"Fabulous" Las Vegas

I'm glad Jay Leno is not just fading into the sunset the way Johnny Carson did years ago, when he stepped aside to make way for Leno in the Tonight Show. I caught the TV ad for the new Leno prime time show that will debut next month. It was classic Leno.

Jay Leno is pretending to be a TV moderator asking contestants softball questions.

Jay asks: "Who lives in the Vatican?"

One of the contestants hits the buzzer first and answers: "Vatican-ites!"

"Wrong," Jay says, "I'll give you a hint. He wears a big hat"

Another contestant hits the buzzer first. "Abraham Lincoln," she shouts.

Jay is noted for his walkabouts, when he stands on a street corner in Los Angeles and interviews willing passersby. Some of the answers he gets are hilarious. He once asked a college student in LA when in world history was the ancient times. The reply he got from the college student was, "the 18th century."

Jay Leno's walkabouts are nearly as hysterical as the Philippine reality TV shows where the hosts ask simple, everyday questions of contestants in "Let's Make a Deal" copycat shows.

The host of one such Philippine show asked a woman contestant what she puts on her husband's eggs in the morning. She answered: "baby powder."

We all know what the educational standards are in the Philippines, but not everyone is aware how the educational standards in the U. S. have taken a straight-down nosedive over the last few decades. And nothing could have prepared us for the cover story of a recent Time Magazine issue. The cover is a shot of Las Vegas' iconic welcome sign, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas," but the city's name is spelled "Less Vegas." The article in the inside pages is called, "Less Vegas."

The story was written by no less than the crackerjack Time writer Joel Stein, which automatically ranks the story in the pantheon of the Unbelievables. "What was Joel thinking?" I heard myself ask myself.

And that real estate agent, Ms. Boemio, why would she own up to doing unethical and illegal acts on the pages of any publication, let alone Time Magazine? For those who have not read "Less Vegas," Joel Stein writes that he and Ms. Boemio both broke into a bank-foreclosed house to see for themselves the extent of the damage to the house that previous squatting "occupants" had wrought.

There's a law against breaking and entering in this country, including in Las Vegas. It's considered a crime. So what was Joel Stein thinking writing about he and Ms. Boemio doing just that? How dumb could they both be?

And then there's Ms.Boemio's admission that she advises her customers to stop paying their mortgages on their underwater homes - properties that have mortgage balances that are more than the properties are worth. She further advices that her customers buy a foreclosed house on the cheap, move to the new house and let the old house go into foreclosure.

The customer's credit record is ruined, but at least the homeowner owns a house with a positive equity and a significant upside.

There may not be a law against Ms. Boemio - a real estate agent - advising her customers to stop making payments on those customers' upside-down properties, but it is clearly unethical. At least according to other real estate professionals in Las Vegas.

Ms. Boemio has been fired by her employer, is under investigation for alleged unethical practices and the Clark County prosecutor's office is looking into possible breaking and entering charges.

Because of Joel Stein's story, Ms. Boemio's career in real estate is over and she may soon be a defendant in a criminal case. Joel Stein may be subpoenaed as a witness and may in fact face charges himself.

What was Joel Stein thinking? Did he not know that he had a responsibility to protect sources of his stories? Even in cases where his source is not asking deep cover, he should have provided that cover.

In the old days, when Americans were still the smartest people on earth, no American journalist would have fumbled the ball the way Joel Stein clearly did. This is clearly a blunder bigger than chess masters commit when they are under intense pressure.

As a Vegan, I did not like the Time Magazine story, which seemingly predicts an impending monumental collapse of the city of Las Vegas and the danger that it will take decades before the city recovers - if it does recover.

I am half-amused, half-irritated by the cover of that Time issue - Welcome to Fabulous Less Vegas - which reminds me of one of the yuks that the old radio show Imus in the Morning got when a guest pointed out that army recruiters are worried about their male recruits whose favorite expression is "fabulous."

The Imus guest was talking about the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the military towards gay men who were entering the Army. The Imus guest asked rhetorically, "If you are a recruiter for the Army and you ask the young man who is enlisting how his day has been and he answers, 'Fabulous' what would you do?"

Imus and his staff burst out laughing.

A great man has passed. I watched the Kennedy wake and Catholic Mass ceremonies last night and this morning and was amazed at how highly Americans think of the late Ted Kennedy. I knew that Ted was a great man, what I did not figure on hearing was that he may have been the greatest U.S. senator ever. His name is on more than 500 bills passed by the U.S. Senate and more than 1000 bills that became law had his imprint on them. He is being compared to the great Senator Daniel Webster, and when told of the comparison, Ted was said to have quipped, "Why, what did Daniel Webster accomplish?"

Most Filipinos owe an eternal debt of gratitude to Ted, as he was the author of the Immigration Department's policy of giving preference to "family reunification" cases for granting immigrant visas. It was the "family reunification" Kennedy mandate that allowed parents and unmarried siblings to follow those Filipinos who had managed to become immigrants in the U.S. In my case, I was able to bring my parents, three unmarried siblings and one married brother and his family to the U.S. after I became a citizen in 1974.