Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Body Found in Iraq Confirmed As Hostage's
1 hour, 23 minutes ago |
|
By KRISTEN WYATT, Associated Press Writer
MARIETTA, Ga. - The family of hostage Jack Hensley has received confirmation that the headless body handed over to U.S. officials in Iraq (news - web sites) is his, a family spokesman said Wednesday.
| ||||||||||||||||
The family was told the news Wednesday, the day Hensley would have turned 49, Cobb County police spokesman Robert Quigley said outside Hensley's Marietta home.
The body was handed over to American authorities in Baghdad, the U.S. Embassy said.
In an interview earlier in the day on NBC's "Today," Hensley's brother, Ty Hensley, said Hensley's wife, Pati, was "extraordinarily devastated."
"She is a widow now," Ty Hensley said. "She is a mother of a 13-year-old daughter. She's also a caregiver of two mothers. What has fallen upon her is an extraordinary amount of weight."
The discovery of the body came a day after a posting on an Islamic Web site had claimed that an al-Qaida-linked group in Iraq had slain a second American, presumably Hensley. It came a day after the group said it beheaded fellow U.S. hostage Eugene Armstrong.
The White House offered condolences to the Hensley family Wednesday.
"Their strength during a difficult time is amazing. The terrorists want to shake our will, but they will not," said Scott McClellan, a White House spokesman. "It shows the true barbaric nature of the enemies we face in Iraq, that they would take innocent civilian life. They will be defeated, they will not prevail."
Hensley, Armstrong and an Englishman, Kenneth Bigley, were kidnapped last Thursday from a house that the three civil engineers, working for the construction firm Gulf Services Co., shared in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.
Ty Hensley declined to answer directly when asked if he felt anger toward his brother's captors but said he felt that despite their demands, the hostage takers always intended to kill the hostages. They never called an embassy to communicate their demands, he said.
"The terrorists wanted to kill my brother and hurt my family," Ty Hensley said.
"He was my T-ball coach," he told CNN. "He put my toys together at Christmas." He said friends had created a fund to help pay for Hensley's daughter to go to college.
Outside Hensley's suburban home, a trickle of friends came Tuesday to give condolences to his wife and daughter. One neighbor delivered food wrapped in foil.
"Jack's agenda was to help the people of Iraq," said Ken Cole, a 19-year friend.
On Tuesday, Hensley's wife clung to hope that her husband was alive.
"We are still hopeful at this time that Jack Hensley is still with us," Pati Hensley said in a statement read by a family spokesman.
The captors, a militant Islamic group called Tawhid and Jihad, demanded the release of female prisoners from American jails in Iraq and set a 24-hour deadline.
___
On the Net:
All change at JordanPantano out, Glock and Doornbos get the nod
Timo Glock to race in ChinaGiorgio Pantano has been dropped from the Jordan Ford team the Silverstone-based outfit announced this morning. Pantano, who competed in 14 events this year, failed to score any championship points, despite some strong drives. Heading to the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, Timo Glock has been promoted from the role of third driver to race driver, while the team has signed Robert Doornbos as the team’s third driver for the remaining races.“It has been a pleasure working with Giorgio this year however contractual issues have made this unavoidable and we wish him every success in the future," Jordan said in a statement. "Timo’s performance throughout the season as our third driver in testing and free practice has been first-class particularly when he stood in and raced in Canada. I am confident that in this unexpected call-up he will do a good job for Jordan again. In Shanghai he will be in the same boat as everyone else as the circuit is new for all the drivers.”Glock has participated in team test sessions and Friday free practice at every Grand Prix so far this season. He raced in the Canadian Grand Prix and scored two points in his F1 race debut. Doornbos, team-mate to Tonio Liuzzi this year in F3000 with Arden International with three podium positions and a victory at Spa Francorchamps to his credit, described his chance with Jordan as 'Fantastic'.“The F3000 season only just ended in Monza and it’s been an amazing season for me – in my first year in F3000 I won a race and got on the podium a few times," Doornbos said. "To get this chance with Jordan is fantastic and although it’s late in the day and at circuits I have never visited, I’m grabbing the opportunity with both hands and looking forward to my first F1 drive. I would like to thank my sponsors Muermans Group and Burgfonds for helping me to make this possible.”Describing the Friday position as an unexpected opportunity, Jordan welcomed Doornbos to the team. “I’m very pleased that we have been able to offer this unexpected opportunity to Robert Doornbos," said Jordan. "He has shown very impressive form this season with Arden International, holding his own against a dominant team-mate. Winning at Spa is a great achievement because it is a true ‘drivers’ track and we are looking forward to having Doornbos on board with Jordan for his F1 debut.”E.A.Source Jordan Ford
