From the earlier, funnier M*A*S*H episode “Deal Me Out,” here’s Hawkeye discussing the psychology of gambling with the show’s semi-resident mental health professional,who not coincidentally, happened to share the same initials as Sigmund Freud:
Hawkeye: Okay, moving right along now, dealer’s choice, five card stud. Sidney, what’s the psychiatric basis for gambling?
Dr. Sidney Freedman: Sex.
Hawkeye: Why?
Dr. Sidney Freedman: I don’t know. They told me to say it. Sex is why we gamble, sex is why we drink, sex is why we give birth.
Hawkeye: Thank you, doctor.
Dr. Sidney Freedman: I’m taking a five-dollar chip. That was a house call.
Similarly, Frances Fox Piven, the co-inventor of the “bankrupt the game” school of very high-stakes municipal gambling thinks that sex is the impetus behind the Tea Party — “Sure it is. Not just sex… But freaky-deaky sex,” Jim Hoft quips, adding, “What’s she trying to do? Up our numbers?”
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They told Glenn Reynolds that if he voted for John McCain a new generation of puritanical progressives* would use quack psychiatric reasoning to find sex lurking everywhere in today’s culture…and they were right!
* As opposed to the first generation of puritanical progressives.
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