Columnist Jeff German: Ironies abound in Las Vegas

Tuesday, Dec. 14, 2004 | 11:03 a.m.

For some reason, this is the time of the year when I find myself thinking about the ironies of living in Las Vegas.

We are a city, after all, that is rooted in irony. Modern-day Las Vegas, the envy of the tourism world, wouldn't have occurred without the help of old-time bootleggers, illegal gamblers and mobsters who migrated here to find legitimacy in their lives.

Today we boast of having some of the world's largest and most luxurious hotels, yet we don't know how to put roofs over the heads of our growing homeless population. And we are forced to let the mentally ill crowd our emergency rooms because we won't build them the treatment centers they need to become productive citizens.

Religious conservatism is all around us, yet we market ourselves as a city of sin. Last week, instead of showing leadership and pointing out the dangers of promoting Las Vegas as a city with no social boundaries, our governor caved in to the power brokers who put him in office and publicly endorsed the sin-oriented marketing campaign.

The sky's the limit now.

Just ask our fun-loving, hard-drinking mayor, who went to baseball's winter meetings in Anaheim over the weekend arm in arm with scantily clad showgirls and an Elvis impersonator, in search of a major league baseball team for Las Vegas. The mayor apparently couldn't resist handing out fake casino chips bearing his likeness to the lords of baseball.

I'll never understand how a man who has an ego the size of the MGM Grand and treats his office like it's his own personal fiefdom manages to remain one of the most popular politicians in town.

But then I'll also never understand how a licensed casino owner can hang out in public with one of the city's most notorious convicted felons (her initials are S.M.) and encourage a gossip columnist to publish a photo of the two partying. It's not the best way to earn brownie points with gaming regulators.

If you're looking for the ultimate irony in Las Vegas, however, consider last week's annual conference on problem gambling, sponsored by the National Center for Responsible Gaming, a Washington-based research group funded by the casino industry.

There were plenty of keynote addresses, seminars and round-table discussions on every imaginable subject related to gambling addictions. Organizers brought in the brightest minds of the casino industry and the medical profession to participate.

What a shame that the conference had to be held in a city (and a state) that sets aside no funding at all toward treating those addicted to gambling.

We have talked before about the failings of the last two Nevada Legislatures to pass measures that would have established a fund to treat problem gamblers on the front lines.

Even though the state gets the lion's share of its revenues from the casino industry, it refuses to steer some of those revenues toward bettering the lives the industry has ruined.

The industry is no better. It won't take the initiative, either, and create its own fund for the addicted.

Industry leaders would rather see the addicted continue to gamble so that they can continue to announce record profits for their shareholders.

I can live without this kind of irony.