Timo Glock to race in ChinaGiorgio Pantano has been dropped from the Jordan Ford team the Silverstone-based outfit announced this morning. Pantano, who competed in 14 events this year, failed to score any championship points, despite some strong drives. Heading to the Chinese Grand Prix weekend, Timo Glock has been promoted from the role of third driver to race driver, while the team has signed Robert Doornbos as the team’s third driver for the remaining races.“It has been a pleasure working with Giorgio this year however contractual issues have made this unavoidable and we wish him every success in the future," Jordan said in a statement. "Timo’s performance throughout the season as our third driver in testing and free practice has been first-class particularly when he stood in and raced in Canada. I am confident that in this unexpected call-up he will do a good job for Jordan again. In Shanghai he will be in the same boat as everyone else as the circuit is new for all the drivers.”Glock has participated in team test sessions and Friday free practice at every Grand Prix so far this season. He raced in the Canadian Grand Prix and scored two points in his F1 race debut. Doornbos, team-mate to Tonio Liuzzi this year in F3000 with Arden International with three podium positions and a victory at Spa Francorchamps to his credit, described his chance with Jordan as 'Fantastic'.“The F3000 season only just ended in Monza and it’s been an amazing season for me – in my first year in F3000 I won a race and got on the podium a few times," Doornbos said. "To get this chance with Jordan is fantastic and although it’s late in the day and at circuits I have never visited, I’m grabbing the opportunity with both hands and looking forward to my first F1 drive. I would like to thank my sponsors Muermans Group and Burgfonds for helping me to make this possible.”Describing the Friday position as an unexpected opportunity, Jordan welcomed Doornbos to the team. “I’m very pleased that we have been able to offer this unexpected opportunity to Robert Doornbos," said Jordan. "He has shown very impressive form this season with Arden International, holding his own against a dominant team-mate. Winning at Spa is a great achievement because it is a true ‘drivers’ track and we are looking forward to having Doornbos on board with Jordan for his F1 debut.”E.A.Source Jordan Ford
21 SEPTEMBER 2004
While earlier in the week, Sadie Frost's FrostFrench show in London drew the interest of front row VIPs Jude Law and Kate Moss, other designers are saving their star power for the runway. In one of the most highly-anticipated collections of London Fashion Week, designer Clements Ribeiro featured Mick Jagger's model daughter Liz showing off the label's spring-summer 2005 creations. The pillow-lipped brunette wasn't the only rock offspring strutting her stuff, however. Rolling Stone Keith Richards' daughters, Alexandra, 19, and Theodora, 20, gave onlookers a double dose of fashion as they prowled the catwalk for Eley Kishimoto Ellesse. Another British model, Jodie Kidd, put her talents to use for Notting Hill-based designer Alice Temperley, displaying a range of vintage-inspired ensembles in pastel mint, peach and cream-coloured chiffon. Travelling a bit further was 39-year-old Canadian fashion icon Linda Evangelista, who showed the younger girls how it's done for Giles Deacon.
While earlier in the week, Sadie Frost's FrostFrench show in London drew the interest of front row VIPs Jude Law and Kate Moss, other designers are saving their star power for the runway. In one of the most highly-anticipated collections of London Fashion Week, designer Clements Ribeiro featured Mick Jagger's model daughter Liz showing off the label's spring-summer 2005 creations. The pillow-lipped brunette wasn't the only rock offspring strutting her stuff, however. Rolling Stone Keith Richards' daughters, Alexandra, 19, and Theodora, 20, gave onlookers a double dose of fashion as they prowled the catwalk for Eley Kishimoto Ellesse. Another British model, Jodie Kidd, put her talents to use for Notting Hill-based designer Alice Temperley, displaying a range of vintage-inspired ensembles in pastel mint, peach and cream-coloured chiffon. Travelling a bit further was 39-year-old Canadian fashion icon Linda Evangelista, who showed the younger girls how it's done for Giles Deacon.
Tuesday September 21, 6:53 PM
Formula One teams settle in to Shanghai circuit ahead of Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix
Formula One's ten teams settled into Shanghai's brand-new racing circuit on Tuesday following the arrival of 32 cars ahead of the inaugural Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
Protected by colorful covers, the multimillion were lifted delicately into team garages by forklifts along the US$240 million (euro 197 million) Shanghai International Circuit's pit lane. The arrivals marked yet another milestone for organizers following nearly two years of flat-out work for the Sunday event.
"The preparation enters its final stage," circuit General Manager Mao Xiaohan said.
The Grand Prix marks China's first foray into the international glamor sport. That has generated massive civic pride in the country's largest, wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city, already home to a thriving auto industry and the country's tallest building.
The Grand Prix, which Shanghai will host until at least 2010, adds to a string of top-tier sports events staged by China, including professional tennis and figure skating, in a quest for prestige to match its rising economic and political clout.
Drivers, including this season's champion Michael Schumacher of Ferrari, were to begin arriving on Tuesday.
In remarks prior to his arrival, Schumacher said he wasn't concerned that other drivers might have had a chance to try out the track before him.
"Only after having run the first few laps on Friday will we discover what it is really like," the German was quoted as saying by the Web site Motorsport.com.
Meanwhile, Williams BMW driver Juan Pablo Montoya spent part of Monday celebrating his birthday at the Great Wall outside Beijing.
The race is also expected to see the return of Ralf Schumacher, Michael's brother, to Williams following a six-race absence after crashing into a wall at the U.S. Grand Prix in Indianapolis in June.
Former World Champion Jacques Villeneuve will also be returning with Renault after being without a ride all season. The Canadian replaces Jarno Trulli, who left to join Toyota.
