after the First World War. Inevitably, they took sides and came to rethink their place in the world. This doesnt accord with the stereotype of the Lost Generation, its members drinking away their anomie in Parisian cafs. But as Brooke Blower noted in her insightful Becoming Americans in Paris (2011), that is because our conception of the Lost Generation is too limited. They werent simply running away; they were, as John Dos Passos put it, running toward the whole wide world.

The most avidly engaged expatriates were the foreign correspondents, like Gunther, whose job was to translate European news for American audiences. International journalism was thriving in the U.S., as papers such as the Chicago Daily News and the Philadelphia Public Ledger built up their own bureaus abroad rather than relying on wire services. Gunther spent his 20s and 30s dashing between European chancelleries, deciphering coup attempts and revolutions, trying to explain the rise of fascism and the consolidation of Soviet Communism.

Gunther had arrived in Europe in 1924, a cub reporter from Chicago, dreaming, like many of his journalist friends, of writing the Great American Novel. In 1925, he met Frances Fineman, a New Yorkborn Barnard graduate who had become a journalist, and the pair married two years later. An avowedly modern woman, Frances Gunther saw meaningful work and sexual fulfillment as her due: She expected marriage and a career, domesticity and adventure. A serious follower of Freud, she underwent at least four psychoanalyses, grappling with the ways that she frustrated herself, including by tryingand failingto write her own books. Stymied by a formidable writers block, she involved herself in Johns reporting, exhorting him to think harder about both the structural forcesshe was also a serious student of Marxand the psychological dynamics at play in a Europe recovering from a brutal war.

In part influenced by Frances, John came to recognize that the traditional tools of the newsroom hardly sufficed to convey what he was seeing. Objectivity was then, as it is now, the hallmark of the respectable paper. Yet Gunther found it impossible to report dispassionately on the rise of the Nazis or the Austrian dictator Engelbert Dollfusss bloody civil war against the Viennese Socialists. He felt mystified by the roaring crowds saluting strongmen and the seemingly irrational, passionate hatreds all around him. Writing articles on elections and bank failures struck him as simply scraping the surface of events. Like many young Americans, Gunther had taken for granted that the whole thrust of human history was toward freedom. But what if the leaders people freely chose were dictators rather than democrats?

Instead of looking for proclivities to authoritarianism in, say, German or Italian national character, Gunther trained his attention on the dictators themselves. He searched out Hitlers relatives in an Austrian backwater, trying to understand what had made him the man he was. Gunthers own psychoanalysis in Vienna with Wilhelm Stekel, one of Freuds first disciples, helped consolidate his views. Hed gone to Stekel wondering whether psychic strains might explain his worsening asthma, but soon was talking about his dissatisfactions with his work and marriage. In his reporting, he started to foreground unconscious urges: the psychological injuries of childhood, repression, frustrated sexual desires.

Feeling the world crashing in around them, he and Frances tracked for themselves how the patterns of public lifea dictators machinations, the betrayal of one nation by anothertranslated into private relations between husbands and wives, parents and children. This was what Virginia Woolf called in Three Guineas (1938) the inseparable interconnection between the tyrannies and servilities of the public and private worlds. The global economic crisis of the Great Depression, John thought, had precipitated his own personal upheaval.

Armed with a psychological framework, the Gunthers dedicated themselves to understanding how the pathologies of world leaders became the stuff of international crises. Gathering information about Stalins family life and Mussolinis marriage, about Atatrks mother fixation, about the emotional makeup of Hitlers henchmen, John broke the rules regarding fit topics for reporting. He put his argument right on the first page of Inside Europe: The fact may be an outrage to reason, but it cannot be denied: unresolved personal conflicts in the lives of various European politicians may contribute to the collapse of our civilization. So strong was the proscription against such disclosures that Gunther thought hed have to publish his book anonymously.

In the end, Gunther signed his name to the book, figuring he didnt want to stay a newspaperman forever anyway. Inside Europe became a sensation: hurriedly reprinted, translated into 14 languages, and banned in Germany, a fact that Gunthers other publishers ballyhooed in their advertising. President Franklin D. Roosevelts son Franklin Jr. took the book on his European honeymoon. The young John F. Kennedy toured the continent with Inside Europe in hand, his guide as he weighed the comparative evils of fascism and communism. The book made Gunther enough money that he could quit his day job as a reporter and devote himself, as hed always wanted, to writing books, novels as well as nonfiction. In September 1936, he, Frances, and Johnny, then 6, moved back to the United States after 12 years abroad.

In the decade that followed, Gunther scored two more publishing hits with his Inside Asia (1939) and Inside Latin America (1941), accompanied General Dwight Eisenhower in the invasion of Sicily, and became the sort of international expert asked to opine on everything from Japanese military strategy to the fortitude of the British home front. FDR invited him to the White House for a tte--tte. He and Frances separated in 1941 and then divorced in 1944, their troubled marriage a microcosm, they both thought, of a world at war. She went on to become an ardent campaigner against the British empire: an Indian nationalista confidant of Jawaharlal Nehrusand then a Zionist, and a leading figure in the American pressure campaigns for both causes.

In the spring of 1946, Gunther was busy writing the book hed planned about democracy, Inside U.S.A., when 16-year-old Johnny was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The prognosis was grim; radiation therapy began immediately, and the doctors bills piled up. John cried so much that Frances feared hed collapse. But he had to work. Hed barely made a dent in the books projected 50-plus chapters and was running out of money. While Johnny was undergoing treatment, John visited him at noon and in the eveningsFrances was there all afternoonand returned to his office, writing until 1 or 2 a.m. every night. Thank God for the end of daylight savings time, he noted in his diary: It gave him an extra hour to work. The Book-of-the-Month Club had chosen Inside U.S.A. as its selection for June 1947, a guarantee of big sales. To make that deadline, Harper & Brothers was typesetting the book a chapter at a time, as quickly as Gunther finished them.

