Good and bad from the weekend papers

I caught up this morning on the weekend papers, and this stuff is worth your eye:

* Howard Stutz of the R-J puts together the surprising detente between Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson, right down to the suggestion by Adelson that the epic rivals will soon dine together. Oh, to be a fly...

* Tom Gorman of the Sun has a most awesome Q-and-A with Sir Patrick Stewart on his plans to create a Vegas-set version of "The Merchant of Venice." It reminds me of the time I saw "Taming of the Shrew" staged as a Western starring Morgan Freeman and Tracey Ullman and put on by Joseph Papp in Central Park. (Side note: I once considered titling a podcast interview with Adelson as "The Merchant of Venice" but opted against doing so because because the play -- or at least the title character of Shylock -- is so notoriously anti-Semitic. I went with "Mr. Sands Man" instead.)

* J. Patrick Coolican, who has been refreshingly diversifying his columns from the monotony of politics that the Sun is addicted to, gives us a terrific piece on a 25-year-old kid living at Veer for $1,000 a month plus valet parker duties. Money quote to make Jim Murren, who pictured a different grade of humanity living in these units, cringe: "The amenities -- you can't beat 'em." Party on, dude!

* Adrienne Packer geeks out on data collected by an 81-year-old monorail obsessive who has empirically proven that, for the most part, it's faster and cheaper to walk from one casino to another than to ride the ill-placed transit system. What's more, the creative codger's analysis also indicates that the oft-cited panacea for the monorail's woes -- a link-up to McCarran -- won't work, either.

Of course, there are some jeers:

* Why does Sad Shermy still have a column in the newspaper he has legally imperiled and whose circulation he ruined? I'd much rather have seen them hold over ex-editor Thomas Mitchell's columns because at least they were (usually) original and smart meditations on a topic that doesn't get enough press, first amendment matters. Instead, we have Sad Shermy writing the same old predictable babble, only not as well or as thoughtfully as other conservative commentators who actually do some reporting.

* I adore the work of Adrienne Packer, so I hope she doesn't take this the wrong way, but the absence of any coverage of the passage and Sandoval signing of AB511, the bill that makes Nevada the first state to legalize DRIVERLESS CARS for road use, is simple dereliction. This is a major, major legislative and technological development. I understand why Carson City scribes would overlook it because they had the budget and everything else to cover, but transportation writers ought to be all over this. So should technology writers, but neither the R-J nor the Sun have one of any merit, a glaring problem. (I'm trying to get the link to my piece on this from the iPad-only The Daily.)

Check out this YouTube video on the driverless cars for background and some amazing visuals:

This could be real on the roads of Vegas a year from now, thanks to the law. Really.

* Steve Bornfeld of the R-J applied his typical staccato, sentence-fragment style to his coverage of the Daytime Emmy Awards in a piece that essentially chronicled the construct of the red carpet and the backstage post-win appearances. I do understand the instinct toward media navel-gazing (see this blog post or this whole blog!) and the desire to behave above and apart from the media silliness of such events. But in this particular case, he actually missed the story, which was how offended the audience and Emmy brass were that Oprah Winfrey did not show up for her own lengthy tribute. There was noticeable hostility in the Hilton theater as well as all over Twitter, and I'm pretty surprised that Oprah didn't just snubbed this crowd but also passed up a much-much-much-needed opportunity to plug her flailing network and its unwatched offerings. Didn't Oprah quit so she could focus on that? Also, why did they lie and pretend that Celine Dion was singing live from the Colosseum during the show when Celine's part was taped four days earlier? That sort of stuff would've made an interesting, Vegas-centric wrap-up.

* I'm completely puzzled that (a) this below is front page news, (b) that the paper misspelled the name of its own reporter of 426 years (It's Przybys, not Pyzybys, as it was corrected later online) and (c) that they ran with this thoroughly misleading headline:


What "history" was made? A California woman won a beauty pageant. She's not the first. She's not the last. She's not even all that interesting a woman, except she seems to have acquired a bit of Tudor lust thanks, probably, to Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. If there was some history made -- beyond the fact that every day is technically historic -- then John Pryzyzyzbys didn't tell us what that might've been.

