The Nevada angle in Charlie Chaplin’s big scandal

Posted on by January 10, 2025
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Charlie Chaplin's big scandalSince becoming New to Las Vegas, I have been amazed at the ability of places in Nevada to pop up in big stories focused elsewhere, often as a precursor. Remember the Watergate scandal triggered in 1972 when henchmen working for President Richard M. Nixon broke into Democratic Party offices in Washington, D.C.? By some accounts, it, had its origins in a bribe Nixon had taken from reclusive tycoon Howard Hughes, then living in a Las Vegas hotel.

There’s still a video on the Internet of Donald J. Trump partying in Las Vegas in 2013 with Russians and some hangers-on. One of them later wrote an infamous email promising Russian government dirt on Hillary Clinton. The matter became a focus of that Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation begun four years later into purported Trump-Russian ties in the 2016 presidential election, which Trump won.

A New York City judge today is formally pronouncing a sentence on Trump after a jury last year convicted him on 34 felony counts of covering up a $130,000 hush money payoff made there in 2016 to stop porn actress Stormy Daniels from chatting up a one-night stand she said she had had with The Donald in 2016. The venue of the liaison? Why, Nevada, of course, specifically the Edgewood Tahoe Golf Course in Stateline, Nev., near Reno. In a 2018 interview with Anderson Cooper on “60 Minutes,” Daniels said she was subsequently threatened in a Las Vegas parking lot by an unknown man to “forget the story.”

It is with this backdrop that I write about a book to be published next month concerning a controversial Hollywood episode during World War II in the life of the legendary actor and director Charlie Chaplin (1887-1977) that has an interesting Nevada angle. The work is When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Law (University of Michigan Press).
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Las Vegas predictions for 2025

Posted on by December 21, 2024
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Las Vegas predictionsTwo of my Las Vegas predictions for 2024 from last December actually came true. This is amazing since the list was intended as satirical social commentary.

I’ll detail the pair at the end. But again I note that clearly labeled satire is protected free speech under the First Amendment, thanks to a unanimous 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision involving Larry Flynt and Jerry Falwell.

So from the New to Las Vegas world headquarters, here I go again for 2025.

–President Donald J. Trump suggests at a press conference that the Hoover Dam should be renamed for himself because “I don’t like losers.” Continue reading →

Las Vegas exhibition really suggests Old Spanish Trail was much ado about nothing

Posted on by November 18, 2024
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Old Spanish Trail

Old Spanish Trail (via National Park Service)

Las Vegas likes to play up a Western history it really doesn’t have. The place is simply too new. The city was only created in 1905, hundreds of years after Boston, New York and Philadelphia. At the turn of the century five years earlier, the U.S. Census reported the population of all of the Las Vegas area was all of 18. Cowboys, Indians, cattle and other trappings of the traditional Old West were in short supply.

It took Las Vegas 30 years to even start Helldorado Days, an annual celebration of its supposed Wild West culture. When Nevada legalized gambling in 1931, enterprising casino operators latched onto Western imagery as a tourist draw. This still persists, helped by such annual events as the National Finals Rodeo, the nation’s largest, and the occasional cowboy sign illuminated in neon.

Las Vegas’s latest effort to claim historic frontier honors opened on Friday at the Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas. It’s an exhibition entitled “The Old Spanish Trail: Connecting a Network of Paths.” The show focuses on the OST, a meandering 19th Century trade route running 2,700 miles over several routings from Santa Fe., N.M., to Los Angeles that went through the future Las Vegas. In posted signage, the museum asserts the OST was “a conduit for revolutionary change throughout the vast, arid expanse we call the American Southwest” that “has earned its historic legacy.”

Over the weekend I toured the exhibit, which is to run for six months. I saw no evidence of that “revolutionary change” or “historic legacy.” What I did see was mainly–nothing. Continue reading →

In Las Vegas, unique Nevada ballot law saves another Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent

Posted on by November 11, 2024
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None of These Candidates

Nevada ballot, 2024

It didn’t do Kamala Harris a lick of good. But for the second straight biennial election, Nevada’s unique, half-century-old law giving voters the explicit option to defiantly choose “None of These Candidates” has saved the bacon of a Democratic U.S. Senate incumbent.

Five days after the November 5 election, they’re still counting votes in the thinly populated Silver State. Still, nearly complete returns compiled by the Nevada Secretary of state’s Office show that despite Donald J. Trump’s solid presidential victory in Nevada (and the country), Democrat Jacky Rosen is winning her second six-year term in the Senate by 21,202 votes (out of 1,419,550 counted) over Republican challenger Sam Brown. But “None of These Candidates” is polling 41,638–nearly double Rosen’s margin.