From the April 1997 issue: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. on John Gunther and the writing of Inside U.S.A.

He met his deadline, and Inside U.S.A. hit the market with the largest initial print run in the history of American publishing, a half-million copies. Johnny died a month later, on June 30, 1947. At the end of the summer, Gunther put his sons papers in order: his schoolwork, his diaries, the letters he and Frances had exchanged with Johnny when they were away for eight months in 193738 reporting from Asia and, later, when he left for boarding school. John talked with Frances about writing a Johnny book. He arranged the hundreds of condolence letters theyd gottenbrief, embarrassed missives from friends and acquaintances, people never at a loss for what to say, acknowledging that the Gunthers grief was beyond words. Just after Christmas, he started writing.

The book, Gunther decided, would have three parts: his own narrative, then Johnnys lightly edited letters and diaries, and an afterword by Frances. Gunther had been jotting down notes and phrases all along on the colored slips of paper he always kept nearby. An old reporters habit: Hed recorded fragments of conversations, the offhand comments doctors and nurses made, Johnnys wry observations. His subject wouldnt be Johnnys lifethe usual territory of the In Memoriam volumebut how hed endured sickness. He was writing a blow-by-blow account of what happened to Johnnys brain.

It was, Gunther recognized, an unconventional approach. The standard mid-century source on American autobiography counts only 13 titles dealing with illness out of the more than 6,000 memoirs published before 1945. None of those is a chronicle of cancer, the subject of most illness memoirs today. After the Second World War, scientific advances in cancer therapeutics were just starting to extend survival rates, and with the new medical possibilities came a new narrative form, which derived its suspense from the twists and turns of treatment.

Gunther brought the skills of a spectacular newsman to bear on the story, taking the reader right into the situation with him. The call from Deerfield Academy, where Johnny was a junior, had come on an April afternoon in 1946. I think your child has a brain tumor, the doctor had blurted out. Gunther raced to western Massachusetts, picking Frances up in Connecticut on his way from New York. As soon as he saw the look on the doctors faces, he knew there was no hope of a recovery. Three days later, Johnny underwent a six-hour surgery at the Neurological Institute of New York. I got half of it, the surgeon told John.

David J. Linden: A neuroscientist with terminal cancer prepares for death

In the 14 months that followed, the Gunthers consulted more than 30 specialists. They searched for the latest medical miracle. Johnny was the first brain-tumor patient in the United States to be treated with mustard gas, an early form of chemotherapy; Gunther himself delivered the canisters full of the toxic stuff to the hospital. As Johnny grew sicker and sicker, they turned to the refugee physician Max Gerson, who insisted that a diet of fresh vegetables, no salt, no fat, and scant protein could cure cancer. And then, for some reason the doctors couldnt explainwas it the X-ray treatment, the mustard gas, or the diet?the tumor seemingly retreated. I was beside myself with a violent and incredulous joy. Johnny was going to recover after all!

Gunther wrote without euphemism. His metaphors were precise, his descriptions unflinching. The effect of that first surgery was akin to the explosion of a .45-caliber bullet, a doctor told him. He made use of a clinical vocabulary, translating the language of the medical case report: Papilledema, he explained, was swelling of the optic nerve; a ventriculogram required drilling holes through the skull. The surgeons left Johnnys skull open so that the tumor wouldnt be driven inward; the flap of scalp that covered the soft spot was the size of a mans hand. When the tumor began to grow again, a few months after the remission began, the surgeon excavated more than four inches into the brain, unable to find healthy tissue.

The multi-perspective memorial volume was a classic Victorian form, but Death Be Not Proud gave it a new purpose. Because each part struck a different emotional register, together they functioned as a sort of Inside Ustaking the reader into the familys private dynamics to understand how theyd coped. Gunthers tone was restrained and dignified: As to our own emotions I am trying not to write about them. He was reining in his feelings even as he was writing of intimate experiences, exposing just enough to make plain the weight he was carrying. The battle among the doctors over which course of treatment to pursue all but destroyed us. At times, Johnny seemed subconsciously hostile to me as if out of resentment at my good health. Johnny talked about death with Frances, but almost never with John, changing the subject when his father walked into the room.

Johnnys letters and diaries reproduced in the second part of the book bore witness to his character. They filled in the details of his life before the tumor: the affectionate young son writing home from summer camp, the prodigious schoolboy playing chess, experimenting in chemistry and physics. He maintained a chipper tone even after he got sick, valiantly cloaking his fear in humor. I have discovered Utopia here, Johnny wrote to a friend while in the hospital. No athletics, No worries. In his diaries, he admonished himself to make the best use of the time he had left, getting on with his schoolwork and his science projects. He fretted about his parents. In November 1946, as his tumor erupted again, he wrote: Ask parents what you can do to make them happy.

Francess afterword was the most personal and unabashedly emotional of the three parts. She wrote about her relationship with her son, her attempt to create of him a newer kind of human being: an aware person, without fear, and with love. To remake a war-ravaged world required people who cared about others, and Frances had started with her son. Shed reared him to become a cooperative rather than competitive person. But now that he was dead, she was consumed by guilt. She felt remorse about sending Johnny to boarding school; she regretted the divorce: I wished we had loved Johnny more when he was alive.

In 1949, the year that Death Be Not Proud was published, new ideas about both the individual and collective psyche were taking root. Rebuilding after the Second World War would require more than simply clearing away the bomb rubble and restarting industry; for the fragile peace to hold, a psychological reconstruction was imperative. President Harry Truman sent a message of encouragement to be read aloud at the American Psychiatric Associations annual meeting. The greatest prerequisite for peace, he observed, must be sanitysanity in its broadest sense, which permits clear thinking on the part of all citizens. To foster a sane and healthy postwar society, people would need to learn how to express the emotions theyd kept bottled up.