Teams have scheduled a parade of flashy promotional events to maximize the publicity value of their entry into what F1 is hailing as its most promising new market of 1.3 billion car-crazy potential fans.
"China is a big market for everyone. For Honda it's a huge market," said Alistair Watkins, marketing director for the BAR-Honda team who are running second behind Ferrari on the constructors table, just three points ahead of Renault.
Watkins spoke at the launch of a BAR-Honda extravaganza at the ultra-trendy Xintiandi nightlife spot, featuring a laser show, bands, and 500,000 yuan (US$61,000; euro 50,000) worth of fireworks.
However, along with several other teams, BAR-Honda has been forced to rework their promotional materials to conform with China's ban on tobacco advertising.
While actual race cars will still carry cigarette logos, they are banned from advertising hoardings at the track and even from materials placed in team VIP rooms, according to a spokesman at the State Sports General Administration, who gave only his surname, Chen.
Organizers say they've sold all 150,000 tickets available to the general public, bringing in more than 300 million yuan (US$36 million; euro 30 million). Including those holding sponsors tickets, about 200,000 in all are expected to attend.
Most tickets have been sold to Chinese fans, according to local media, reflecting how interest in auto racing is taking off in the world's fastest-growing car market.
The Chinese Grand Prix is the third-to-last event on the 18-race F1 schedule, the second new event after the Bahrain into a sport that is looking to Asia to expand its audience.
Out at the track, gear was trucked directly from Shanghai's international airport and customs setting up a special office on the site to handle paperwork.
Drivers and team engineers have just three days to familiarize themselves with the new track before Friday's practice session. Up to now, they've been working with maps and computer simulations, but those tools can't gauge variables such as wind speed, wear on brakes and tires and surface temperatures affecting engine cooling.
The 5.4-kilometer-long (3.4-mile-long) circuit on Shanghai's west side was designed by prolific German Hermann Tilke. It forms the shape of the Chinese character "Shang" _ meaning "to rise," which also forms the first part of the word Shanghai.
The track has been called fast and technical, with 14 turns and a 1.2-kilometer-long (0.75-mile-long) straightaway on which cars will hit speeds of up to 326 kph (205 mph).
Its tightening first turn and final straightaway have been singled out as its most interesting features.
Email this story
Printer friendlyversion
Formula One teams settle in to Shanghai circuit ahead of Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix
Formula One's ten teams settled into Shanghai's brand-new racing circuit on Tuesday following the arrival of 32 cars ahead of the inaugural Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai.
Protected by colorful covers, the multimillion were lifted delicately into team garages by forklifts along the US$240 million (euro 197 million) Shanghai International Circuit's pit lane. The arrivals marked yet another milestone for organizers following nearly two years of flat-out work for the Sunday event.
"The preparation enters its final stage," circuit General Manager Mao Xiaohan said.
The Grand Prix marks China's first foray into the international glamor sport. That has generated massive civic pride in the country's largest, wealthiest and most cosmopolitan city, already home to a thriving auto industry and the country's tallest building.
The Grand Prix, which Shanghai will host until at least 2010, adds to a string of top-tier sports events staged by China, including professional tennis and figure skating, in a quest for prestige to match its rising economic and political clout.
Drivers, including this season's champion Michael Schumacher of Ferrari, were to begin arriving on Tuesday.
In remarks prior to his arrival, Schumacher said he wasn't concerned that other drivers might have had a chance to try out the track before him.
"Only after having run the first few laps on Friday will we discover what it is really like," the German was quoted as saying by the Web site Motorsport.com.
Meanwhile, Williams BMW driver Juan Pablo Montoya spent part of Monday celebrating his birthday at the Great Wall outside Beijing.
The race is also expected to see the return of Ralf Schumacher, Michael's brother, to Williams following a six-race absence after crashing into a wall at the U.S. Grand Prix in Indianapolis in June.
Former World Champion Jacques Villeneuve will also be returning with Renault after being without a ride all season. The Canadian replaces Jarno Trulli, who left to join Toyota.
Teams have scheduled a parade of flashy promotional events to maximize the publicity value of their entry into what F1 is hailing as its most promising new market of 1.3 billion car-crazy potential fans.
"China is a big market for everyone. For Honda it's a huge market," said Alistair Watkins, marketing director for the BAR-Honda team who are running second behind Ferrari on the constructors table, just three points ahead of Renault.
Watkins spoke at the launch of a BAR-Honda extravaganza at the ultra-trendy Xintiandi nightlife spot, featuring a laser show, bands, and 500,000 yuan (US$61,000; euro 50,000) worth of fireworks.
However, along with several other teams, BAR-Honda has been forced to rework their promotional materials to conform with China's ban on tobacco advertising.
While actual race cars will still carry cigarette logos, they are banned from advertising hoardings at the track and even from materials placed in team VIP rooms, according to a spokesman at the State Sports General Administration, who gave only his surname, Chen.
Organizers say they've sold all 150,000 tickets available to the general public, bringing in more than 300 million yuan (US$36 million; euro 30 million). Including those holding sponsors tickets, about 200,000 in all are expected to attend.
Most tickets have been sold to Chinese fans, according to local media, reflecting how interest in auto racing is taking off in the world's fastest-growing car market.
