See, I'm not sure that this argument -- "wholesome family entertainment" -- is going to win the day, are you?
The drama has had some odd results. I totally loved Review-Journal political scribe Spillman's opening paragraph and found the Las Vegas Sun's J. Patrick Coolican was perhaps the MSM's most sober observer. Yet in offering a piece already asking whether the President was actually wrong in suggesting people shouldn't blow money in Vegas if they're saving for college, it seemed Coolican was missing the point. This wasn't about the wisdom of Obama's notions, it was about Obama's now-repeated abuse of Vegas as an example of profligate activity and the stunning lack of political savvy that it took to step in this particular morass again. The latter suggests startling malpractice on the part of Obama's crew.
The last time this came up, the context was different -- he was referring to Vegas because there had been a specific controversy about a bailed-out bank taking an extravagant junket here -- but this time, he could've said just about anything and chose Vegas. Why, for instance, didn't he say, "You don't buy tickets to the Super Bowl if you're saving for college" or "You don't go to Disney World if you're saving for college" or "You don't go flying your wife to New York for dinner and a show if you're saving for college." The ESPN, Disney or Broadway fandoms would've, absolutely, been up in arms? And none of them are suffering as Vegas is.
The drama also resulted in some strange bedfellows, specifically Jon Ralston actually agreeing with Mayor Goodman. Alas, Ralston had to let his snark out somewhere, so he Tweeted a slam against the Review-Journal's website for linking prominently to Sherm Frederick's blog post regarding the Obama-Vegas flap. The great irony of that dig was that on that very morning, Ralston's own newspaper, the Las Vegas Sun, sprawled a bright, huge banner atop its front page where the biggest news of the day belongs that heralded the newspaper's gratitude to Sen. Harry Reid for killing the Yucca Mountain dump.
Sure, there are differences and here they are: The LVRJ.Com crew are incompetent and idiotic and that's well-established but that decision was no doubt made by some flunky somewhere on the fly. And even if Sherm himself called ol' Al to get that treatment, it just fits a longstanding pattern of vanity that is not surprising. Maybe he was hoping to stutter on Fox again. Who knows.
The Sun's print edition, on the other hand, is a planned effort by Pulitzer winners that comes together over the course of a full day and involves meetings and debates. If I was going to choose one to crucify for journalistic malpractice, it would have to be the team that decided that the Sun's obvious effort to provide a nice campaign-ad visual for an embattled Harry Reid was the most important thing happening that day.