Caitlin Flanagan: The things I would never do

This was the context in which Death Be Not Proud caught fire. The old strictures on self-revelation that had hemmed in Fitzgerald hadnt entirely disappeared. According to the Hartford Times book critic, Gunthers book was just as breathtaking and shocking as would be a similar confession from a new neighbor, a complete stranger, who suddenly told you his familys most secret tragedy. But for every critic who objected to Gunthers almost indecent disclosures or the memoirs nauseating details, many more applauded its frankness and bravery. To read it was to undergo a magnificent human experience, wrote the Chicago Tribunes influential critic Fanny Butcher.

For John Donne, the phrase Death be not proud had conveyed a religious belief in immortality. Death, thou shalt die, Donne had written: One short sleep past, we wake eternally. Death Be Not Proud, by contrast, represented a bid for a secular afterlife, a testament to Johnnys courage. As much as it was about one boy, it was also about the worth of the individual writ large. In their sons illness, the Gunthers saw the same sort of dynamic that had haunted them in Europeit was as if the pattern of Johnnys illness were symbolic of so much of the conflict and torture of the external world. The battle between Johnnys fine mind and the savagery of the tumor was like the fight theyd witnessed in fascist Vienna and Berlin: A primitive to-the-death struggle of reason against violence, reason against disruption, reason against brute unthinking force.

To insist on the value of a single existence was to strike back at that shocking disregard for human life. Gunthers memoir was a literary counterpart to the work then under way in international law, where new concepts of human rights were being invented. As Death Be Not Proud went to press in the fall of 1948, delegates at the recently founded United Nations were debating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document proclaimed an inalienable right to live free from want and oppression and, still more novel, to develop fully ones own personality. After half a century of war and genocide that had claimed by conservative estimates more than 70 million lives, the defenders of the individual were gaining the upper hand.

The reading public received the book just that way. Thank God there are people like you who still realize the infinite value of one soul when the world is devising new means of mass killing, one woman wrote to Frances. Death Be Not Proud became an instant best seller. In American college towns as in county seats, it topped the list of the books that patrons requested in public libraries. As soon as the first excerpts appeared in Ladies Home Journal, then one of the largest-circulation magazines in the United States, the Gunthers found themselves deluged with letters. Readers thanked them for having the courage to put their own hearts into print. Some correspondents took the Gunthers relative openness about their divorce as an invitation to comment, and urged the couple to reconcile.

By far the largest number of letters, and there were thousands of them, came from grieving parents. Their children had died of meningitis, leukemia, or glioma; their sons had been killed in action in Germany or died in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Mostly mothers wrote, but occasionally fathers did too. Some unburdened themselves at great length, filling pages and pages, as though they hadnt been able to talk to anyone. A ministers attempt at consolationWe know it must be for the best. God doesnt make mistakeshad proved no comfort at all. These parents blamed themselves, as Frances had. They felt guilty that they couldnt afford more treatments and private doctors, or they regretted subjecting their children to painful operations. Dont you ever feel bitter? they asked the Gunthers. I expect you did, but I suppose that doesnt help does it?

These letters comprise an astonishing archive of the repressed grief in mid-20th-century America. Readers peeled pictures of their loved ones out of photograph albums, to enclose with their letters. A mother whose baby had died of pneumonia cut A Word From Frances out of the book and put it in her Bible with her babys footprints. One father ordered 20 copies of Death Be Not Proud to send to his relatives; his son had polio. Gunther had put their familys suffering into words. In turn, readers adopted his manner of narrating the course of an illness, telling him their stories, interspersing the clinical details with everyday accounts of how theyd tried to cope. It was as if hed given them not just permission but a template for relating their experiences.

Beginning in the late 1950s, a different set of readersreaders like my mothertook up Gunthers book. English teachers assigned Death Be Not Proud; the tribute to selfless bravery fit well on civics syllabi too. It became a popular selection for teen book clubs. Young readers wrote to Gunther in increasing numbers. They wished theyd known Johnny: He was the sort of boy theyd like to befriend or, someday, marry. They saw him as a model against which their own character should be measured, certain that they fell far short of his example. I only wish that I could be half the person Johnny was! wrote one high-school girl from Scarsdale, New York.

Gunthers teenage readers recognized Death Be Not Prouds redemptive message. It was a book about an individual whose selflessness was his most salient feature. As an eighth-grade boy in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, put it, His fight for life was not only for his mortal body but the lives of millions of people. But Johnnys wasnt the self-sacrifice of a Christ figure or the hardened courage of a soldier. It was something altogether more recognizable to young readers. Students put themselves in the shoes of Johnny, Frances, or John. Teachers encouraged that sympathetic identification by asking their pupils to write essays from the perspective of one of the characters in the book.

And yet, adolescents were so gripped by Death Be Not Proud precisely because it wasnt fiction. Like Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, which was translated into English in 1952, Gunthers memoir demonstrated how life had outpaced fiction, as millions of people all over the world, in the words of one Connecticut girl, shared in the tragedy of your sons death. It wasnt like the average book, she added, perhaps because this really happened. Teenagers requested photos of Johnny, details of his science experiments, more information about the couples divorce. Some people would say, Oh, its only a story, dont let it bother you, one reader wrote; but when you realize that it actually took place, it makes a person stop and think.

Gunthers young readers were the Baby Boomers, born into the prosperity and stability of a postwar world. Some of them later marched on Washington, protested the war in Vietnam, and eventually popularized the slogan The personal is political, an idea that owed much to the slippage between geopolitics and inner life that Gunther and his generation had first chronicled. Youth movements dont spend much time paying homage to their elders, and the rebels of the 1960s were no exception. But what the Boomers had learned from their transgressive 1930s forebears was that repression had to be combatted by openness and that no subject was beyond words.

