"Judith Miller has a WMD problem," Greg Mitchell writes of the New York Times reporter and former Las Vegan in an April 4 column on alternet.org. "She sees them where they don't exist. Where they did exist she tells only half the story."
Ouch.
Posted on Monday, his 1,417-word column denounces Miller's stories on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction as press releases for the warhawking Bush Administration. He also shreds her March 31 Times piece on her visit to the new Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, claiming Miller distorted the impact of Nevada Test Site bomb blasts on downwinders, ignored that soldiers served as guinea pigs (some were ordered to march under mushroom clouds to) and failed to reveal her father's role in the boosterism surrounding the bombing (local officials thought it could enhance tourism).
"One thing that jumped out at me in Miller's story," writes Mitchell, "was her failure to even mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the loss of more than 200,000 lives there following America's first atomic test, though she was all too willing to raise the image of nuclear annihilation in some of her bogus WMD articles for the Times."
Double ouch.
Last week, New York Times reporter Judith Miller penned a short essay about the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas. She keyed it to her memories of spending first and second grade in Las Vegas, back when above-ground tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site. The essay's nuclear subject matter is mildly ironic: Her early exposure to weapons of mass destruction is now mirrored by the ongoing controversy over her prewar reporting from Iraq (see above). She's also caught up in the ongoing investigation of the Valerie Plame affair, and may wind up in jail for refusing to name confidential sources, although she didn't write about the Plame case.
Good stuff. Juicy stuff. She declined to talk about it. But she did let us pose a few questions about her childhood in Vegas. (Note: The ellipses are hers and don't indicate any deletions from her answers.)
What's your strongest memory of your years here?
Looking at the neon at night from Mt. Charleston; children being banned from casinos ... the great music you could hear in lounges ... and entertainers you could see close up ... the lack of clocks ...
Did you actually see the light or cloud from any above-ground detonations?
My memories of the actual blasts are very vague ... my mother still talks about the light ... the silence, the momentary absence of air ...
You refer to this as America's "most bizarre city." Did you have any sense of its oddity back in your day?
I loved it in the '50s, when it was small and quirky and full of mobsters. ... I'm not a fan of today's Vegas as a "family entertainment destination." I love music, and it always attracted musicians ... the very wealthy and the down-and-out ... you have always been able to get anything you want there ... assuming you could pay for it. Now on an international scale ... I remember walking down the Strip during my last trip and hearing well over a dozen languages being spoken ... and watching French people look at the mock Eiffel Tour ...
And I love the desert. Always have; always will.
"We have abundant free parking, which is almost a disincentive to get out of your car."
UNLV history Professor Hal Rothman telling the R-J his viewpoint on Steve Wynn: "He's the little guy rowing as fast as he can, chased by steaming battleships of capital, but this time he has a rocket attached to his (relatively) small craft."
Steve Wynn, who is, it seems, at sea, had no comment.
The money mania surrounding March Madness, the men's NCAA postseason basketball tournament, is finally building up around the women's championship, according to the Indianapolis Star. An April 2 article notes that Las Vegas sports books fielded nearly $2 million in bets for the women's tournament, a significant increase over years past but still tiny compared to the $80 million wagered on the men. As more women's games are televised, Robert Walker, who set odds on the women's tournament for MGM Mirage properties, expects betting will increase. As he told the Star: "TV drives everything."