Super. Model.

Linda Evangelista. I had almost forgotten. My very favorite 80’s-90’s supermodel. You can keep your Kates, your Christys, your Naomis, your Cindys and your Tyras, Linda was the shit. First off, she looked more like a vintage Barbie doll or 50’s mannequin than any human being ever has. Two, she was the absolute protean ideal of the haughty supermodel. It was La Evangelista who first said, “We don’t wake up for less than $10,000″ and also said, “I have become bigger than the product.” Three, she was resoundingly hated by all her bookers and agency workers and most of the other models, who you know know some bitches. And not even because she was actually mean, but just because she had such a highly developed level of “I’m all that”-itude.

Mr. Diva, the original designator of divas, adds: “While being Kyle MacLachlan’s babymama before he morphed into a Berkeley dyke and one-upping one dozen confections in a George Michael video. Including George HimSelf AND the Thierry Mulger motorcycle dress. And looking Elsa Klensch right in the eye backstage at the Gaultier Hassidic runway show and barking ‘NO PHOTOS PLEASE’ before ripping open the cameraman’s shutter to expose his film before getting him, though not Elsa, banned from the proceedings.” [The fact-checker in me would like to add that actually the father of her son is an "unnamed prominent New York architect," which is even better in a sort of Dorian Leigh/Fountainhead way. But they did meet--At a Barney's shoot! Can this get any more Anne Welles?!--back when he was still Agent Cooper and they occupied a stunning duplex in Soho for several years.]

What do I love even more about her? That this supremely disdainful muse of the haute couture started out competing in beauty pageants. In Canada. And losing. I mean, can you imagine her standing up there with the rest of the competitors for Miss Ontario? Although I can imagine her standing there afterward, soundlessly clapping, smiling without her eyes and thinking “I will go to New York City and become the international supermodel and fuck you all in the ear with a donkey’s dick”–OK, that last part is me. And what would have happened if she’d won? Would she have married the local football hero who became manager of North Bay’s second-most successful used car dealership? Which then begs the rhetorical question: If Linda Evangelista never leaves Ontario, is she still Linda Evangelista? The mind wobbles. On Louboutin heels, no less.

Nowadays, there is no dating of greasy cokehead rockers, no yogawear companies, no celly-whipping, no furniture collection, no talk show. No, that would be vulgar. Linda just stays at home with her piles of money and her baby, occasionally descending from her penthouse to be on the cover of Vogue. Like this divine photo spread that reminded me of her to begin with. Really: Does anyone work that Tippi Hedren/Babe Paley look better? And could anyone else wear that ridiculous hat with such an utterly convincing expression of “Yes, I know I look beautiful?” No, no one could.

arrested-bush.jpg

In the wake of former Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s 323-page book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, one former member of the president’s own military team says he also believes the president should be indicted for war crimes (Read CityLife editor Steve Sebelius’ review of Bugliosi’s book here).

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, in the preface to a newly released report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives (for the group Physicians for Human Rights), writes that, ” … the Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. This story is not only written in words: It is scrawled for the rest of these individuals’ lives on their bodies and minds. Our national honor is stained by the indignity and inhumane treatment these men received from their captors.”

Taguba isn’t just some salty old soldier spewing sour grapes over petty slights. This is the same two-star general whom Bush tapped to initially investigate the systemic prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib - and the general says he’s shocked by what he uncovered at the prison. The report is heavy with medical evidence that appears to confirm first-hand accounts of 11 former prisoners tortured by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. Even more shocking? In the wake of the Abu Ghraib, just two enlisted Army reservists, one active-duty dog handler and an Army captain have been prosecuted for their role in the prisoner abuse. To date, no general officers, and no ranking field commanders have faced charges, despite the common knowledge among service members that the OK for the abuse, as is standard Army practice, came from the top.

Taguba writes, “There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

If other leaders had as much chutzpah as Taguba, perhaps we wouldn’t have to rely on the above doctored photo to accompany our piece. We’d have full-color evidence that the American legal system isn’t rigged to protect the rich and powerful, after all. We’d have, in a word, justice. A right those detainees in American custody never enjoyed.

Another day in Las Vegas, another depressing bunch of stories in the morning papers.

Today, for example, we learn that we rank really low (45th out of the 50 states) on the Milken Institute State Technology and Science Index. This is mostly due to the fact that our education system is poor, and not producing graduates who can go to work for high-tech firms. So while the Nevada Development Authority is advertising the state as a low-tax haven, and unsurprisingly drawing businesses that are too cheap to pay taxes, high-tech businesses yawn and move to states like California, Maryland and Massachusetts.

Speaking of education, it seems the Clark County School District has raised the drawbridge on hiring, even though it’s 791 teachers short for the school year that begins about a month from now. Classroom specialists and even administrators may be called upon to fill the gap. (And thus, education does not improve, and thus we don’t draw high-tech companies here, which even if we did wouldn’t matter since they wouldn’t pay taxes on gross revenues, etc. etc. etc.)