Read: Why writing about bodies is vital

For this, at least in part, they had a once ubiquitous, now largely forgotten reporter and his ex-wife to thank. In 1926, Virginia Woolf had lamented how few writers had taken on the subject of illness. Sickness, she wrote, ought to be among the prime themes of literature, alongside love, warfare, and jealousy. John Gunther paved a way to talk about cancer and death in public, about divorce, pain, and parental remorse. He did so precisely because he was a reporter whod taken from the hellish world of the 1930s and 40s a conviction that the individual needed defending and that the full range of human experiences had to be told. In the next decades, when telling all became the norm, some part of that original impetus got lost, as the imperative to tend to the common good faded. If the I became detached from the we, that was above all else a measure of the late 20th centurys good fortune.

This article appears in the April 2022 print edition with the headline The Man Who Told All. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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How John Gunther's 'Death Be Not Proud' Inaugurated an American Genre - The Atlantic

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Wake Up With 3/7: Taron Egerton Collapses Onstage, and More – Broadway World

Posted: at 10:26 pm

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Scroll down for the latest news.

Today's top stories include the latest episode of The Aging Ingenue, a new single from Noah Reid, and more!

Plus, Taron Egerton collapsed onstage this weekend during the West End opening night preview performance of the Mike Bartlett play, Cock.

Read more about these and other top stories below!

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In today's episode: Claire picks up smoking and loses her phone - just a typical Tuesday morning. Starring Sara Jean Ford and her daughter. . (more...)

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VIDEO: TAKE ME OUT Gets Company Ready to Return to Broadwayby BroadwayWorld TV

In just days, the Second Stage Theater production of Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning play, Take Me Out, will officially begin previews at the Hayes Theater, where it was originally set to open almost two years ago. Right before Broadway shut down, BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge met with the company while they were still in rehearsals. We're looking back on that day ahead of the show's official return!. (more...)

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Singer-songwriter and actor Noah Reid today released the first single, "Everyday," from his upcoming album available to stream or download. "Everyday" offers a sublime introduction to the expansive sonic world of Reid's highly-anticipated new music, sharply contrasting the track's heavy-hearted mood with bright guitar tones and effervescent melodies. . (more...)

Taron Egerton Collapses At Opening Night of c*ckPreviewsby Marissa Tomeo

According to an article on Just Jared, Taron Egerton collapsed onstage last night during the West End opening night preview performance of the Mike Bartlett play, Cock. The show paused for forty minutes, ultimately continuing on Egerton's understudy. . (more...)

VIDEO: David Byrne Discusses AMERICAN UTOPIA on CBS Saturday Morningby Marissa Tomeo

Broadway star, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member, and musical legend David Byrne stopped by CBS Saturday Morning to talk with Anthony Mason about his show, American Utopia.. (more...)

3/10: Take Me Out begins previews

Music:

3/11: Betty Buckley Sings Sondheim

Books:

3/10: 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theater

And a Happy Birthday shout-out to Andy Blankenbuehler, who turns 52 today!

Blankenbuehler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a 1988 graduate of St. Xavier High School and 1984 graduate of Nativity School in Cincinnati. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

As a performer, he has appeared on Broadway in many musicals, from Guys and Dolls (1992-1995) to Fosse (1999-2001).

His Broadway work as a choreographer includes the musicals In the Heights (2007-08) and 9 to 5 (2008-09). He won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for his choreography for In the Heights. Other New York work includes choreography for the "Broadway By The Year:1930, 1938 and 1978" series, and the City Center Encores! productions of The Apple Tree (2006) and The Wiz (2009). He is the director and choreographer of Bring It On: The Musical, written by Jeff Whitty, with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Amanda Green, which premiered at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, on January 16, 2011. This production also performed at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles where Blankenbuehler won the 2011 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Choreography.

Additionally, Blankenbuehler choreographed the Frank Wildhorn world premiere production of Waiting for the Moon. The show featured 6 full-length dance sequences, including one that lasted over 10 minutes. He was nominated for a Barrymore Award for Choreographing the show.

Blankenbuehler has choreographed for Bette Midler and directed, choreographed, and co-conceived the production "Nights On Broadway" at Caesars Palace.

Blankenbuehler appears briefly in the 2008 documentary "Every Little Step" about the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, with his Polaroid shown as one of the people being cut from a callback for the show.

He choreographed the 2012 Broadway revival of Annie. He is the choreographer for the musical Hamilton (2015), both Off-Broadway and on Broadway. He received a special 2015 Drama Desk Award for Hamilton. His choreography for Hamilton won the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 2016.

He both directed and choreographed a new musical, Bandstand, which premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse (New Jersey) in October 2015. The music is by Richard Oberacker and book and lyrics by Robert Taylor and Oberacker. He directed and choreographed a developmental lab of this musical in August and September 2014, then titled Bandstand: A Musical.

In 2016, Blankenbuehler choreographed the revival of the movie Dirty Dancing starring Abigail Breslin and Shane Harper. He also choreographed the revival of the Broadway musical Cats with previews beginning July 14 and an August 2 opening.

See you bright and early tomorrow, BroadwayWorld!

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There is no just war – The Tribune India

Posted: at 10:26 pm

Avijit Pathak

Sociologist

As I write this piece, television news channels are continually giving a running commentary on the devastating war the Russian army intoxicated with the technologically sleek weapons of destruction ravaging the major cities of Ukraine. In the age of media simulations and psychic impoverishment, even this war might look like a spectacle; and so long as it doesnt affect us directly, we tend to consume it as some sort of mass entertainment: no less thrilling than a video game! Even though wars are traumatic economically, culturally and existentially our Generals, techno-fascists, narcissistic leaders and weapon-manufacturing empires would continue to create an environment conducive to war. Or, is it that as pragmatists, we too have normalised the mass psychology of aggression and violence, and accepted the inevitability of war in some form or other?

Why is it that the age of modernity, despite its gospel of progress, reason and freedom, has further brutalised our consciousness?

