phil.mushnick@nypost.com WHAT'S UP 'DOC'?
EVER have a feeling you can’t shake? Stupid question, I know. Already, this Oct. 7 HBO documentary about the colossal freefall of Craig Carton has caused suspicion. That’s likely because Carton, who after his release from prison after just over one year of his 3 ½-year sentence for millions of dollars in fraud, instills suspicion.
HBO’s widely distributed trailer shows a dramatized $1 million in gambling cash stuffed into a bag, as well as Carton’s sensational claim that he “borrowed over $30 million to gamble with.”
I don’t know who his backers were, but they’d have to be a combination of rich and stupid, an abnormal kinship. And if there’s anyone who believes that over the long haul or even a week, he or she knows a guy who can regularly beat a casino at blackjack they wouldn’t have millions to invest in Carton’s “can’t-lose” genius.
Beyond that, if Carton genuinely knew that he could regularly beat casinos at blackjack, he wouldn’t need or want anyone’s backing nor cut them in on his haul. He’d be in on his own.
There’s a scamdicapper element to this, the football tout claiming that he hits 78 percent winners — yet he’ll sell you his picks for 50 bucks. But such touts don’t move betting lines because they’re regarded by sportsbooks as scam artists, no gambler needs paid help to assist them in losing their money.
It seems logical that the documentary will be somewhat sympathetic toward Carton and his addiction in order to have ensured
Carton’s appearance and fresh interviews.
But how does a man so self-deluded and self-destroyed resume a career as a shock jock, a put-down artist and slinger of defamations and crudities regardless of whether he uses sports as a prop?
Sports radio, now immersed in gambling ads and shows that promise young adult male listeners millions in exchange for spare change, would make Carton’s resumption of his career somewhat easy. And he has to get to work paying $5 million in restitution — not all that much if one considers Carton’s claim that he “borrowed” more than $30 million with which to gamble.
So beyond the short-term novelty act of Carton returning to the air as a convicted felon, his renewed attachment to gambling, even at a distance, and the advertising revenues gleaned from what suddenly became an enormous sports gambling industry with the greed-driven blessings of sports commissioners, team owners and media magnates, makes 21st Century sense.
Carton might still be very good for the radio business, thus nothing else matters, even if he has to schedule his appearances around appointments with his parole officer. Big deal. To the spoilers go the spoils.