It is widely believed by political experts that Nevada’s NOTC line overwhelming draws Republican voters rather than Democratic voters in partisan races. The GOP certainly believes that, which is why the party some years back challenged NOTC in court (unsuccessfully). Indeed, attracting unhappy Republicans was the somewhat-hidden intention of Democratic lawmakers who in 1975 enacted the measure into law. Helping give NOTC additional force: another Nevada law prohibiting write-in candidates. Continue reading →

It Didn’t Stay Here: Employee for Montana gunmaker spent some stolen funds in Las Vegas

Posted on by October 28, 2024
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Teri Anne Bell, a 58-year-old bookkeeper who worked for a gunmaker in northwest Montana, is about to start serving some hard time in federal prison after pleading guilty to stealing $159,000 from her former employer. If you are a regular visitor to this space, you probably know already where this post is heading.

Yes, she took some of the stolen loot and spent it in Las Vegas, that great, big bug light for folks with a few extra dollars to blow in ill-gotten gains.

That makes her a candidate for my long-running list, It Didn’t Stay Here. The criterion is simple: people who got in trouble elsewhere for something that happened in Las Vegas (in this case the local spending of ill-gotten loot). It’s a tongue-in-cheek rebuttal of that famous former Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority marketing slogan, “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”

You can see the list nearby. Bell is not the first on the roster who stole money and hot-footed it to Sin City. Since becoming New To Las Vegas, I have been amazed at how often this town is the lure for people with such proclivities.
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In Las Vegas, tomorrow is Nevada Day, when Lincoln invented a state to help win re-election

Posted on by October 24, 2024
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Abraham Lincoln in 1863

As the tighter-than-a-hangman’s-noose presidential race approaches its denouncement, Donald J. Trump and some of his fellow Republicans, despite the absence of evidence, are still complaining nationally about voter fraud in the 2020 race and predicting the same on November 5. This is especially true here in Nevada, where Republicans have especially groused about supposed future and past voting by non-citizens and non-residents. The GOP apparently thinks that most of these folks are in the tank for Democrat Kamala Harris, even though Trump’s name graces the top of the state’s tallest non-casino building just off the Las Vegas Strip.

As it happens, tomorrow is Nevada Day, the start of a three-day holiday weekend in Nevada. Government offices and schools are closed. Celebrated on the last Friday of October, it commemorates Nevada’s admission to the union in 1864 as the 36th state.

Why do I bring this up? Because Nevada actually became a state to help rig the 1864 re-election of Trump’s fellow Republican, Abraham Lincoln. Putting aside the party it favored, that sort of makes today’s claims of voter fraud pale by comparison. But there are some interesting parallels. Continue reading →

Near Las Vegas, Rutgers is playing USC, but not as oldest college football team

Posted on by October 28, 2024
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oldest college football teamSee update at end of story

On Friday, October 25, the University of Southern California football team will host Rutgers under the lights at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. The game will be the first gridiron match ever between the two, as well as the first ever for Rutgers in the City of Angels.

Both the Trojans and the Scarlet Knights are now members of the Big Ten (which for $ome broadca$t rea$on now ha$ 18 team$). Since becoming New To Las Vegas, I have learned that USC has a big following hereabouts. As for Rutgers, from which I have two degrees, I sometimes have to tell local folks what and where it is. For the record: New Jersey’s state university, the country’s eight oldest college, never a member of the Ivy League, located in the distant New York City suburb of New Brunswick, N.J.

Rutgers was founded in 1766 as a tiny church-related institution named Queens College with a charter signed by Ben Franklin’s illegitimate son. The institution is nearly twice as old as USC, co-founded in 1890 by a family harboring racist thoughts. (But to be fair, I should note that Henry Rutgers, for whom the school was renamed in 1824 after making  a big gift, was a slave owner.) Both schools have grown into major academic institutions.

However, I digress. Whenever Rutgers plays a new team in football, the scribes covering the opposition like to play up the role of Rutgers in what has been called the first college football game, against Princeton in New Brunswick on November 6, 1869. This is especially likely this week since the game otherwise is shaping up rankings-wise as a real yawner. Rutgers is 1-3 in the Big Ten (but 4-3 overall), while USC is 1-4 in the conference (and 3-4 overall). Both team are coming off losses this past weekend, but–since I am in Las Vegas–the early betting line has home-team USC as a 13.5 point favorite.