Possibly, in this dystopian age, we see Trump and Putin, or George W Bush and Saddam Hussein as more real than, say, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, or the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Who knows we might ridicule the pacifists for their anti-war position, and brand them as idealistic and impractical? Are we then destined to pay the price of being practical war, mental trauma, influx of refugees, homelessness, and untold misery of women of invaded territories?

The trajectory of human history is filled with the narratives of war. However, what ought to disturb us is the fate of modernity. Why is it that the age of modernity, despite its gospel of progress, reason and freedom, has further brutalised our consciousness? Far from taking us to the land of peace and solidarity, modernity has given us a never-ending cycle of wars with mathematical precision, and ever-expanding sophisticated technologies of violence and weapons of mass destruction. There is no just war, be it the Gulf war in the name of restoring civility and democracy, or the destruction of Ukraine in the name of rescuing it from what Putin would have characterised as neo-Nazis.

Possibly, the reason for the inability of the age of modernity to free itself from war is a mix of three destructive principles the discourse of hyper- nationalism, often sanctified by a techno-authoritarian state with narcissistic leaders like Hitler and Putin; militarism as a hyper-masculine practice that manufactures and cultivates the fear of enemies, and thereby sanctifies itself in the name of patriotism and martyrdom; and above all, the greed implicit in modern capitalism, totalitarian socialism and associated colonial/imperial ambitions. It is, therefore, not surprising that only in a world of this kind can we dance with death, kill more than 75 million people in World War II, and, as Zygmunt Bauman said, think of holocaust with scientific planning. We saw Soviet tanks and troops crushing a spontaneous national upsurge in Hungary in 1956, or the might of the US manifesting itself in the aerial bombing or dropping of thousands of bombs on Iraq in 1991. From Vietnam to Afghanistan to Ukraine, the story goes on.

It is sad that the prevalent practice of education seldom encourages the young learner to interrogate the ideology of militant nationalism and militarism. If you talk to an average school/college student, you would find how his mind has already been conditioned to believe that, say, Pakistan is our enemy; military aggression is not bad because our Army personnel, as true patriots, are rescuing the nation! Our education system transforms young minds into warriors of multiple forms hyper-competitive careerists with the aggression of social Darwinism; techno-managers with instrumental reasoning; or sado-masochists willing to be carried away by authoritarian personalities.

Yet, those who have not yet lost faith in the possibility of human goodness must come forward, raise their voice against war, and strengthen the pacifist movement. This requires a paradigm shift in our worldview from brute instincts and narcissistic urge to dominate over others to what Erich Fromm would have regarded as the art of loving; from the monologue of power to what Thich Nhat Hanh would have characterised as loving kindness and compassionate listening; from colonial aggression and militarism to what Gandhi would have stressed: nonviolence as an art of resistance, or, as Johan Galtung would have said, a mode of conflict resolution; and from instrumental science and technological violence to ecological holism, or what feminists would have regarded as the ethics of care. Be it Jesus and Buddha, or Leo Tolstoys The Kingdom of God is Within You and Tagores Gitanjali: we see the finest aspiration for the elevation of humankind.

In this Orwellian/Foucauldian world, not many would be willing to be convinced by these pacifists. Yet, we need this utopia not as some sort of day-dreaming, but as an inspiration for a nuanced art of resistance, or a creatively nuanced and spiritually elevated pedagogy to nurture the seeds of a peaceful world. We need this utopia to make our children realise that the cult of militarism is ugly, the invention of nuclear weapons reveals our moral decadence, and narcissism, far from being an expression of courage, is a manifestation of chronic fear and psychic insecurity. And atom bombs are not more powerful than love and empathy.

Even under extremely difficult circumstances, the hope for a new world should not wither away. Amid the ongoing war, as we see young Russian students and pacifists in the streets of Moscow raising anti-war slogans and pleading for peace, it arouses hope. Why should we negate the redemptive power of this hope?

#russia ukraine war

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Arizona Caps 2021 Sports Betting With Nearly $500M Handle In December – Sports Handle

Posted: at 10:25 pm

Arizona came just $800,000 short of $500 million in sports betting handle in December, the states Department of Gaming reported Tuesday.

With two new operators in the fold SuperBook and Fubo the December total of $499.2 million eclipsed the October record of $486.1 million. In the first four months since launch, the Copper State has generated just shy of $1.75 billion in wagers as Arizona has quickly made its presence known as a top-10 national market.

Operators claimed close to $38.6 million in gross gaming revenue, a drop of 23.2% compared to November as the 7.7% win rate for December was 3 full percentage points lower from the previous month. Promotional credits and free bets accounted for more than half that amount, as operators reported $21.3 million in such play.

That left nearly $17.3 million available for the state to tax, 45.8% less than the nearly $31.9 million from November, and Arizonas coffers received more than $1.7 million. Nearly all the taxable revenue came from mobile and online wagering, as the 8% tax on retail revenue generated barely more than $17,000.

Arizonas figures also put a cap on 2021 reporting among the legalized states, and the nationwide handle for the year totaled close to $57.8 billion. It was more than double 2020s amount of $21.5 million, not surprising considering how the COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc during 2020 and how many states launched anew over the course of 2021.

Virginia became the 20th state to start accepting wagers in January 2021, and near years end in December, Maryland was the 26th. In between, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, and Connecticut all launched in addition to Arizona.

Gross gaming revenue from U.S. sports wagering in 2021 topped $4.3 billion, while adjusted revenue surpassed $3.5 billion after more than $800 million in promotional credits and other deductions were taken in multiple states where operators may do so. States with legalized sports wagering collected $562.3 million in tax receipts, which was more than in the entirety of the period from June 2018 when states outside Nevada first started allowing wagers through 2020.