The Chinese Grand Prix is the third-to-last event on the 18-race F1 schedule, the second new event after the Bahrain into a sport that is looking to Asia to expand its audience.
Out at the track, gear was trucked directly from Shanghai's international airport and customs setting up a special office on the site to handle paperwork.
Drivers and team engineers have just three days to familiarize themselves with the new track before Friday's practice session. Up to now, they've been working with maps and computer simulations, but those tools can't gauge variables such as wind speed, wear on brakes and tires and surface temperatures affecting engine cooling.
The 5.4-kilometer-long (3.4-mile-long) circuit on Shanghai's west side was designed by prolific German Hermann Tilke. It forms the shape of the Chinese character "Shang" _ meaning "to rise," which also forms the first part of the word Shanghai.
The track has been called fast and technical, with 14 turns and a 1.2-kilometer-long (0.75-mile-long) straightaway on which cars will hit speeds of up to 326 kph (205 mph).
Its tightening first turn and final straightaway have been singled out as its most interesting features.
Email this story
Printer friendlyversion
America's Last Honest Place
by Marc Cooper
Las Vegas
This city is often described as one of dreams and fantasy, of tinselish
make-believe. But this is getting it backward. Vegas is instead the
American
market ethic stripped bare, a mini-world totally free of the pretenses
and
protocols of modern consumer capitalism. As one local gambling
researcher
says gleefully: "What other city in America puts up giant roadside
billboards promoting 97 percent guaranteed payback on slot play? In
other
words, you give us a buck and we'll give you back 97 cents. That's why
I
love my hometown."
Even that stomach-churning instant when the last chip is swept away can
be
charged with an existential frisson. Maybe that's why they say that the
difference between praying here and praying anywhere else is that here
you
really mean it. All the previous hours of over-the-table chitchat, of
know-it-all exchanges between the ice-cool dealer and the cynical
writer
from the big city, the kibitzing with the T-shirted rubes and the
open-shirted sharpies to my right and left, the false promises of the
coins
clanging into the trays behind me, the little stories I tell myself
while my
stack of chips shrinks and swells and then shrivels some more--all of
this
comes to an abrupt, crashing halt when the last chip goes back in the
dealer's tray. "No seats for the onlookers, sir." And the other players
at
the table--the dealer who a moment ago was my buddy, the solicitous pit
boss, the guy from Iowa in short khakis and topsiders peering over my
shoulder--no longer give a fuck whether I live or die. And while
winning is
always better, it's even in moments of loss like this that I feel a
certain
perverse thrill. It's one of the few totally honest interludes you can
have
in modern America. All the pretense, all the sentimentality, the
euphemisms,
hypocrisies, come-ons, loss leaders, warranties and guarantees, all the
fairy tales are out the window. You're out of money? OK, good--now get
lost.
In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level
democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind,
class-free
place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one
gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual
orientation,
address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal
arrest
record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you
as
the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America's
manifold
unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place
guaranteed
to come through--even if it's for a fleeting weekend. You may never, in
fact, surpass the Joneses, but with the two-night, three-day special at
the
Sahara, buffet and show included, free valet parking and maybe a comped
breakfast at the coffee shop, you can certainly live like them for
seventy-two hours--while never having to as much as change out of your
flip-flops, tank top or NASCAR cap.
"Las Vegas as America, America as Las Vegas. It's like what came first?
The
chicken or the egg?" says Vegas historian Michael Green. "Fresno,
California, doesn't have a row of casinos, but you can be sure it has
some
part of town where you can go for vice even though it's supposed to be
illegal. Here it's not necessarily vice in the first place, but it's
certainly not illegal. We have the same sort of stuff and more. Except
that
unlike in most places, here it's just out in the open." What
extraordinary
prescience social critic Neil Postman displayed when he wrote in his
1985
book Amusing Ourselves to Death that Las Vegas--where Wall Street
corporations had replaced mafias and mobs--should be considered the
"symbolic capital" of America. "At different times in our history,"
Postman
wrote, "different cities have been the focal point of a radiating
American
spirit." In the era of the Revolutionary War, Boston embodied the
ideals of
freedom; in the mid-nineteenth century, "New York became the symbol of
a
melting-pot America." In the early twentieth century, the brawn and
inventiveness of American industry and culture were captured in the
energy
of Chicago. "Today," Postman concluded, "we must look to the city of
Las
Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration,
its
symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a
chorus
girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of
entertainment,
and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public
discourse
increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, our
religion,
news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into
congenial
adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular
notice."
When Postman penned these words, little could he imagine that the Vegas
he
was writing about was the "old" Las Vegas and that Sin City was just a
few
years away from a radical makeover. Nor could Postman fully fathom that
America itself was in the throes of a cataclysmic transformation. The
more
both places changed, the more they mirrored each other. In 1989 Steve
Wynn--with junk-bond financing from Michael Milken--stunned the Strip
with
his $700 million Mirage Hotel and Casino and touched off a revolution.
One
after another, the old Rat Pack-era hotels were dynamited and in their
place
rose staggering Leviathans of modern, market-based entertainment: the
biggest casino in the world, then the biggest hotel in the world, then
the
most expensive hotel in the world, the biggest man-made hotel lake in
the
world, the hotel with the biggest rooms in the world, and so on.
