Tiger = Vegas Stimulus Package?

It's a little disconcerting that the same night as my column about how Tiger's scandal could help Vegas, the mayor himself says so and Jon Ralston smacks him down on Twitter as buffoonish. Ahh, well. For the record, I am not saying that committing adultery while in Vegas is something I endorse. I'm just saying, as I suspect the mayor might, that it's good for business. There's a difference. Anyhow, enjoy. -sf

Welcome to Fabulous Lust Vegas, Mr. Woods

BY STEVE FRIESS

I got dragged kicking and screaming into an on-air discussion about the Tiger Woods sex scandal last week by KNPR State of Nevada host Dave Berns. I had happily avoided the topic in its first week and felt smug and superior about sticking to the real and important news of CityCenter and strippermobiles.

“I don’t want to talk about Tiger Woods, Dave,” I moaned at 8 a.m., when Dave asked me to come in for a ramble about several recent topics. “I just don’t care about him.”

Still, the opportunity to discuss the other matters on the docket propelled me to show up and play along. So at about 10 a.m., Berns raised a question that I felt at the time was an erudite person’s excuse to roll in the gutter:

“The revelations that are coming out about Tiger Woods’ personal life, could this endanger Las Vegas’ reputation in some way as a place that you can go and you can have a bacchanal, you can have a wide-open party, you can spend money and you can do it assuredly knowing that whatever you do there truly does stay there?”

Go ahead, roll your eyes. I sure did. And then, when I began answering and started paying a little more attention to this matter elsewhere, I realized it is a legitimate question with, to my mind, a pretty surprising answer.

You see, the more I’ve thought about it, the more it appears to me that the Tiger Woods scandal and its now-multiple Vegas tie-ins is actually one of the best things that has happened to this city in a long, long time.

First, though, let’s answer Dave’s question. Do these revelations betray the “what happens here stays here” ethos?

Read the REST at LasVegasWeekly.Com.