With mobile wagering accounting for nearly 99% of Arizonas all-time handle, DraftKings, FanDuel, and BetMGM have emerged as the top tier of operators through the first four months. All three cleared $100 million in handle for December, with DraftKings leading the way at $146 million, followed by FanDuel ($128.5 million) and BetMGM ($103.8 million).

DraftKings edged FanDuel for most gross operator revenue at nearly $11 million compared to $10.7 million, but FanDuels promotional spend dropped 24.9% compared to 5.9% for DraftKings. That resulted in FanDuel reporting close to $7.2 million in adjusted revenue, nearly one-half million more than its eternal rival. DraftKings has doled out nearly $30 million in promotional credits and free bets in Arizona compared to $20.2 million by FanDuel.

BetMGM also has been aggressive with enticements, and December was no different as promotional credits and free bets accounted for 86% of its $8.8 million in gross revenue. Its overall spend of $26.3 million has represented 72% of its $36.6 million in gross revenue.

Caesars is the last of the Big 4 that have separated themselves among mobile operators, with its handle climbing 16.4% from November to an all-time high of $73.9 million. Its promotional spend also reached a peak since launch of $4.4 million, leaving less than $520,000 eligible for taxation.

Barstool Sportsbook ($20.6 million) and WynnBET ($14.3 million) were the best of the rest in handle, with Barstools gross revenue tumbling 42.2% to $930,000 as its hold plummeted more than 5 percentage points compared to November. Wynns GGR was nearly halved from December at slightly more than $1 million, with its win rate also dropping more than 4 full points.

Both SuperBook and Fubo launched mobile operations shortly before Christmas, and Superbook looks to have gotten out of the blocks quicker. Its handle of more than $170,000 was nearly five-fold that of Fubo ($34,497). Bettors are 1-0 against Fubo in monthly reporting after coming out nearly $3,500 ahead. SuperBook had a 21% win rate, resulting in nearly $36,000 in gross revenue, with only $1,754 of that qualifying as adjusted revenue.

Three operators Unibet, BetRivers, and TwinSpires did not report any adjusted revenue in December, and the latter two have yet to report any since launch. With close to $4.9 million, BetRivers nearly doubled its November handle, but its gross revenue climbed just 2.7% as its hold fell nearly 4 percentage points.

It was the third time in the four months of operations Unibet did not have adjusted revenue, with its December handle of slightly more than $700,000 a 43.4% drop from its October peak of more than $1.2 million. TwinSpires, whose owner Churchill Downs Inc. recently announced it would be getting out of the sports betting industry, has a 13.3% overall hold from $5.3 million handle since launch, but the entirety of its $709,551 in gross revenue has been marked as promotional credits and free play.

Mobile and online promotional credits and free play have totaled nearly $96.8 million since launch, representing 62.5% of the $154.9 million in operator gross revenue.

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The Week In Sports Betting News: Will Momentum Carry Into February? – Legal Sports Report

Posted: at 10:25 pm

Happy Monday, folks. Earnings season is approaching the lull between fourth-quarter and first-quarter but there is still news concerning sports betting bills in multiple legislatures.

The LSR Podcast discussed the changing US sports betting industry with all the surprises coming out of earnings calls so far, including Churchill Downs shutting down their sportsbook and Caesars Sportsbook ending most external marketing.

Make sure you are following @LSPReport on Twitter for the latest news all week.

The first February sports betting reports should come out this week and give a sense of how much of the record betting in January continued into February.

Total reported January handle from 23 jurisdictions is $8.4 billion. That is by far the monthly record since PASPA fell in May 2018, up 121.3% from January 2021 and 38.5% from December.

Much of that growth, of course, is from the incredible start for mobile sports betting in New York. The state is on pace to top $1.5 billion in handle for February.

No jurisdictions should be setting handle records in February. January has the benefit of NFL betting and March has March Madness betting, but outside of Super Bowl betting, February is pretty slow in terms of sports.

Expected reports this week include Indiana, Iowa and Maryland.

Multiple US sportsbooks and a sports betting regulator are no longer allowing bets on events in and involving teams from Russia and Belarus.

The Colorado Division of Gaming suspended betting on all Russian and Belarusian events Friday. That is notable because table tennis from those countries is consistently one of Colorados top sports for the month with more than $7 million bet in January.

DraftKings was the first to make the move, quickly followed by FanDuel on Thursday. PointsBet and Caesars took the markets down later Thursday. B2B sportsbook tech provider IGT also ended betting on the markets.

DraftKings was fined $150,000 by NJ sports betting regulators for allowing a VIP customer to bet through a proxy from its suite at Super Bowl in 2020, according to a complaint.

A five-page report from the NJ Attorney Generals office shows DraftKings breached proxy betting rules multiple times in 2019 and 2020.

DraftKings told LSR it is improving its systems to detect such violations:

We strive to continuously improve our systems to detect violations of our terms of use. In this instance, our systems failed to detect the violation of our terms of use. We have taken corrective action to address that.

It was a long 11 months but remote registration is finally back for Illinois sportsbooks and it brought a friend: BetMGM.

BetMGM launched Saturday, the same day remote registration went live for good in Illinois.

There are now seven online sportsbooks in the state.

Legislatures in Missouri and Oklahoma advanced their respective sports betting bills last week. Neither state is a lock to legalize, though.

In Missouri, a special house committee voted to move bills along, but that was only after multiple adjustments and promises made.

This bill still needs work, Committee ChairRep. Scott Cuppssaid. There is a desire by the bodies of this institution to see this bill moving. I agree with that and Ive gotten commitments from bill sponsors, and many folks with interest in this legislation, theyll continue to work with some of those concerns.

Oklahomas bill passed its House committeebut has a deadline coming quickly. HB 3008 has to be approved by the full House before March 24.

The permanent Mohegan Sun FanDuel Sportsbook held its grand opening Saturday with fanfare and celebrity guests.

The 11,000 square-foot book includes seating for more than 200 people, a 140-foot video wall, and more than 40 places to bet between kiosks and windows.