If economist Joseph Schumpeter was correct in theorizing that "creative
destruction is the essential fact about capitalism," then capitalism as
practiced in Las Vegas is the purest strain. The erection of the Vegas
mega-resorts was not only heralded by the televised dynamiting of their
predecessors but also accompanied by the concurrent collapse of much of
the
rest of America's urban, industrial and employment infrastructure.
Isn't it
logical or at least fitting that Las Vegas, the City of the Eternal
Now, the
town that every few years seems to slather yet one more layer of
pavement
and glitz over its own scant history, tradition and roots, would expand
just
as long-entrenched communities from Southeast Los Angeles to Lima,
Ohio,
evaporated into the deindustrialized dust of globalization?
Indeed, just as quickly as Las Vegas consumes and erases the past and
scrambles the present, it now shines to many as an attractive beacon of
the
future. Unlike almost any other place in America, Las Vegas is one city
where unskilled labor can still--thanks to vibrant unions and wealthy
and
efficient employers--earn middle-class wages. Vegas food servers, car
parkers, cashiers, even maids, can still buy into the new American
dream,
purchasing a house and putting their kids through school. A high school
grad
can become a professional dealer for three hundred bucks' worth of
tuition
and a few weeks of practice pitching cards--and most likely get a job.
Where
else in America can you regularly find 60-year-old, bouffant-coiffed
cocktail waitresses proudly wearing union buttons (those of the mighty
Culinary Workers Local 226) and going home to peruse the statements of
their
fattening pension accounts?
Even though the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center slowed
(slightly) what has traditionally been the recession-proof Vegas
economy, a
steady stream of 5,000-6,000 domestic economic refugees a month still
pour
into and around the city. Only 6 percent of adults living in Vegas's
Clark
County were born here--the lowest such figure anywhere in America. And
although water supplies are drying up, schools are strained and suicide
and
domestic violence rates are among the highest in the nation, they keep
pouring in. Purchasers of new houses--at prices far below those of the
two
coasts--are wait-listed. Vegas's population doubled during the 1980s,
and
doubled again in the '90s. Vegas continues to be the fastest-growing
metropolitan area in America.
This generation of immigrants, however, is different in many ways from
the
grifters, hustlers and outcasts who huddled here over the past century.
Sure, there will always be a certain batch of trimmers, fugitives and
shakedown artists looking to launder themselves in the Vegas sun. But
most
of those now crowding into Las Vegas are fleeing from an America where
everyday life has become too much of a gamble--where either the Reagan
recession of 1981, the Bush slump of 1990 or the burst bubble of a
decade
later has left them as devastated as a blackjack player who bet it all
only
to have his pair of tens get trounced by the dealer's Ace-King. The
only
risk they are interested in now is the off chance that Vegas can
provide the
normalcy, the security, the certainty, that once underpinned their
lives, or
at least their dreams.
What a turnaround it has been for once lowly Las Vegas--and for the
nation
around it. Barely fifteen years ago, the august Citicorp was queasy
about
publicly admitting that its major credit-card processing center had
been
relocated to an unincorporated suburb of Las Vegas. A deal with state
authorities allowed the banking corporation to postmark and camouflage
its
mail as coming from "The Lakes, Nevada" instead of from sinful Vegas.
Today,
that same neighborhood sports several high-end casinos and luxury
hotels.
And Citicorp's own credibility, in the aftermath of the great Wall
Street
accounting scandals, ranks somewhere below that of a midtown
three-card-monte hustler.
Nor could Neil Postman have known back in 1985 that casino gambling was
about to be fully destigmatized within a decade--and delicately renamed
"gaming." The resulting shift in public attitudes would not only
definitively cleanse Vegas's image but also net it a growing bonanza.
As
recently as 1988, casino gambling was legal only in Nevada and in
Atlantic
City. But as American industry continued to wash up offshore and the
commercial tax base atrophied, one strapped state and municipality
after
another turned its forlorn eyes toward the gaming tables and slot
machines.
Impoverished Indian tribes were more than willing to sign gambling
compacts
with state governments. The result: Now twenty-seven states have
Nevada-style casinos, and forty-eight states have at least some form of
legal gambling. With local budgets again being squeezed by burgeoning
deficits, government itself is thinking about going into the casino
business. In the spring of 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said he'd
like
to open a municipal casino. Before the 1989 opening of the Mirage
unleashed
the New Vegas revolution, only 15 percent of Americans had ever visited
the
city. By mid-decade that number had doubled. In its 1996 annual report,
Circus Circus celebrated the news: "In an era when social attitudes
toward
play, and the means to afford it, have dramatically changed, so has the
role
of the casino."
