Local View: Sin City, remember?

Push to censor provocative billboards smacks of hypocrisy

By James P. Reza

At a moment when broadcasters are self-censoring their content, commentators for National Public Radio are getting fired for editing errors and Howard Stern is being hunted by the FCC (and its Bush-cozy chairman, Colin Powell's son Michael), it is hardly surprising that some Las Vegans have their granny panties in a bunch over the provocative advertising of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, the Hard Rock Hotel and others. Ridiculous, perhaps. Hypocritical, even. But not surprising, particularly in a recently built, suburb-driven community that knows little of what roots it does have.

Let us be clear about this: By most definitions, there is no such thing as a "wholesome" or "family-friendly" casino operation. Thank you, Mandalay Bay, for the Shark Reef. Cheers to you, Circus Circus, for an air-conditioned theme park. Nice dolphin pool, Mirage. But regardless of how elaborately the shed is decorated, at the center of our resorts, and our city, resides gambling. Without it, none of the so-called family-friendly, multimillion-dollar attractions or shopping malls would have been built.

When Mario Cuomo sanitized Manhattan's Times Square, he did it via a wholesale, aggressive replacement of the local economy: drug dealers and porn stores out, Disney and Starbucks in. But in Las Vegas, Disney and Starbucks are merely another layer of retail entertainment spread thickly atop our core base of gambling.

Sure, gambling has been spit-shined a bit since The Boys ran the place; casino operators don't dig holes in the desert anymore. But no matter how you package it and sell it, gambling is about Greed and his buddy, Anger. And his hot sister Desire. And that horny little brother, Lust. The stuck-up cousin, Pride, the lazy son, Sloth and his kissing cousin, Envy. And--thank you, Wolfgang Puck--Gluttony.

For a brief moment last decade, the Sin family felt the heat come down. They pulled back a bit, laying low, hanging out downtown or sequestering themselves in the high-roller betting parlors and ordering hookers to lavish suites while families trotted about in fannypacks and flip-flops from one underperforming family attraction to another.

But thanks in large part to the Hard Rock Hotel's 1995 opening, sin, or at least the idea of it, is in. And that's something most potential Vegas transplants overlook. These new Las Vegans--1.2 million more of them since my graduation from Clark High School in 1984--are seduced by the lure of sunshine, a good economy, the abundant potential for growth and financial success, and all the shiny new "fastest-growing" gated communities. But they conveniently ignore that 70 cents of every dollar circulated throughout our valley, the money fueling the success they chase, results from how well we lure the nation's gamblers.

And how we lure them has some bewildered soccer moms wondering where the "limit" is on suggestive advertising. For casinos, advertising limits are determined by the Nevada Gaming Commission, who, like a panel of "I know it when I see it" Supreme Court justices, metes out interpretations based on a licensing regulation requiring casino operators to "conduct advertising and public relations in accordance with," among other things, "decency," "good taste" and "inoffensiveness." In Nevada, such moral battle lines smack of hypocrisy.

The LVCVA, whose series of "What Happens in Vegas" ads were adapted from a decades-old wink-and-nod island vacation joke, is not bound by Gaming Commission regulations. The Hard Rock Hotel, on the other hand, has been Howard Stern to the Gaming Commission's FCC. Its series of cleverly provocative billboards raised the voices of concerned parents who evidently moved to Summerlin and Green Valley not realizing that Las Vegas was just around the corner.

These parents packed a recent Gaming Commission meeting, wondering how to explain to their kids that some hot chicks evidently dig other hot chicks, particularly at nightclubs. But do they ever stop to wonder why that dollar bill they just received from Starbucks smells of vanilla perfume and stale cigarettes? Or what weak slob just covered their portion of Nevada's "state income tax" with his rent money and now has to hitchhike home?

Lucille Lusk, co-chair of the Nevadans for Concerned Citizens group who spearheaded the vocal attendance at the Gaming Commission meeting, has been quoted in the Review-Journal as saying that the Hard Rock has "taken it over the edge without respect. This is indeed a family community. We still have children here."

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious, but there always have been families and children here; Mormons founded this city, remember? To play the child card is a weak emotional argument typically unsheathed when moral standards come into question. It degrades parental influence and denies the very nature of Las Vegas.

Many longtime Las Vegans were raised in neighborhoods closer to the Strip and downtown than most suburban residents ever dare to venture. Resident families spent more time in hotel-casinos than they do now, as the dining and entertainment options off-Strip were few and far between. Of course, Las Vegas was more of a libertarian, live-and-let-die place back then, but guess what? Despite being widely exposed to images of gambling and sexuality, many Vegas children grew into well-adjusted citizens whose particular definitions of "good taste" and "inoffensiveness" seem far more realistic when confronted with the reality of Las Vegas.

The complaints against the ad campaigns of some casinos, nightclubs and the LVCVA ignore that all of us feed from the vices of the Strip, downtown and, increasingly, from "neighborhood" casinos, which, despite the movie theaters and KidZones, also make their money from gambling.

Folding money is the litmus paper of a community, absorbing and disbursing traces of countless individual sins and successes. As Vegas is driven by money, such residuals are far less removed. Raising children in any city without measuring your own values against that of the community is ridiculous. It sounds much like the cries of those who would plant their roots downwind from a pig farm and then complain about the smell. Or buy a house that backs up to an interstate and complain about the noise. Oh, we have those folks here, too? Well, no one ever said we check SAT scores at the border.

James P. Reza is a native Las Vegan who writes about the city on assignment from Time Out, Conde Nast Traveler and others.