COLUMBUS: All I know is what I read in the newspaper. If I only depended on television news this month I wouldn’t know about anything but Gary Condit and Powerball.

Television reporters spent a week telling us what Congressman Condit would tell Connie Chung; then the entire week since he said it, they’ve been telling us why we can’t believe what he told her. They only paused long enough to interrupt with bulletins of how many lottery tickets were sold in the previous minute, and what the total purse is up to.

Well, Saturday night they pulled out the numbers, and four people are getting about $40 million each. By now television has told us all about the winners. I guess they’ll leave it to the newspapers to interview the thirty million losers. It seems fair that we should hear their story, too, since they contributed the prize money in the first place.

Workers at one factory contributed $24,000 and came up dry. Just think what the Red Cross could have done with $24,000.

I heard a fellow say on the radio, “I’ve made some mistakes in my past, but now I can do something positive with my future.” I thought at first it was Mr. Condit resigning. But, no, it was a lottery winner, from a poverty stricken region of the country. The man’s been in jail the better part of twenty years, and now he has $40 million.

He announced that he’s going to get a Rolls-Royce, “I’m not one to take a lot of money and splurge on mansions, but I’m sure buying that Rolls.”

Yes, it’ll be the only Rolls-Royce in the state parked beside a trailer. With the dough he has left he may run for Congress.

Historical quote from Will Rogers:

“Lotteries has played – it really has played a great part in our whole history of our country…. Now, here’s something I bet you didn’t know. I bet you didn’t know the Revolutionary War was largely financed by lotteries. They sold tickets on that, you know. They made it a sporting event instead of a war. History shows that George Washington always had number one lottery ticket in every lottery. George had number one. And one time he won – that’s when he bought Mount Vernon. Yes, sir, they made a sweepstakes out of the Revolutionary War. They sold England some tickets, but not the right ones. They didn’t win anything.” Radio broadcast, May 5, 1935