* Journalists really must stop bitching, especially publicly on Twitter, about the quality of the free seats they get at various events. It truly embarrasses to them to behave so openly entitled, and it distracts from the quality of their coverage. Do they think their readers are sympathetic to the complaints of a group of people who seem to expect special treatment? This came up, too, during the opening of Celine's show at the Colosseum. The whiners' lack of self-awareness is kind of unbelievable.

* Finally, where the heck was the print coverage of the Starkey Hearing Foundation's mission to provide 100 underprivileged kids in Clark County with free hearing aids on Saturday? Those hearing aids cost probably $2,500 each, so that's $500,000 in donated, customized equipment alone, but more importantly there were some amazing and heartbreaking stories there. But never fear, I volunteered and I'll be columnizing about that this week for the Las Vegas Weekly. Also, because I know someone at KSNV, they did this:

Miss America Stomps Miss USA In TV Ratings

Norm Clarke reported this morning that the Miss America pageant netted 6.6 million viewers on ABC on Saturday and declared it a success because that's a 47 percent uptick from the 2010 pageant's 4.5 million viewers in the first-run on the cable network TLC.

That seemed like spin to me because 6.6 million viewers is really not that great for network TV and at least on TLC the pageant enjoyed reruns that garnered even more viewers after the fact.

Then I went to compare apples to apples for quite a surprise: The Miss USA in 2010 broadcast on NBC drew just 5.25 million viewers in May and that was up 5% from 2009. And that's the pageant that all the tabloids adore because there's always a stray pole dancer or mini-Palin in the running. (The winner, 17-year-old Teresa Scanlan, a religious kid from small-town Nebraska who said she'd like to be president and thinks Wikileaks involves "espionage," is already being analyzed for her potential Palinistic attributes.)

Seeing how the media narrative leading up to Saturday's event involved the Miss America v Miss USA storyline -- with now-former Miss America Caressa Cameron snarking to me for AOL News that she'd never "heard anyone say she wanted to grow up to be Miss USA" -- the Miss America gang can be rightfully pleased.

I had a surprisingly good time covering this thing for Agence France-Presse on Saturday and offering a fun barb here and there via Twitter. It's not something I ever cared about before even though my own sister once won Miss Pee Wee New York or some-such and got to compete in some Miss America event in Atlantic City when she was an unbelievably cute 3-year-old. I've been friends with many gays who make Miss America a major, major thing and, in fact, that crowd certainly set Planet Hollywood aflame on Saturday.

I think it was most fun because I was seated besides Nebraska native Cara Roberts, Norm's other half, and behind a particularly jolly Robin Leach who was Tweeting via iPad. I had picked up a big bag of Jelly Bellys before the show and shared, which couldn't have hurt. I'm not sure Cara had really had them before because she was marveling at the buttered-popcorn flavor. Jelly Belly veterans know us from some buttered-popcorn beans.

Also, despite our recent scrums, Robin was incredibly friendly to me and even tried to let me access the Web via his Myfi card when my iPhone was, predictably, not cooperating. And he wasn't even in it for the Jelly Bellys, which he declined.

I'm hopeful I'll have an awesome Vegas-related Miss America column this week for the Weekly on a topic nobody else caught. It really depends on whether I can reach the one I want to speak to on Tuesday.

Wall Street Journal Lets Sharron Angle Lie

No, that is not a partisan statement in that headline. It is a journalistic one.

The Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore has a profile of Sharron Angle up today that is riddled from top to bottom with factual errors, as Jon Ralston noted in a Tweet today. That's shocking enough because the WSJ, while possessing a notoriously conservative editorial page, usually does have some regard for facts even there. This piece is stunning in its misinformation and, clearly, most of it comes from Mrs. Angle, a woman who wears her religion on her sleeve but evidently believes that bearing false witness is cool with God. Angle, of course, is the GOP opponent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

It doesn't take long to get to a whopper. There's one big one in the very first paragraph, where Angle is allowed to state as fact that 30,000 people attended the Searchlight tea party in March. That's 50 percent greater than the highest estimates, coming from tea party partisans, of 20,000. The cops put it around 8,000, so does Sharron Angle think the police are dirty liars? Soon more people will allegedly have been at Searchlight than at the Polo Grounds for Bobby Thompson's homer.

Let's see. What else?

* Angle claims Reid's effort to delay a coal plant in 2009 cost 5,000 jobs. The folks in favor of the plant said it would have created 1,600 construction jobs and 200 permanent ones.

