A few days ago, USA Today published my review of the new book by Wall Street Journal columnist Christina Binkley on Vegas moguls. In it, I explained why I enjoyed reading Winner Takes All despite its enormous flaws, that Binkley almost despite her own sloppiness managed to render an intriguing and entertaining inside look at the past two decades of Vegas development.
In the context of a book review, though, it isn’t possible to delve into the really important factual problems presented in this effort. Longtime Las Vegans might be interested in the laundry list of mistakes I’ve been accumulating ever since I obtained a preview copy back in December.
But first, why be so intense about analyzing one of a zillion books due to appear about Las Vegas this year? Because Christina Binkley isn’t any ol’ author. She is arguably the most important national journalist ever to pay serious attention to Las Vegas. Before she took on the gaming beat in the late 1990s, the topic was—and still is at most national publications—viewed as an adjunct to the hospitality beat. That’s progress; for a long, long time it was just part of the Mafia beat.
So this book is her doctoral dissertation now that she’s moved on to become a columnist. And yet it’s rife with factual mistakes.
The accuracy problems begin with her clichéd title. One of the things we all know about Vegas is that there is never one winner who takes all. There’s always more, or else there would be no Elad, Station, Maloof, Landry’s, Tamares, Marnell.
But that may be seen as a subjective complaint. The following aren’t. Binkley ...
• ... refers to Restaurant Guy Savoy at Caesars Palace as “the most expensive restaurant in the world.” It’s not even the most expensive restaurant in Las Vegas. Both Alex at Wynn and Joel Robuchon at MGM Grand cost $50+ more for the prix fixe meal.
• ... calls the 1980 MGM Grand fire a “tragic grease fire.” The official cause: electrical.
• ... says it took 27 seconds for the Dunes to implode. Watch for yourself on YouTube: The building fell in less than 10 seconds.
• ... writes twice that the Wynns flew the Mirage Resorts’ MD-87 plane to Sun Valley, Idaho, for vacations. Such a plane is too large and heavy to land at the Friedman Memorial Airport there, airport manager Rick Baird says, adding that the nearest airport capable of handling such a large aircraft is in Twin Falls, Idaho, more than 80 miles away. That seems unlikely.
• ... writes that Starlight Express at the Las Vegas Hilton “died an ugly death.” The show lasted longer than any other Broadway show in Vegas history until the current Mamma Mia! run.
• ... misspells the name of the entertainer with the largest marquee on the Strip as “Danny Ganz.”
• ... indicates that the Las Vegas Art Museum is in Summerlin. It is not.
• ... says Jan Jones was Vegas mayor for eight years “prior to a failed run for Nevada governor.” Jones made two failed runs and both were during, not after, her mayoral tenure.
• ... cites that hackneyed slogan as “What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas” even though in actuality, the words “Las Vegas” never appear in the official phrase.
• ... implies that the Venetian was a reaction to the Bellagio’s opulence when, in fact, the two resorts were built at essentially the same time.
• ... implies that Wynn optioned Spamalot to come to Vegas after Avenue Q failed. Spamalot was announced before Q opened. Wynn planned to build a third theater to offer both shows and Le Reve.
• ... makes it sound as though Harrah’s CEO Gary Loveman was involved in the negotiations to land Bette Midler at the Colosseum. Every source I know tells me that AEG, which operates the theater, handled that, and that there is no formal Midler-Harrah’s relationship.
• ... refers to Gillian Wynn as “the eldest daughter” of Elaine and Steve when, in fact, she’s the younger one.
Why does all this matter? For one thing, we expect an exacting level of accuracy from any WSJ scribe and an even more exacting level from any book by one. Instead, we get some surprisingly shoddy fact-checking and a disappointingly casual familiarity by Binkley with important details of the city she covered for so long. That casts a pall over some of the other terrific material in the book, notably her in-depth reconstructions of meetings leading to three important corporate buyouts.
It also made me dubious of one especially hard-to-believe passage. Binkley, writing about how Harrah’s preys on the weak-willed, desperate and poor, introduces us to Shirley Cotton, a sexagenarian from Hobart, Indiana, found in a Harrah’s casino in East Chicago, Indiana. Cotton, who spent all day hoping to win some promotional prize, was diabetic. And overweight. And had ulcers on her feet. And lived off a $967-a-month pension in a $300-a-month home. And canceled her phone service to pay for eye-disease treatment. And drove an old Caddy with a busted headlight. And had lost her dentures.
That’s a lot for one character, so I checked it out. My partner, Miles, dug up Binkley’s 2004 WSJ piece in which Cotton first appeared to find precious little of this amazing detail reported then. I thought we were on to something when sources at Harrah’s said there was nobody by the name “Shirley Cotton” in their Total Rewards database.
But after a lot of effort, I located Cotton’s sister and read the passage to her.
It’s all true. Every last detail. Poor old Shirley is in some sort of nursing facility now. But the sister was astonished at the level of accuracy.
So was I.
Read Steve Friess’ daily blog at TheStripPodcast.blogspot.com and catch his weekly celeb-interview podcast at TheStripPodcast.com. He can be reached at [email protected].