A List
Longtime lottery advocate and state Sen. Steve Cohen has been firing back at the statewide Gambling Free Tennessee Alliance, the organization campaigning against the lottery in Tennessee. The organization has admitted targeting him as a symbol of the lottery and why it shouldn’t be enacted. Cohen, who is Jewish, has charged the attacks are anti-Semitic. The claim has brought many other individuals and groups out of the woodwork, each arguing that the anti-lottery’s internal strategy memo contains other messages or sentiments as well:
♦ If you read the first letter of the third word to each of the first 19 sentences of the internal document, it says that Paul McCartney is dead.
♦ Reading backwards from the end of the document, there are detailed directions to Area 51.
♦ The memo was produced on nonrecycled paper, which the Tennessee Environmental Council regards as a direct assault and affront to the state’s green movement.
♦ A highlighter pen that shows hidden ink reveals notes in the memo’s margins to the effect that gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen was seen exiting a campaign plane in Kentucky to buy lottery tickets.
♦ The National Organization for Women is charging that the document was blatantly sexist and misogynistic for referring to Cohen as a “he.” As well, NOW is up in arms that the anti-gambling campaign didn’t target female Jewish political leaders as well.
♦ The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee is researching whether the Ten Commandments are hidden somewhere in the document’s contents, and is preparing a lawsuit in anticipation of finding them.