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Sports betting in Wyoming: Promo codes, online sports betting promotions, apps, how to bet on sports – CBS Sports

Posted: at 10:25 pm

Wyoming sports betting launched on Sept. 1, 2021, and over $40 million was wagered during the first four months in the Cowboy State. It's an impressive haul for a state that doesn't have any major professional teams. There are, however, multiple college sports teams and a pair of professional basketball teams in proximity, so residents are heading to legal Wyoming sportsbooks in droves to take advantage of the latest Wyoming sports book promo codes.

Several Wyoming online sportsbooks have been launched and more have been given approval to operate within the state in the future. Sports betting promotions in Wyoming include bonuses based on how much you deposit, risk-free bets, and more. Many sports books have easy-to-navigate apps, bringing the action to the palm of your hand.

Here are several ways you can bet on sports in Wyoming:

Against the spread: Bet one team to win by a certain number of points. For example, if the home team is -6.5, or favored by 6.5 points, you win if they win by seven or more points. This is the most common type of sports bet for team games like football and basketball.

Money line: Bet on one team to win outright. If a favorite is -250 on the money line, a $250 bet on that team to win outright will bring a return of $100. Conversely, if a team is a +400 underdog, a $100 bet will bring a return of $400. The larger the money line number, the bigger the favorite or underdog that team is.

Over-Under: Bet on the total number of points scored in a game. If the over-under is 51.5 and you bet the over, you win if at least 52 points are scored.

If you're looking for the best values on the board in Wyoming or elsewhere, be sure to check out SportsLine.com, which specializes in Vegas picks, DFS advice and season-long Fantasy sports projections.

An industry leader, SportsLine.com provides advanced computer modeling, expert picks, news and analysis of all the biggest events in sports. It can help you identify in which games you'll have the biggest statistical advantage. Plus, you'll get access to a team of over 40 experts.

SportsLine provides betting advice across the four major professional sports, college sports, golf, tennis, soccer, combat sports, horse racing and auto racing. It's a proven resource to sports bettors around the world. You can sign up here to enjoy all of the sports betting and Fantasy sports advice that SportsLine has to offer.

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Try, Try Again: Suit To Stop Tribal California Sports Betting Initiative Refiled – Legal Sports Report

Posted: at 10:24 pm

A second lawsuit to prevent legal sports betting at California tribal casinos has been filed, and it is the same as the first.

Hollywood Park and the Cal-Pac Rancho Cordova cardroom operators are suing to challenge the legality of the approved ballot measure to expand gaming on tribal lands.

The initiative would legalize retail California sportsbooks. It would also allow dice and ball games at those tribal casinos, which is where the lawsuit comes into play.

The cardrooms want to see the approved ballot initiative thrown out because it violates Californias constitution, the suit alleges. Those initiatives can only contain one subject, according to the suit.

The suit was initially filed on an emergency basis with the California Supreme Court but was not heard.

Both cardrooms have bigger concerns than just missing out on added revenue, though. The suit alleges passing the initiative would give tribal casino operators the right to sue cardrooms for alleged violations of the Penal Code, which could jeopardize their businesses.

Tribes and cardrooms in California have long disagreed over what cardrooms can offer.

The suit says it is in the best interest of California voters to address the unconstitutional initiative now because of others still looking for signatures:

The impending placement of this unconstitutional Initiative on the same ballot prejudices the ability of these other initiatives to be approved by voters and even to qualify for the ballot by the certification deadline of June 30, 2022, because the presence of this Initiative will confuse voters about the need for those measures and undermine the initiative process overall.

There are two other CA sports betting initiatives trying to make the ballot in November.

One initiative comes from cardroom operators but loops in multiple businesses for mobile or retail betting licenses. Tribal casinos, horse racing tracks and pro teams could join cardrooms in holding those licenses.

The other initiativeincludes support from seven US sports betting operators:

Four California mayors threw their support behind the sportsbook-backed measure. Three tribes, however, are pushing back.

Whether or not any initiative passes could come down to currently undecided voters. Arecent poll found California voters supported sports betting 45% to 33%, though another 22% are undecided.

The tribal-backed Coalition for Safe, Responsible Gaming is not concerned with the refiled frivolous suit, according to a spokesperson:

The California State Supreme Court recently dismissed this frivolous case and we are confident the lower court will side with us also. Card room casino operators and their financial backers must be desperate to avoid having to follow Californias responsible gaming laws.

Card room casinos are frequent violators of California gaming laws and have been fined more than $8 million for misleading state regulators and violating anti-money laundering laws.

Wereconfident California voters will see through their deceptive and wasteful tactics and continue to stand with California Tribes whom they have entrusted to provide safe, responsible gaming for over two decades.

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Who Would Make The Best Canadian Sports Betting Brand Ambassadors? – Sports Handle

Posted: at 10:24 pm

With roughly 30 private operators potentially launching in Ontarios regulated iGaming market on April 4, sportsbookadvertising is reaching unprecedented levels across the province.

According to Canadian media analyst Adam Seaborn, over 28 different gambling advertisers, most of them offshore and non-regulated, appeared on TV in Canada last year spending upward of $100 million. That number will soar in 2022 with the launch of Ontarios regulated market, and potentially more provinces adopting an open market model.

Using brand ambassadors is one advertising tactic sportsbooks will use to connect with local betting communities across Canada. In the United States, several celebrities and athletes are already working as brand ambassadors for major sportsbooks. BetMGM has recruited Wayne Gretzky, Marshawn Lynch, Kevin Garnett, and most recently, Connor McDavid to promote its brand, while the Manning family Archie, Peyton, and Eli have inked partnerships deals with Caesars sportsbook.

In Canada, Bet99, a gray-market sportsbook, is using UFC legend Georges St-Pierre to promote its pay site, while Auston Matthews is the new ambassador for the free-to-play games offered by the sportsbook. And PointsBet Canada has recruited the cast of Trailer Park Boys to help convey its brand to Canadian bettors.