Still, using today’s political vocabulary, this ancient football history is simply fake news. I’m here to tell you that first contest way back when was not a football game as the term is now understood in the U.S. It was a soccer match.

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In Las Vegas, campaign flyer uses antisemitic imagery against U.S. Senate incumbent

Posted on by October 30, 2024
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campaign flyer uses antisemitic imagery

Republican Party, Nevada, 2024

The campaign flyer arrived in the mail yesterday at the New To Las Vegas world headquarters on behalf of Republican U.S. Senate challenger Sam Brown. It depicts a photoshopped image of Jacky Rosen, the Democratic incumbent running for a second term representing Nevada, with legs spread sitting in front of the U.S. Capitol surrounded by piles of hundred-dollar bills. “MULTIMILLIONAIRE AND CAREER POLITICIAN JACKY ROSEN GOT RICH IN WASHINGTON, While Voting to Make Your Life More Expensive,” the headline reads.

campaign flyer uses antisemitic imagery

Nazi Party, Germany, 1938

The copy doesn’t say it, but Rosen is Jewish.  And the set-up of the image bears more than a little resemblance to a drawing in The Poisonous Mushroom (Der Giftpilz), an infamous antisemitic children’s book published in Nazi Germany in 1938. The original cartoon depicts a Jewish speculator with legs spread sitting on a big, fat bag labeled (in German) “Gold” in front of the “Stock Exchange.”

Look at the two images nearby, and judge for yourself.

After World War II (and the Holocaust), the publisher of The Poisonous Mushroom, Julius Streicher, was convicted and hanged at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity because of his antisemitism. Prosecutors specifically cited The Poisonous Mushroom as evidence against him.

In my view, this political flyer as constructed, playing on ancient tropes linking Jews to ill-gotten money, is antisemitic as hell. But that’s not even the most shocking part. Besides the fact that it’s not very often that Republican campaign literature criticizes the accumulation of wealth, this wasn’t sent out by some crazy, third-party political operation.

It was paid for and mailed by the Nevada Republican Central Committee, the state’s main establishment GOP operation, based in Las Vegas. And according to its filings, a number of Jews made campaign contributions to the NRCC. Folks like Miriam Adelson, Steve Wynn, Jared Kushner and his dad. Do they know how their money is being spent? Continue reading →

Not far from Las Vegas, Texas hero-worshippers still have a spelling problem

Posted on by October 14, 2024
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Texas hero-worshippers

William Barret Travis

Once again a Texas media outlet has mangled the spelling of one of the state’s most celebrated historic figures, who partly shares my name. A story last week in The Highlander, a twice-weekly newspaper published in Marble Falls, Texas, invited the public to the dedication of a plaque commemorating the famous 1836 “Victory or Death ” letter written by William Barret Travis, commander of the Alamo.

Except that the story in several places incorrectly spelled Barret with two Ts.

The Highlander thus joined an impressive roster of prominent Texas media, politicians and organizations that over the decades have gotten the storied man’s name wrong in print–scores of times. The list includes–repeatedly and too numerous to cite individually–the state’s largest newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and even the Alamo’s hometown San Antonio Express-News. Texas Monthly, the state’s most prominent magazine (which once declined to publish my letter of correction). Written statements from elected officials, including both of Texas’s sitting Republican U.S. senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. Even, amazingly, the web page right now of something called the Alamo Letter Society, apparently based in the Dallas suburb of University Park, and the list of inductees into another something called the Texas Trail of Fame in Fort Worth.

Okay, I admit this is a rant. My grievance dates back to when I lived in Texas decades before becoming New To Las Vegas. I used to get asked a lot if I am kin to Travis or named for him (no and no). It was annoying because, as I will explain presently, I don’t consider Travis all that much of a role model.

But I think this repeated blunder by the powers-that-be says a lot about the shallowness of hero-worshipping in the Great State of Texas, if not elsewhere.

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Las Vegas gains in Forbes 400 members

Posted on by October 3, 2024
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Forbes 400The 43d edition of the annual Forbes 400 list was released today, and for the Las Vegas area it was good news if one likes proximity to conspicuous consumption. The number of local swells rose from four to six. No one fell off (like casino magnate Phil Ruffin did last year). This is fewer than the nine who graced the famous list of America’s richest eight years ago in 2016, the year I became New To Las Vegas. But Sin City this year at least has more than its cross-state rival of Reno, the self-styled “Biggest Little City in the World” with four entries each year.

