If Bennett SPENT 8 million dollars over 10 years seeing Broadway plays, buying expensive wines and taking fancy trips to Europe would anyone care? But because the money was SPENT in a casino and that's called gambling people are upset and worry about his virtue.
I think that's all true except for the last part. It's not gambling, it's high rolling. I'm not trying to play a semantic game, I'm trying to describe two different concepts. The first concept called gambling is the wagering of money in any amount. The second concept, high rolling, is the wagering of extremely large amounts of money, plus the attention paid to the person doing the wagering by the casinos who are gaining that money. Large amounts of that attention can lead trigger Vanity in the person being attended to.
In Bennett's case, I don't see any recognition on his part of this possibility. Like many on this thread, he hasn't acknowledged the difference between gambling and high rolling which makes me suspicious of his virtue since one attribute of Vanity is the inability to recognize it.