The past seven years have shown an ever more dramatic shift toward the
mainstreaming of gambling. A gambling-industry poll claimed that in the
single year of 2001, 51 million Americans--more than a quarter of the
population over age 21--visited a casino, chalking up a national total
of
almost 300 million visits. More than 430 commercial casinos nationwide
brought in $26.5 billon in revenue--two and a half times what Americans
spent on movie tickets, $5 billion more than they spent on DVDs and
videos,
and $3 billion more than on cosmetics and toiletries. The explosion of
legalized gambling nationwide has had little but positive impact on Las
Vegas. "All it did was increase the average Joe's appetite for
gambling,"
says a veteran Vegas Strip pit boss. "You know, it's like baseball. We
see
all those local Indian casinos and riverboat casinos and local slot
parlors
as our farm teams. They suck in a lot of average American types who
never
thought about gambling before. But once you play on the farm team, who
doesn't want to play in the majors? And Las Vegas is the friggin' World
Series. It's kind of like, You build the casinos out there and they'll
come.
But eventually they'll come here."
The difference between the marketing of Vegas a half-century ago and
today
is precisely the difference in mainstream American attitudes. "Fifty
years
ago, Lucille Ball was pregnant, and they couldn't say that word on I
Love
Lucy,'' says historian Green. "Today we have lesbian kisses on TV. We
have
the word 'bullshit' on prime time, not to talk about cable programming.
As
the culture has become more open, Las Vegas can market itself more
honestly." And, Green might add, there's a whole new line of
Lucy-themed
slot machines now out on casino floors.
In a time when Martha Stewart gets busted, Mark McGwire is on chemicals
and
Sammy Sosa gets caught with a corker; when everyday economic life in
America
has become a breathtaking risk and it's an all-out crapshoot whether
you'll
still have a job next month or your HMO will cover your spinal tap or
you
can hock the house for enough to pay for your kid's college tuition,
who can
say whether it would have really been that stupid to let it all ride on
18
Red? Was it smarter to invest ten years of savings in an Enron-backed
401(k)
or to spend your time studying the probability charts for single-deck
blackjack? Is the integrity of the roulette wheels at the Bellagio more
tainted than the quarterly corporate reports coming out of WorldCom?
Both
are iffy propositions, but at least in Vegas the rules of the game are
clear-cut, the industry tightly regulated and the unfavorable odds
publicly
posted. There are no multimillion-dollar-a-year cable TV touts telling
you
that red or black or double-zero green is the next best thing or that
life
somehow owes you an eternal double-digit annual return. Haven't we, in
fact,
reached a point in our culture where the button-down bankers and
arbitrageurs have become the reckless "casino capitalists," while those
who
actually run the casinos can get away with labeling themselves
responsible
and conservative "entertainment visionaries"? Even if they are,
increasingly, often the same people?
A couple of years back at a gambling industry convention in Las Vegas,
the
chief financial officers of three major casinos sat on a public panel.
When
someone from the floor asked if investment in the casino business was a
good
bet, one of the CFOs answered, essentially: The difference between us
and
Enron is that at least our money is real. That globally recognized icon
of
Las Vegas, the neon-lit, hand-waving cowboy Vegas Vic, unveiled in 1947
and
still presiding over downtown's Fremont Street, used to regularly and
electronically call out "Howdy, pardner" until the complaints of
card-groggy
hotel guests got him permanently muted. But if Vic could speak today,
he
might well be saying, "Welcome to Las Vegas, pardner. The last honest
place
in America."
by Marc Cooper
Las Vegas
This city is often described as one of dreams and fantasy, of tinselish
make-believe. But this is getting it backward. Vegas is instead the
American
market ethic stripped bare, a mini-world totally free of the pretenses
and
protocols of modern consumer capitalism. As one local gambling
researcher
says gleefully: "What other city in America puts up giant roadside
billboards promoting 97 percent guaranteed payback on slot play? In
other
words, you give us a buck and we'll give you back 97 cents. That's why
I
love my hometown."
Even that stomach-churning instant when the last chip is swept away can
be
charged with an existential frisson. Maybe that's why they say that the
difference between praying here and praying anywhere else is that here
you
really mean it. All the previous hours of over-the-table chitchat, of
know-it-all exchanges between the ice-cool dealer and the cynical
writer
from the big city, the kibitzing with the T-shirted rubes and the
open-shirted sharpies to my right and left, the false promises of the
coins
clanging into the trays behind me, the little stories I tell myself
while my
stack of chips shrinks and swells and then shrivels some more--all of
this
comes to an abrupt, crashing halt when the last chip goes back in the
dealer's tray. "No seats for the onlookers, sir." And the other players
at
the table--the dealer who a moment ago was my buddy, the solicitous pit
boss, the guy from Iowa in short khakis and topsiders peering over my
shoulder--no longer give a fuck whether I live or die. And while
winning is
always better, it's even in moments of loss like this that I feel a
certain
perverse thrill. It's one of the few totally honest interludes you can
have
in modern America. All the pretense, all the sentimentality, the
euphemisms,
hypocrisies, come-ons, loss leaders, warranties and guarantees, all the
fairy tales are out the window. You're out of money? OK, good--now get
lost.
In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level
democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind,
class-free
place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one
gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual
orientation,
address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal
arrest
record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you
as
the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America's
manifold
unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place
guaranteed
to come through--even if it's for a fleeting weekend. You may never, in
fact, surpass the Joneses, but with the two-night, three-day special at
the
Sahara, buffet and show included, free valet parking and maybe a comped
breakfast at the coffee shop, you can certainly live like them for
seventy-two hours--while never having to as much as change out of your
flip-flops, tank top or NASCAR cap.