Here’s the Las Vegas-area contingent:

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New book about Las Vegas delivers less than promoted

Posted on by September 30, 2024
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Vegas ConciergeNow this seemed interesting. Brian Joseph, who was fired as an investigative reporter at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was writing a book entitled, Vegas Concierge: Sex Trafficking, Hip Hop and Corruption in America. Breathless pre-publicatio promised a broad look at how American society disregards sex trafficking victims, how Las Vegas is probably its center and in Vegas, “how self-interest corrupts news organizations and the corridors of power.”

Oooh. With hype like that, I expected something cataclysmic on the order of The Green Felt Jungle. That’s the 1963 exposé by Ed Reid and Ovid Demaris that laid out details of organized crime control of Vegas for the whole world to see. The international best-seller greatly embarrassed important state and local pooh-bahs, helping to spur government reforms that eventually drove out the mob and spur dramatic economic growth. I wrote about the book’s continuing impact last year, the 60th anniversary of its publication.

I have finished reading a reviewer’s copy provided by publisher Rowman & Littlefield of the 292-page Vegas Concierge, whose official publication date is tomorrow. To put it bluntly, I don’t think the book quite delivers on its promised premise to blow the lid off Sin City and America in this regard. But Vegas Concierge certainly has its moments. Continue reading →

Las Vegas newspaper backing Trump posts lowest print circulation in 60 years

Posted on by September 23, 2024
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newspaper backing Trump

Las Vegas Review-Journal, September 22, 2024

With Election Day just six weeks off, the presidential race is a dead heat. That’s especially true here in Nevada, that giant morass of mountains, desert and casinos considered one of the Seven Swing States. The latest poll, from Emerson College/The Hill, shows Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald J. Trump tied at 47% each for the Silver State’s six electoral votes. The candidates clearly need all the local influencers they can get to proclaim their virtues as loudly as possible.

Which is why a legal notice buried at the bottom of page 5-G in yesterday’s Las Vegas Review-Journal, the state’s most formidable newspaper and a long-time bullhorn for Trump, spells big local trouble for The Donald. The notice was the paper’s legally required once-a-year sworn statement of circulation.

The data showed that the RJ‘s paid print circulation has fallen to its lowest level in six decades! Even including digital subscriptions, the total paid circulation is the lowest in five decades!

Put another way, less than 7% of the households in the RJ’s main market area of Clark County–home to an overwhelming 78% of Nevada’s population–will be directly exposed to the RJ‘s loud clamor of editorials, cartoons and columns beating the drum for the one-time President. Six decades ago, such a din would have reached 60% of the households. Continue reading →

From Las Vegas, how an only-in-Nevada ballot rule could stump Trump

Posted on by November 4, 2024
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only-in-Nevada ballot rule

2020 presidential ballot in Nevada

With its six electoral votes, Nevada is one of the seven battleground states that likely will determine the next president of the United States. By all accounts the race is pretty close in the Silver State. The latest poll shows Democrat Kamala Harris with a 1% edge over Republican Donald J. Trump, 47% to 46%, well within the proverbial statistical margin of error.

So anything could happen. But as someone New to Las Vegas who has studied Nevada election trends, I’m here to tell you that Harris has a secret weapon in her favor unique among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, especially if the race stays close. A nearly half-century-old law requires that the ballot for every statewide race give voters the option to choose “None of These Candidates.”

Along with another law that prohibits write-in candidates, it is an article of faith among devotees of Nevada politics that the NOTC option draws far more disenchanted Republican voters than it does disenchanted Democratic voters. The GOP simply hates it, which is why in the past the party has gone to court–unsuccessfully–to get the line eliminated. But Republicans are not challenging it in court this time around. Continue reading →

As ‘Casino’ defined Las Vegas, so ‘The Third Man’–75 years old today–depicted Vienna

Posted on by December 1, 2024
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Mostly shot on location, the movie is full of shady characters depicting a fading era in a famously corrupt city trying to cope with change amid moral decay. Mysterious forces abound. Folks get murdered. There is a love interest. Law enforcement is everywhere. The chief villain is almost sympathetic. The soundtrack is striking. So is the acting. Memorable scenes and dialogue abound. After all the carnage, you don’t know watching the ending whether to cry or cheer, but you know you’ve seen something profound

Since I am New To Las Vegas, you might think I’m writing about “Casino.” That’s the 1995 Martin Scorsese-directed movie starting Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone about the rise–and fall–of corrupt mob control over the casinos that help build up Las Vegas.

But I’m not. Instead, I’m describing “The Third Man.” The film noir, starring Joseph Cotton, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard and Alida Valli, is about corruption in post-World War II Vienna, Austria. The flick had its world premiere in London exactly 75 years ago today, in 1949. Continue reading →