Columnist Susan Snyder: Dancing around real issues

Friday, Aug. 2, 2002 | 2:02 a.m.

Just about every weekday morning I get a document I call "The Daily Death Report."

It's really the report from the Nevada Office of Traffic Safety's Fatal Analysis Reporting System. (Yeah. "Daily Death Report" is easier.)

It's a running county-by-county tally of all the fatal traffic crashes across the state. As of Thursday, 198 people have died on Nevada's roads in 2002 -- 116 of them in Clark County. That's 10 more than the number of people who died in Clark County crashes by the same date last year.

According to the report, 35 of those who died perished in collisions involving alcohol. That averages out to about five a month. Another 26 of the victims were walking when they were hit, and 13 were riding motorcycles. Two were riding bicycles (the only two bicyclists to die in crashes statewide).

The annual Kids Count report, released in March by a Baltimore-based foundation, says a third of Nevada's fourth graders scored below the basic level for math skills, and 35 percent of eighth graders couldn't make the grade in math. A fifth of our children have no health insurance, the report says.

Las Vegas' homeless population has nowhere to go in one of the most unforgiving climates on the planet.

Oregon is trying to lure away what's left of our doctors and nurses.

We're building schools at a breakneck pace without the hope of finding enough teachers to fill them.

And the thing that compels people to take out half-page newspaper ads and rant to the Clark County Commission is lap-dancing? This stupid, meaningless line of work is what elicits our outrage?

Oh, OK. Plenty of folks have their hackles up over whether to legalize marijuana use by "otherwise law-abiding citizens."

Where is a meteor when you need one?

If you could read the teeny print, the Citizens for Smarter Government did have a point in the diatribe they paid for in the B-section of Brand X on Tuesday. Lap-dancing is a trivial thing on which to spend time and money -- whether we're restricting one, performing one or paying for one.

"Our state is not a state founded by Pilgrims but by pioneers," the ad says. Yeah -- Mormon pioneers. State historians say the oldest building in our valley was built by Mormon settlers. Not exactly the lap-dancing types, but I could be wrong.

And adult businesses do not operate "in a totally separate adult environment." Billboards emblazoned with buxom blondes and brunettes leer at passersby. It's an adult environment, but it's not separate.

Still, it was what we were willing to do to bring tourism and money to this desert. We made it our culture.

Frankly, there are bigger fish in this pond that need tending.

The ad that sought to make it un-American to oppose lap-dancing asked thousands of our newcomers why they "try to make Nevada just like the place they left." (I imagine a few thousand American Indians have been asking that same question for 200 years.)

But fret not. We won't turn into those other places, where kids do better in school, classrooms have enough teachers, and homeless shelters and hospital trauma centers stay open.

We simply won't let it happen. We have lap dances and dope to bicker over.