This week's LVW col: Beer Summit West

OK, folks. Here's the new Las Vegas Weekly column, in which I attempt to diffuse the most legendary feuds in modern Vegas. I kinda was hoping they would photoshop my head on Obama and Wynn and Adelson on Crowley and Gates, but they didn't. If anyone knows how to do that, it would be so awesome! Anyhow, read on and enjoy!

Beer Summit West
Vegas' best feuds need to be settled, Obama-like, over a beverage
By STEVE FRIESS

It’s been a couple of weeks now, but I still can’t get that White House beer-summit image out of my mind. There they all were, the leader of the free world playing genial host to the black professor arrested at his home by a white cop in that symbol of racial conflict, the Ivy League city.

President Obama viewed the gathering as political damage control, er, I mean, a “teachable moment.” Yet none of those erudite cable-news pundits have divined what lesson we were all supposed to glean from this ham-handed photo op. (Or, for that matter, why Joe Biden was there.)

I think I know. The three of them weren’t modeling a way to diffuse tension between blacks and whites but, much more generally, between people who feud in the public square.

(Biden? He’s just a mooch.)

Which brought me back to Las Vegas. Believe it or not, we have lots of prominent people who dislike one another, too. I’ve picked the five most ripe for beer-or-whatever summits. Consider this a Road Map to Peace.

Read the rest at LasVegasWeekly.Com