I noticed in the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Crazy Horse Too owner Rick Rizzolo lost his bid to regain his liquor license. Rizzolo is wracked up with various federal criminal charges - but he was, for the longest time, treated as a responsible member of the Las Vegas community. Indeed, Mayor Goodman recused himself from the vote revoking the liquor license because of his business and personal relationships with Rizzolo. This is the dark underside of Las Vegas business and politics.

We are in Nevada very libertarian minded - I was advised early on after I moved here that the unofficial motto is "do whatever you like, just don't bother the other gamblers". It is a live and let live world. Still, the acceptance that some of our citizens will engage in unsavory - although legal - activities should not raise these activities to moral propriety. Judgement must still be shown in whom we befriend and do business with.

The plain fact of the matter is that I would not have a business or personal relationship with a strip club owner - I would with a former strip club owner who repented and was seeking to make amends, but to befriend and think well of a man who ruthlessly exploits young women for money? I don't think so. It is absolutely no surprise that Rizzolo - like so many other strip club owners - has run afoul of the law. Decent, law abiding men and women by and large don't run strip joints...you have to be rather weak in the area of morals to even consider entering such a business.

What, then, are we to think of our politicians who sit at table with such people; who solicit donations from them; who think it perfectly ok to be close socially and otherwise with them? The only thing I can think of is that such a politician is either stupid or weak on the moral side in his own right. In either case, wise voters should take such associations in to consideration when voting time comes 'round.

You see, if we here in Clark County are really tired of all the political corruption endlessly happening in our various local governments, then we are going to have to wise up to the fact that we can't have moral immorality. There is no such thing as an honest bankrobber - nor a morally upright strip club owner. This does not mean we have to change Las Vegas - this city is the way it is and absent a complete change of heart, it won't become different...but we must separate out the glitter from the gold; we must keep separate the soul of our community and those unsavory aspects of same. Think of Sin City as a person - we are all sinners, just as Sin City is, but this doesn't mean we start praising the sins and thinking that they are all just fun and games.

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Tracked on September 13, 2006 10:56 PM