"Las Vegas as America, America as Las Vegas. It's like what came first?
The
chicken or the egg?" says Vegas historian Michael Green. "Fresno,
California, doesn't have a row of casinos, but you can be sure it has
some
part of town where you can go for vice even though it's supposed to be
illegal. Here it's not necessarily vice in the first place, but it's
certainly not illegal. We have the same sort of stuff and more. Except
that
unlike in most places, here it's just out in the open." What
extraordinary
prescience social critic Neil Postman displayed when he wrote in his
1985
book Amusing Ourselves to Death that Las Vegas--where Wall Street
corporations had replaced mafias and mobs--should be considered the
"symbolic capital" of America. "At different times in our history,"
Postman
wrote, "different cities have been the focal point of a radiating
American
spirit." In the era of the Revolutionary War, Boston embodied the
ideals of
freedom; in the mid-nineteenth century, "New York became the symbol of
a
melting-pot America." In the early twentieth century, the brawn and
inventiveness of American industry and culture were captured in the
energy
of Chicago. "Today," Postman concluded, "we must look to the city of
Las
Vegas, Nevada, as a metaphor of our national character and aspiration,
its
symbol a thirty-foot-high cardboard picture of a slot machine and a
chorus
girl. For Las Vegas is a city entirely devoted to the idea of
entertainment,
and as such proclaims the spirit of a culture in which all public
discourse
increasingly takes the form of entertainment. Our politics, our
religion,
news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into
congenial
adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular
notice."
When Postman penned these words, little could he imagine that the Vegas
he
was writing about was the "old" Las Vegas and that Sin City was just a
few
years away from a radical makeover. Nor could Postman fully fathom that
America itself was in the throes of a cataclysmic transformation. The
more
both places changed, the more they mirrored each other. In 1989 Steve
Wynn--with junk-bond financing from Michael Milken--stunned the Strip
with
his $700 million Mirage Hotel and Casino and touched off a revolution.
One
after another, the old Rat Pack-era hotels were dynamited and in their
place
rose staggering Leviathans of modern, market-based entertainment: the
biggest casino in the world, then the biggest hotel in the world, then
the
most expensive hotel in the world, the biggest man-made hotel lake in
the
world, the hotel with the biggest rooms in the world, and so on.
If economist Joseph Schumpeter was correct in theorizing that "creative
destruction is the essential fact about capitalism," then capitalism as
practiced in Las Vegas is the purest strain. The erection of the Vegas
mega-resorts was not only heralded by the televised dynamiting of their
predecessors but also accompanied by the concurrent collapse of much of
the
rest of America's urban, industrial and employment infrastructure.
Isn't it
logical or at least fitting that Las Vegas, the City of the Eternal
Now, the
town that every few years seems to slather yet one more layer of
pavement
and glitz over its own scant history, tradition and roots, would expand
just
as long-entrenched communities from Southeast Los Angeles to Lima,
Ohio,
evaporated into the deindustrialized dust of globalization?
Indeed, just as quickly as Las Vegas consumes and erases the past and
scrambles the present, it now shines to many as an attractive beacon of
the
future. Unlike almost any other place in America, Las Vegas is one city
where unskilled labor can still--thanks to vibrant unions and wealthy
and
efficient employers--earn middle-class wages. Vegas food servers, car
parkers, cashiers, even maids, can still buy into the new American
dream,
purchasing a house and putting their kids through school. A high school
grad
can become a professional dealer for three hundred bucks' worth of
tuition
and a few weeks of practice pitching cards--and most likely get a job.
Where
else in America can you regularly find 60-year-old, bouffant-coiffed
cocktail waitresses proudly wearing union buttons (those of the mighty
Culinary Workers Local 226) and going home to peruse the statements of
their
fattening pension accounts?
Even though the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center slowed
(slightly) what has traditionally been the recession-proof Vegas
economy, a
steady stream of 5,000-6,000 domestic economic refugees a month still
pour
into and around the city. Only 6 percent of adults living in Vegas's
Clark
County were born here--the lowest such figure anywhere in America. And
although water supplies are drying up, schools are strained and suicide
and
domestic violence rates are among the highest in the nation, they keep
pouring in. Purchasers of new houses--at prices far below those of the
two
coasts--are wait-listed. Vegas's population doubled during the 1980s,
and
doubled again in the '90s. Vegas continues to be the fastest-growing
metropolitan area in America.
This generation of immigrants, however, is different in many ways from
the
grifters, hustlers and outcasts who huddled here over the past century.
Sure, there will always be a certain batch of trimmers, fugitives and
shakedown artists looking to launder themselves in the Vegas sun. But
most
of those now crowding into Las Vegas are fleeing from an America where
everyday life has become too much of a gamble--where either the Reagan
recession of 1981, the Bush slump of 1990 or the burst bubble of a
decade
later has left them as devastated as a blackjack player who bet it all
only
to have his pair of tens get trounced by the dealer's Ace-King. The
only
risk they are interested in now is the off chance that Vegas can
provide the
normalcy, the security, the certainty, that once underpinned their
lives, or
at least their dreams.
