Posted 7:16 PM by Gene

Sociologists, the intellectual versions of astrologists, had to hold their annual convention in VEGAS because they didn't want to CROSS PICKET LINES in Chicago, and so in addition to the abundant cheap local delicacies they feasted on ample SOLE:

Sara Goldrick-Rab, associate professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, emphatically agreed. “I found it hard to believe we sociologists would come to a place that clearly thrives on the exploitation of people’s financial and emotional insecurities,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The grotesque treatment of young women was visible and jarring.”

But some of those in attendance weren’t complaining. “Who are you kidding?” said one young faculty member from a university outside the U.S., of those who said they were not enjoying the Vegas experience. “Go out, have fun, check out all the eye candy.”

Perhaps not incidentally, this faculty member was male – as was the graduate student from a highly respected private institution who suggested that any dislike of or discomfort with Las Vegas was limited to the conference’s female attendees. Also male: the grad student from a California public who smilingly boasted of having slipped a small bribe to the man at the check-in desk in exchange for a room with a good view of the pools (and the bikini-clad women therein) – which view, he said, he found rather distracting as he sat in his room preparing his presentation.

Oh, and should we mention the letters P and C?

(And there was a little of the sociologists in Vegas, too -- at least at Caesars Palace. The hotel, like most of the Strip, seems more than comfortable with traditional gender roles, even charging men more than women for the use of its pools. But the ASA made its own adjustment, posting a large sign on a pair of restrooms in the conference area that declared them both to be unisex -- a move intended to provide support for transgender sociologists.)

Unfortunately some noozpaper blogger or something proved he liked the taste too, as witness this delectable leather morsel:

“People think they’re having fun here. But in fact they’re wandering through a maze of really inauthentic, fake landscapes.”

First of all, you’re probably wandering into a dangerous maze yourself by telling people that when they think they’re having fun they’re not actually having fun. [*]

Second, authentic, the dictionary says, means “not false or copied; genuine; real.” That’s the beauty of the Strip — there’s no place like it, so how can it be anything but authentic. It’s also totally honest about what it is, unlike the rest of the country....

As for dressing up and showing themselves to other people — uh, what? How does this make us different?

A separate critique was equally ignorant — that Las Vegas isn’t sustainable.

It’s easy to see the fountains on the Strip and feel the dry heat of the Mojave and presume we’re not sustainable. But as Robert Lang, director of Brookings-Mountain West, noted, we’re closer to our water source than any other city that relies on the Colorado River. [Links definitely added]

Closer indeed!

As this bozo proves, when Mike Royko and Mike Kelly died, they took the nooz biz with them.

*Caveat: sociologists.