* Angle claims she was at the forefront of fighting the 2003 tax increases at the Legislature, that the governor singled her out and that Republican legislative leaders sought her out to try to get her to swing. Fact is, it was Assemblyman Bob Beers who held together the part of the GOP caucus that held back the two-thirds needed to pass the increases. Nobody would have bothered to bargain with Angle as she describes knowing that she was, as she also proudly describes, an unmovable force. Also, I can't find anywhere online where Gov. Guinn said at the time that anyone opposed to the increases was "irrelevant, irresponsible and cowardly," as the WSJ's Moore puts in quotes.

* The following is an unmitigated, total lie: "She spearheaded a movement to get the Supreme Court replaced. In the next election in 2006, voters threw out five of the seven members of the Nevada Supreme Court; the other two had retired." The controversial Guinn v Legislature decision was decided 6-1. Three of the six, Miriam Shearing, Deborah Agosti and Robert Rose, retired at the end of their next terms (2004 for Shearing and Agosti, 2006 for Rose), and one who perhaps Angle thinks she got to retire, Myron Leavitt, actually died. Only one justice from that group was ever unseated by ballot, Nancy Becker in 2006. In 2008, the one justice who dissented -- that is, who voted as Angle would have liked -- retired. Justice Mark Gibbons, who voted in the 6-1 majority but later repudiated it, was re-elected in 2008.

Two other points:

* Someone needs to tell Sharron she can stop bashing Sue Lowden now or Snow White might not help her convince moderates she's not as bat-shit crazy as Harry Reid says. In the WSJ piece, she says: "We had to have a candidate who would offer a sharp policy contrast. Someone who would not just pay lip service to limited government principles, but had a solid record of voting that way time and again."

* Moore says Angle "has Irish red hair." Dude, she's almost 61. It's called henna.

The Silly Triangle Of Robin, Brad & Badd

Robin Leach is going apeshit on his blog and Twitter feed on behalf of comic Brad Garrett because there's a fellow who uses the Twitter name @BaddGarrett who the Vegas headliner "exclusively" told Leach was upsetting him.

According to Leach, Garrett is getting the cops involved because he says the Tweeter has also been impersonating him by calling "ticket brokers about my new Comedy Club shows at the Tropicana" and sending "out dozens of fake Twitter messages pretending to be me and saying things I’d never say. ... He behaves as if he is me and has Twitter conversations with people as if he was me, and they all think it is me. It is not me." Garrett refers to the whole thing as "stalking" and told Leach that his "stalker" may even have pictures of his family.

The only problem is that Robin wrote in his own Twitter feed that Garrett didn't even know what @BaddGarrett had written until Robin showed it to him yesterday:



Uh, Robin? How would the real Brad Garrett know to say, "He behaves as if he is me and has Twitter conversations with people as if he was me" if he didn't know UNTIL THAT VERY CONVERSATION what might be being said in @BaddGarrett's Tweets? How could say "he’s had his lawyer go to the District Attorney’s Office and criminal detectives to hunt down the impostor" if he didn't even know what the Tweets said until YOU SHOWED THEM TO HIM?

Best case scenario: Garrett does have some sort of stalker or impersonator and he decided on the spot when Robin showed him a few select Tweets from @BaddGarrett that the Tweeter and the stalker were the same thing. And somehow Robin didn't think to say, "Well, Brad, how do you know this Twitter guy is the same guy?"

But wait. There's more.

Y'see, the day before Garrett complained to Leach, I publicly asked the official Tweeter for the Tropicana Hotel-Casino whether @BaddGarrett was actually the comic. I doubted it, but I figured asking would be worthwhile. And this is what @TropLV wrote:


In other words, the publicists for the Trop knew this Tweeter wasn't their headliner but they were HAPPY that @BaddGarrett was out there as an "advocate" for #BGCC, which is a hashtag for the Brad Garrett Comedy Club.

I don't know about any impersonations offline, but @BaddGarrett is and always has been a somewhat obvious parody Twitter feed. How Robin Leach didn't instinctively know that is truly baffling, but his Las Vegas Weekly colleague John Katsilometes himself wrote today (2nd item) that he's known it was a parody for weeks. A parody is not an impersonation, especially when the person doing the parodying acknowledges he's not the actual person whenever he's asked.

