If you were hoping a classy column like this would not stoop to a cheesy year-end roundup, well, you should have abandoned hope around November 3 or so.
Here in Clubland, it's time to clear the mental pantry of column ideas that never quite got baked, even half-.
• How about that overwhelming landslide in the presidential election? In one of the most authoritative victories in American history, Karl Rove thoroughly trounced, uh, that guy from Massachusetts. Or is that only the impression we're getting? C'mon, that's right, isn't it? All those millions of NASCAR dads and values voters sharply steered the nation rightward, and isn't it about time for that shabby minority of has-been lib'rals to pipe down and get with the program?
Certainly seems to be the case, the way the right continues to spin reality. The day after the election, Bush declared himself endowed with "capital" he intends he spend, and the Fox News fellow-travelers have adopted the same haughty tone. Newly emboldened conservative groups have engineered a new "values" onslaught — for instance, a handful of operatives generated the massive e-mail complaints about ABC's Desperate Housewives promo on Monday Night Football.
Thanks in large part to similarly masterful marketing, Bush won the election by three percentage points. For the 13 elections in my lifetime, that's the third lowest differential—not counting, of course, his -.5 "win" in 2000. Only Kennedy in 1960 (.2) and Nixon in 1968 (.7) won by smaller margins over the major-party opponent.
Just after the election, Hendrik Hertzberg pointed out in The New Yorker that more Americans voted for the 44 Democrats in the Senate than for the 55 Republicans in the majority.
But the news media appear to be taking cues obediently. Did you notice the spate of stories about how good Christians are tired of being wished "Happy Holidays," stories asking if "political correctness has gone too far"? Well, maybe we could loosen up a bit about that, but the way the issue has been framed, as if a massive sea-change has taken place in American political life, is troubling.
Three points, folks. Count 'em. How long does it take to spend that?
• I visited some relatives with children recently, and was amused to find the parents standing pat against the household incursion of PlayStation 2. The kids were wheelin' and dealin', promising limited hours, extra chores, diligent homework, but Mom and Dad were having none of it. These folks also curtail television viewing.
This is a losing battle in the long run, of course. You can speculate endlessly about successive generations maturing with heads and thumbs attuned to virtual realities, and if you're among those who believe media make kids do bad things, you've got to conclude that slaying dragons and gangstas is more mind-bending than watching someone slay them. The military already has discovered that couch warriors make proficient real-life missile-launchers.
But in every generation, some sorry souls throw themselves into one obsession or another, and end up making sad news, while the majority trudges on, unscathed, into employment and parenthood. If any concern merits attention, it is the general shedding of interior life by a generation that cannot walk 15 feet out of mobile communication.
So it is both amusing, and encouraging, to find news media all a-blather lately about the pernicious effects of poker on our tender teens. Yet another gateway to addiction! But if I were a parent, I think I'd be happy to watch my kid abandon the joystick for a deck of cards and table of friends. Poker could have more cultural impact than Grand Theft Auto, and why not? My parents used to think it was a grand idea to get together with friends and play cards all night; I was in my 30s before I realized they were on to something. And Sinatra wasn't all that bad, either.
Gaming has already tapped into the poker craze, of course. Will it adapt to the other sort of gaming? Is someone already at work on a SimCity slot machine? I suppose the problem is making one nobody could ever get really good at playing.
• Sometimes we Las Vegans like to congratulate ourselves on what a sophisticated city we're growing up to be. We've got big-name New York galleries and a fledgling Downtown art scene; we're going to build a performing arts center; smart new condo towers are popping up all over the Valley and hey, it's a beautiful town for baseball!
Not so fast, buster ... We still don't have a real art museum here, and no one is even talking about one. We have original Cirque shows, some Broadway-caliber musicals and strong professional and semipro theaters, but a truly vibrant Broadway rival, producing original dramas and musicals of varying scale, is still over the horizon.
And where was Vera Drake? A few weeks ago, in these very pages, handicapper Wayne Allyn Root listed actress Imelda Staunton as the best bet for an Academy Award for the Mike Leigh film, the best picture at the Venice Film Festival. Reviewers everywhere sang the praises of a tough little film about a cheery middle-aged woman in 1950s Britain who performs abortions for women she pities.
We do get our share of art-house flicks — and we've even got CineVegas! But local cinephiles waited in vain for Vera Drake to play here. Not exactly an upbeat subject, true. But too gritty for us, apparently.
Chuck Twardy is a really smart guy who has written for several daily newspapers and for magazines such as Metropolis.