I’d Take That Bet

Max links to this article reporting a “near riot” reaction to Linda Ronstadt’s cover of the Eagle’s song “Desperado” and dedication of it to Michael Moore after which she urges the audience to go and see “Farenheit 9/11.”

The crowd’s response and her subsequent “booting” from the Aladdin casino is described by its management as unexpected and severe:

“It was a very ugly scene,” Aladdin President Bill Timmins told The Associated Press. “She praised him and all of a sudden all bedlam broke loose.”

Timmins, who is British and was watching the show, said he didn’t allow Ronstadt back in her luxury suite afterward and she was escorted off the property.

Ronstadt’s antics “spoiled a wonderful evening for our guests and we had to do something about it,” Timmins said.

A commenter at MaxSpeak points out that Ronstadt was a matter of Freeper debate prior to this show and the controversial closing was discussed by Ronstadt in this interview. The performer/political activist is a long-time critic of Alladin’s history of gangsterism and Las Vegas in general, attracted only by the Carnegie Hall-like acoustics of the former, and she had estimated that audience reaction to her show nationwide had been running 50/50. According to Jude only several hundred people of a crowd of 4,500 actually left Aladdin’s theater, that some of those were likely the usual sort who leave a show early to avoid the crowd, and that the vandalism was attributed to just a rowdy few. So, in retrospect, this incident was not as evenly-split as Ronstadt was used to seeing and, if anything, suggests increasing support for Moore and his film and a possible trend towards more violence amongst the minority that oppose it. Also, Ronstadt has no long-running contract with the casino. This was a one-time only performance.

So why would Bill Timmins suggest otherwise?

Jude points to the acquisition of the debt-ridden Alladin by Planet Hollywood. The twice-bankrupt restaurant chain’s financial difficulties have, in part, been attributed to insider deals given to its Saudi investors. Further digging shows that Saudi money has previously been considered vital to Alladin’s prospectus for profit-making, its failure to flourish a blue-note that’s been warbled since “the 31-year old Aladdin was imploded with explosives on April 27, 1998” and rebuilt using the same name, a first for casinos in Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Review Journal reported on March 30, 2001 that Bill Timmins was amongst Las Vegas casino executives who told a Senate Judiciary Committee that casinos needed private salons that would cater exclusively to billionaires who were avoiding Nevada because of a lack of privacy. In what had been described by some as a “Save the Whales” campaign, Timmins and others were hoping to change the Nevada law that had been requiring all gaming operations to be conducted in public; a bill “authorizing the creation of exclusive gaming salons within casinos to cater to publicity-shy high rollers” was signed into law by Gov. Kenny Guinn, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, on May 29, 2001.

Bill Timmins on why these private salons were so necessary:

Bill Timmins, president and chief operating officer of the Aladdin, said the players might be Arab princes or industrialists from Europe, the Middle East or the Far East.

“Some of these people can win or lose millions of dollars, but not all of them wish to be identified to the public,” he said. “They probably number in the hundreds, but with the capability to generate substantial additional revenues for the different jurisdictions.

“Nevada, I believe, has the opportunity to generate substantial additional revenues by creating this international salon,” Timmins said.

Common sense suggests all that’s followed this particular performance was one of the safest bets in Las Vegas last week.