A recent study conducted by Deloitte Canada estimates that single-event sports betting could result in $28 billion in legal-market wagers within five years of legalization. With so many sportsbooks set to compete for the sports betting dollars of Canadians this year, and for years to come, who else would be a strong sportsbook ambassador in the country?

Heres a fun, and hypothetical, list of some potential celebrities and athletes that could help build a sports betting brand and convey responsible gambling messages.

Youd be hard-pressed to find a more influential person in Canada than Drake. The rapper can often be found courtside at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, cheering on the Raptors as the teams official ambassador, when hes not electrifying crowds across the world with his music. Hes a fan of all sports and dabbles in sports betting. Recently, he threw down some big bets on the Super Bowl using Stake, a Canadian-based Bitcoin casino and sports betting website.

The Toronto-born musician has long been an advocate for The 6ix (a nickname for the Toronto 416 area code), and his relationship as an ambassador with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Toronto Raptors (NBA), Toronto Maple Leafs (NHL), Toronto Argonauts (CFL), and Toronto FC (MLS) franchises, could make any potential deal as a brand ambassador with a sportsbook complicated. MLSE is a desirable partner for sportsbooks looking to tackle the Canadian market due to its impressive portfolio of professional sports franchises in Ontario, and its unclear if partnering with MLSE would give a potential sportsbook access to Drake for promotional purposes.

Born in Scarborough, Ontario, Myers is best known for his roles in the Austin Powers movies and Waynes World. The Canadian funny man, who is now 58 years old, could be utilized by sportsbooks to connect with some of its older Canadian demographic (40 years old and up). Just imagine a hilarious responsible gaming skit featuring an oblivious Austin Powers foolishly wagering his entire bankroll on an improbable longshot to win a British soccer game at a sportsbook, while thoroughly embarrassing himself in the process with his lack of sports betting prowess. Gambling, if you can recall from the movies, isnt one of Powers strong suits.

Or how about a commercial spinning off one of the more memorable scenes from Waynes World when Wayne and his sidekick Garth engage in a little one-on-one road hockey? The characters, proudly wearing their Chicago Blackhawks jerseys, are interrupted multiple times by cars passing by, then shout Game On! when they resume play. This could send an important responsible gambling message about taking a break from wagering, or you could end up like the cyclist in the below clip.

With all due respect to Sidney Crosby, McDavid, Jamal Murray, and other top Canadian athletes, there is another rising star who could help sportsbooks hit the perennial jackpot with their marketing campaigns. Davies is quickly surging up the power rankings as one of Canadas top athletes after leading the national soccer team to the brink of qualifying for its first World Cup since 1986. The 21-year-old, who relocated to Edmonton, Alberta, at the age of 5 after fleeing Ghana as a refugee, plays for Bayern Munich in Germany and has 10 goals and 15 assists in 30 caps for the Canadian national team.

Away from the pitch, the charismatic Davies is even more impressive. He boasts an incredibly positive attitude and trim physique and has attracted almost 6 million followers to his wildly popular TikTok account. Davies was recently forced to miss a few of the national teams games due to a heart muscle issue following a bout with COVID-19, but check out his crazy reaction while watching Canada triumph over the United States in January.

Eugene and Dan Levy are the hilarious Canadian father-son duo who co-created the Emmy Award-winning sitcom Schitts Creek. Prior to that, Eugene was best known to many for his role as Mr. Levenstein in the American Pie movies. Mr. Levenstein was known for the outdated advice he gave to his son, Jim (played by Jason Biggs), about the trials and tribulations of surviving life as a teenager.

Following in his fathers footsteps, Dan Levy has comparable comedic chops and an innate chemistry on screen with his dad. The pair recently did a spoof for Vanity Fair teaching youth slang words, a bit that could work equally as well explaining sports betting terms to new bettors. Eugene could butcher his interpretation of single-game parlays, while Dan calmly interjects with the correct definition. This could be a fun and educational way to engage prospective bettors.

Sinclair is without a doubt the most successful soccer player to ever compete for Canada. Fresh off a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, the 38-year-old captain has an unbelievable 308 caps for her country and 188 goals. Shes now competed in four Olympic Games and was the Lou Marsh Award winner in 2012, which is awarded annually to recognize Canadas top athlete.

Sportsbooks looking to enter, and be successful, in the Canadian market, will need to find a way to connect with prospective female bettors, according to a recent study from Deloitte Canada. Deloitte estimates 58.5% of the Canadian sports betting market is comprised of potential bettors who havent placed a wager in the last 12 months but are interested in placing bets in the future. Of that group, 57% identify as female. Recruiting Sinclair, who is a huge advocate for the advancement of womens sports in Canada, could help sportsbooks reach out to the prospective female demographic and also capitalize on the blossoming soccer interest in the country.

Nurse may be one of the most underrated Canadian athletes and sports personalities in the country. A two-time WNBA champion and member of the womens national basketball team, Nurse is also a budding broadcaster and basketball analyst for Raptors games on TSN. Hailing from a large sports family in Hamilton, Ontario, Kia has a brother, Darnell, who is a defenseman for the NHLs Edmonton Oilers. Her father, mother, and other siblings also played, or are currently playing, sports at the professional or collegiate levels.

Toronto would be an ideal city for WNBA expansion north of the border, an idea also supported by the aforementioned Drake. Regular-season WNBA viewership rose 23% when compared to 2020 across ESPN and ABC platforms. Nurse signed a contract extension with the WNBAs Phoenix Mercury in February, as she continues to work her way back from a torn ACL. Could the smooth-talking, media-savvy athlete also be an awesome ambassador for a sportsbook? Absolutely.

Honorable mentions: Justin Bieber, Ryan Reynolds, Seth Rogen, Jim Carrey, Keanu Reeves

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