Wall Street Journal Mocks CityCenter

Someone has spoofed the art at CityCenter, as Ali Berzon of the Wall Street Journal reports here. Hat tip to David McKee, whose blog I found this on today:

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.

They Can Call It CityCenter Station!

The Wall Street Journal reports today that MGM Mirage may have a new sugar daddy, Colony Capital. These are the folk who own the Las Vegas Hilton but, more importantly, own 75 percent of Station Casinos which, from what we've been hearing, is about to go into bankruptcy itself. They also own Resorts Atlantic City, which is facing foreclosure.

So I'm baffled. Why is Station going into bankruptcy if its major owner has money to invest in another risky project on the verge of bankruptcy? Is it all, as we've always suspected, just Monopoly money after all? The WSJ says that Colony has raised $1b in capital to invest in distressed assets. Shouldn't they invest it in the distressed assets they already own?

On a similar but different front, I continue to be confounded by the dollar figures involved with CityCenter. Dubai is a 50-50 partner with MGM Mirage. MGM Mirage said last week that the project cost is $8.7 billion, although the WSJ used $8.6 billion today. Either way, the WSJ says Dubai World has already kicked in $4.3 billion. Why does Dubai still owe anything? Or is the $8.7 or $8.6 billion figure inaccurate? If Dubai still needs to give more, then MGM Mirage must know the project will cost more than $8.7 billion. Or maybe the WSJ is wrong and Dubai has not yet actually kicked in $4.3 billion? ACK!

Am I the only one confused here?

Show is UP: The Wayans To Leno

Enjoy this extra-long show! My L.A. Times profiles of Leno and Wayans can be found here and here respectively. Click on the date to hear it or right-click to download the show and listen whenever you want. Or subscribe via iTunes here or via Zune here:

July 3: The Wayans To Leno

Jay Leno has always been comfortably inside the lines of mainstream American comedy while Damon Wayans has built a family business out of going out on a limb. So what do these two comics have in common? For one, both are performing in Las Vegas this month. For another, they’re both on the show this week. Leno reacts to questions as about why he’s not more respected by the entertainment media while Wayans tries to explain the method to his mad career.

In Banter: Steve Wynn's cocktail, Steve Friess' drinking binge, Harrah's environmentalism, Penn v Angel and a George Carlin tribute.

Links:

Get tickets to Damon Wayans' Orleans show here
Get tickets to Jay Leno's Mirage performances here
Learn how to make Steve Wynn's favorite cocktail here
Check out the Downtown Cocktail Lounge here
Read Penn Jillette's diss Criss Angel here
Learn more about Noir Bar at the Luxor here
The site for Miles' would-be obsession, Clean House, is here
Steve's scoops on the blue tape and the Criss Angel delay is here and here
Read how the AIDS Rides turned out to be a scam here
Read Harrah's press release on their WSOP carbon-credit buy here
That 7/1 WSJ piece on Vegas casino debt is here
See the George Carlin clip we played on the show here
Watch the whole Wayans three-titties routine excerpted on the show here

Trop Spokesman: Bankruptcy is "Speculation"

(UPDATE: ENGLEHART JUST CALLED BACK, SAID HE'D BE IN TOUCH WITH ME LATER WHENEVER THE BANKRUPTCY FILING OCCURRED. ALSO, THE COMPANY PRESIDENT IS QUOTED IN THIS AP STORY AS ACKNOWLEDGING THE COMING FILING.)

The Wall Street Journal is reporting based on two unnamed sources that Tropicana Entertainment is about to file for bankruptcy. Reuters has just moved a piece as well, again using one unnamed source.

This may yet turn out to be true and since it's the WSJ I'd say it's awful likely, but I'm the only reporter thus far with an actual comment from the spokesman for Tropicana Entertainment.

Friess: Is what the Wall Street Journal reported accurate?

Spokesman Hud Englehart: I regard what the Wall Street Journal has reported as speculation.

I pressed him from several sides about whether it was true and he wouldn't budge. Tropicana Entertainment owns the Tropicana and Westin in Las Vegas.

The Troubles With Christina

Here's this week's Las Vegas Weekly column, the first of two about Christina Binkley's "Winner Takes All." Next week, I'll report reaction to the book from the likes of Steve Wynn, Sheldon Adelson and Terry Lanni. Read my USA Today review here.

April 2, 2008
The Strip Sense: Gaffe Factory
Noted WSJ writer nearly sinks book on Las Vegas through factual errors

by Steve Friess

A few days ago, USA Today published my review of the new book by Wall Street Journal columnist Christina Binkley on Vegas moguls. In it, I explained why I enjoyed reading Winner Takes All despite its enormous flaws, that Binkley almost despite her own sloppiness managed to render an intriguing and entertaining inside look at the past two decades of Vegas development.

In the context of a book review, though, it isn’t possible to delve into the really important factual problems presented in this effort. Longtime Las Vegans might be interested in the laundry list of mistakes I’ve been accumulating ever since I obtained a preview copy back in December.

But first, why be so intense about analyzing one of a zillion books due to appear about Las Vegas this year? Because Christina Binkley isn’t any ol’ author. She is arguably the most important national journalist ever to pay serious attention to Las Vegas. Before she took on the gaming beat in the late 1990s, the topic was—and still is at most national publications—viewed as an adjunct to the hospitality beat. That’s progress; for a long, long time it was just part of the Mafia beat.

So this book is her doctoral dissertation now that she’s moved on to become a columnist. And yet it’s rife with factual mistakes.

The accuracy problems begin with her clichéd title. One of the things we all know about Vegas is that there is never one winner who takes all. There’s always more, or else there would be no Elad, Station, Maloof, Landry’s, Tamares, Marnell.

But that may be seen as a subjective complaint. The following aren’t. Binkley ...

READ THE REST HERE

Venetian + Palazzo + Sands Expo = ...

MEGACENTER. No, really. That's what they're about to start calling the entire 19-million-square-foot complex. So writes Tamara Audi in a Wall Street Journal piece today. MEGACENTER is to be used in all-caps, according to the story.

Good piece in general about the convention-space boom in Vegas. Wish I had thought of that one.

Thank you, WSJ!

I'm sure by the time you read this, the moment will have passed. But right now, "Gay Vegas" is ranked #1 on Amazon.Com in the category of gay/lesbian travel, #2 in Las Vegas travel guides and #11 in all gay and lesbian nonfiction. Also, the book is at #24,593 overall. To understand the tremendous impact of Tammy Audi's Wall Street Journal piece that referenced the book, I was at #600,000ish on Friday morning. Wild. Keep it going. Buy yours now.

Now, how do we get WSJ to write about "The Strip" and "The Petcast"?

The WSJ piece...

...is online and in Friday's edition. I'm quoted and the book is mentioned and I'm pleased as punch. Read it here.