Parody Twitter feeds have a long history, at least long for the life of Twitter, anyhow. @NotSteveJobs, @BPGlobalPR and @ATT_Wireless_PR are three that I follow and giggle at. The last two are even less opaque than @BaddGarrett; if that really were the comedian, it surely would have been spelled correctly.

Many, many stars and notables have taken easy measures to clarify for the public which Twitter feeds are theirs -- including @Robin_Leach! Why did Robin not give his pal Brad the 411 on how to set up a "verified account" on Twitter the way he or @ActuallyNPH or @The_Real_Shaq did. Problem solved!

Instead, Robin's opted to be the voice of hysteria for Garrett, calling out @BaddGarrett on Twitter as a "fraud" who is "headed for the slammer! Good riddance to anybody this sick, twisted and mean!" Yes, those are actual excerpts of Robin's Tweets.

See, I reserve "sick, twisted and mean" to people who commit actual, usually violent, crimes. Making loving fun of a famous person in a manner that isn't even original hardly rises to that level. Robin Tweeted: "You have tricked & deceived people into thinking you are him." Who? Somebody -- anybody! -- step up and say, "Yes, he told me he was the real guy and I've been damaged by this horrifying experience." This is something that Robin Leach believes we need to tie up our court system with? Seriously? I wonder how nutso Robin would get if someone poisoned his cat.

@BaddGarrett, whoever he is, has altered his bio to clarify for the truly joke-impaired what he's up to:


That really ought to be where the matter stops. At least via Twitter, the author of that feed has not broken any law. If he happens to also be calling people claiming to be Garrett, then maybe there's something there. But someone would have to prove that and right now there doesn't seem to be any evidence.

Vermin Perez Hilton v Miss California

[UPDATE: Norm Clarke quizzed the vermin PH about this post and the vermin PH responded: "I am praying for Steve Friess." That's pretty funny.]

[UPDATE #2: Perez apparently also says he wishes he had called Ms. Prejean a cunt, too. That'll surely win the gays some friends, huh?]

I've avoided commenting on the flap over Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who answered the vermin Perez Hilton's question at the Miss USA contest in Las Vegas last weekend about gay marriage with an inarticulate response that rambled about alleged free choice -- no gay Americans can choose fully recognized marriage -- before revealing her personal view that marriage is between a man and a woman. (There she is to the right, looking awfully wholesome.)

The whole thing was disconcerting because while I obviously don't agree with Prejean, I'm not sure that political opinions are how we ought to choose beauty queens. And the vermin Perez Hilton, who heretofore has done nothing whatsoever for gay rights and didn't donate a dime to fight against Proposition 8 last year, decided this was a great time to exploit the issue by recording a video blog in which he cackles about all the attention he's gettin over this and then calls Prejean a "dumb bitch." Next thing you know, he's on Larry King Live as though he's been in the thick of this issue all along when he actually represents the worst, the grossest, the least productive and most unpleasant side of what gay America has to offer.

Worse, though, is that using that kind of nasty language is the surest way to shut down any serious debate or discourse. It's not the verbage of a thinking person, one who cares about something greater than his own fame. Once the vermin Perez Hilton attacked this young woman, she became a right-wing hero and handed the Hannitys and Limbaughs of the world a clear-cut case of politically correct aggression with which to paint all gays who argue for marriage equality. She may be wrong on marriage equality, but that doesn't (necessarily) make her dumb or a bitch. Conversely, the vermin Perez Hilton may be right but that doesn't (even remotely) make him smart or honorable.

It really, really bothered me that Prejean may actually have lost her crown on this answer. (She came in second to Miss North Carolina, whose name nobody knows or cares thanks to the vermin Perez Hilton.) That's why I'm delighted that my friend and Miles' colleague Alicia Jacobs, an entertainment reporter for KVBC and one of the vermin Perez Hilton's co-judges, explained to Advocate.Com better why the way Prejean answered cost her in the competition.



I don't know if I totally buy what she says there, but it's a better-reasoned answer than what the vermin Perez Hilton has had to say. See? You can be smart and pretty. Or you can be hideous and stupid. (And, yes, I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder over this creep. Click here to see why.)

Alicia, who talks in that video about attending gay weddings, was also at ours, as you can see:


Mostly, I wish this thing would go away. The vermin Perez Hilton did more to firm up the resolve of straight-only-marriage proponents and provide them with a widely sympathetic figure around which to rally than anything in recent memory. Nicely done!