What a turnaround it has been for once lowly Las Vegas--and for the
nation
around it. Barely fifteen years ago, the august Citicorp was queasy
about
publicly admitting that its major credit-card processing center had
been
relocated to an unincorporated suburb of Las Vegas. A deal with state
authorities allowed the banking corporation to postmark and camouflage
its
mail as coming from "The Lakes, Nevada" instead of from sinful Vegas.
Today,
that same neighborhood sports several high-end casinos and luxury
hotels.
And Citicorp's own credibility, in the aftermath of the great Wall
Street
accounting scandals, ranks somewhere below that of a midtown
three-card-monte hustler.
Nor could Neil Postman have known back in 1985 that casino gambling was
about to be fully destigmatized within a decade--and delicately renamed
"gaming." The resulting shift in public attitudes would not only
definitively cleanse Vegas's image but also net it a growing bonanza.
As
recently as 1988, casino gambling was legal only in Nevada and in
Atlantic
City. But as American industry continued to wash up offshore and the
commercial tax base atrophied, one strapped state and municipality
after
another turned its forlorn eyes toward the gaming tables and slot
machines.
Impoverished Indian tribes were more than willing to sign gambling
compacts
with state governments. The result: Now twenty-seven states have
Nevada-style casinos, and forty-eight states have at least some form of
legal gambling. With local budgets again being squeezed by burgeoning
deficits, government itself is thinking about going into the casino
business. In the spring of 2003, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said he'd
like
to open a municipal casino. Before the 1989 opening of the Mirage
unleashed
the New Vegas revolution, only 15 percent of Americans had ever visited
the
city. By mid-decade that number had doubled. In its 1996 annual report,
Circus Circus celebrated the news: "In an era when social attitudes
toward
play, and the means to afford it, have dramatically changed, so has the
role
of the casino."
The past seven years have shown an ever more dramatic shift toward the
mainstreaming of gambling. A gambling-industry poll claimed that in the
single year of 2001, 51 million Americans--more than a quarter of the
population over age 21--visited a casino, chalking up a national total
of
almost 300 million visits. More than 430 commercial casinos nationwide
brought in $26.5 billon in revenue--two and a half times what Americans
spent on movie tickets, $5 billion more than they spent on DVDs and
videos,
and $3 billion more than on cosmetics and toiletries. The explosion of
legalized gambling nationwide has had little but positive impact on Las
Vegas. "All it did was increase the average Joe's appetite for
gambling,"
says a veteran Vegas Strip pit boss. "You know, it's like baseball. We
see
all those local Indian casinos and riverboat casinos and local slot
parlors
as our farm teams. They suck in a lot of average American types who
never
thought about gambling before. But once you play on the farm team, who
doesn't want to play in the majors? And Las Vegas is the friggin' World
Series. It's kind of like, You build the casinos out there and they'll
come.
But eventually they'll come here."
The difference between the marketing of Vegas a half-century ago and
today
is precisely the difference in mainstream American attitudes. "Fifty
years
ago, Lucille Ball was pregnant, and they couldn't say that word on I
Love
Lucy,'' says historian Green. "Today we have lesbian kisses on TV. We
have
the word 'bullshit' on prime time, not to talk about cable programming.
As
the culture has become more open, Las Vegas can market itself more
honestly." And, Green might add, there's a whole new line of
Lucy-themed
slot machines now out on casino floors.
In a time when Martha Stewart gets busted, Mark McGwire is on chemicals
and
Sammy Sosa gets caught with a corker; when everyday economic life in
America
has become a breathtaking risk and it's an all-out crapshoot whether
you'll
still have a job next month or your HMO will cover your spinal tap or
you
can hock the house for enough to pay for your kid's college tuition,
who can
say whether it would have really been that stupid to let it all ride on
18
Red? Was it smarter to invest ten years of savings in an Enron-backed
401(k)
or to spend your time studying the probability charts for single-deck
blackjack? Is the integrity of the roulette wheels at the Bellagio more
tainted than the quarterly corporate reports coming out of WorldCom?
Both
are iffy propositions, but at least in Vegas the rules of the game are
clear-cut, the industry tightly regulated and the unfavorable odds
publicly
posted. There are no multimillion-dollar-a-year cable TV touts telling
you
that red or black or double-zero green is the next best thing or that
life
somehow owes you an eternal double-digit annual return. Haven't we, in
fact,
reached a point in our culture where the button-down bankers and
arbitrageurs have become the reckless "casino capitalists," while those
who
actually run the casinos can get away with labeling themselves
responsible
and conservative "entertainment visionaries"? Even if they are,
increasingly, often the same people?
A couple of years back at a gambling industry convention in Las Vegas,
the
chief financial officers of three major casinos sat on a public panel.
When
someone from the floor asked if investment in the casino business was a
good
bet, one of the CFOs answered, essentially: The difference between us
and
Enron is that at least our money is real. That globally recognized icon
of
Las Vegas, the neon-lit, hand-waving cowboy Vegas Vic, unveiled in 1947
and
still presiding over downtown's Fremont Street, used to regularly and
electronically call out "Howdy, pardner" until the complaints of
card-groggy
hotel guests got him permanently muted. But if Vic could speak today,
he
might well be saying, "Welcome to Las Vegas, pardner. The last honest
place
in America."