Meanwhile, instead of waking up to the dismal state of life in Nevada, the state Legislature is apparently trying to figure out how to do the very minimum to plug some budget holes, and leave the tough work for another day. The lonely, stentorian voice of Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio cautions “You can’t jump halfway across a river. We have to do it now. We can’t hope and pray that something is going to happen between now and February when every economic indicator indicates just the opposite.”

Alas, senator, you can jump halfway across a river. You just fall in when you do. And sadly for us, the river we’re trying to forge is called “Shit Creek.” (Paddles were eliminated in the last round of budget cuts.)

Maybe we need to consider a stark reality: Maybe, just maybe, we were never meant to be a real city, or a real state after all.

Think about it: We got into the Union back in 1864 because President Abraham Lincoln needed help in the Civil War. Nevada was such a godforsaken place that author Mark Twain wrote in a letter that “Some people are malicious enough to think that if the devil were set at liberty and told to confine himself to Nevada Territory, that he would come here and loaf sadly around, awhile, and then get homesick and go back to hell again.” (At least Twain went on to say that he liked Nevada.)

In more modern times, Nevada was used to supply power to Los Angeles (Boulder/Hoover Dam), to build war machines (at a site in Henderson so disrespected they dumped toxic chemicals in unlined pools; today, they want to put houses on it!), and, of course, to serve as the nation’s red-light district with the legalization, banning and re-legalization of gambling. Nevada was far enough away from civilization, in a territory naturally hostile to human life, that nobody really cared. Oh, and the toxic dumping history is still with us (Yucca Mountain).

So what about building a life and a culture here? Nobody seems interested. They come for jobs, not for amenities. Visitors come to cut loose and have Bacchanalian weekends they could never get away with at home, and then to slink back secure in the knowledge that what happens here stays here. We don’t resent it. Hell, we advertise it! You can come here and be the person you can’t be anywhere else. Social mores? Who needs ‘em in a place where “last call” is the punchline to a joke.

Meanwhile, thanks to a healthy dose of western libertarianism and greed in equal measures, grifters from back allies to corporate suites come to Las Vegas to make their fortune. Creating a sense of community, by and large, isn’t a big priority for them. Creating the image of prosperity, and fun, and wild abandon, that’s important. It’s one of the reasons you can underpay teachers all day long, but if you say something bad about some guy’s pool party or nightclub, well, them’s fighting words!

Since people here are typically unengaged with politics or public life, grifters in politics manage to get elected in droves. We reject smart, savvy and progressive politicians in favor of amoral dunces who don’t care if children go without food, so long as their re-election is assured. (There’s plenty of people for whom this is not true at all; still, most of them lack the courage to stand up and fight hard for a better tomorrow, fearing how they’ll be pilloried in the next election.)

We live in a state where this actually happened: As the Legislature convenes for its every-other-year confab that occasionally touches on what kind of state we really want to be, Gov. Jim Gibbons happily used a state cell phone to send what we’re sure were very charming text messages to a woman not his wife. Like, more than 850 messages. While he was supposed to be working.

The media? The largest paper in town, the Review-Journal, can’t find its voice to say anything bad about Gibbons, because he’s a Republican under attack by Democrats, although that paper would have long since defenestrated a Democrat who’d done half of what our incumbent has gotten away with doing. And while the paper regularly crusades against hardworking public employees because their paychecks come from taxes, big business can pretty much get away with doing whatever it wants. It’s left to the Las Vegas Sun to tell us that, in the rush to build ever larger cogs in the wheel of fantasy that is Las Vegas, people are literally dying.

That’s Vegas, baby! Hell, most the country still thinks that the mob runs the town. (In truth, it’s worse than that. It’s Wall Street.)

Meanwhile, a few, a lonely few, argue against the grain. Chancellor Jim Rogers argues for bettering our education system. Former Boyd Gaming chief Don Snyder struggles to erect a performing arts center, just because people should have a place to see great performing arts. Non-profit organizations are stretched to the limit to mend the myriad holes in the social safety net that government allows to unravel because God forbid we should all pay the price of civilization. Anybody who mentions taxes as a solution is shouted down with right-wing talking points until they just go away.

And we let them get away with it, when we should be outraged. But look! I have 500 channels on my cable TV, my cell phone plays movies and delivery pizza is just a phone call away. What’s so wrong with Vegas?

Maybe we’re getting exactly the city we deserve. And maybe Mother Nature was trying to tell us something about this expanse of dry, unforgiving desert where we’ve carved a city that very likely was never meant to exist.

No, not a city, really. Just a vast collection of dorms for a vast collection of unconnected people, pursuing their own interests above everything else, for however long the mirage lasts. Then it’s on to the next boomtown, the next buck, the next illusion.

Maybe the whole thing just wasn’t meant to be.