Loathing Las Vegas

My religion professor told us on the first day of class that, and I quote, "Las Vegas is the realization of the Kingdom of God on Earth."

He may indeed prove to me by the end of the semester that this statement is not as completely reckless and contradictory as it sounds, but I still have a few problems in buying it just yet. Purely practically speaking, Las Vegas did not exist to Jesus. He had no idea that the area we call Nevada even existed, much less the American continents. I mean, the world was still flat in the year 30.

What's more, had he known that such a land existed, I can hardly imagine him handpicking said land (Nevada) as his Kingdom. My friend and I were discussing the other day which state we would, if we could, throw out of the Union. Nevada was in the top three, behind only Oklahoma (yes, the Sooner State-I'd sooner drop that one, drop it like it's hot) and Arkansas. Nevada is dry, it's barren, and it is miserable. Plus, even if you can defend Vegas, you've still got to rationalize Reno.

Finally, let's face it: Las Vegas is the very embodiment of sin. Hardly the "City of Angels" found in Nevada's neighbor California, Vegas is a city fallen from grace, so to speak, 113 square miles of our very own "Sin City." Even if you will vouch for its climate, location, or sparkling lights, it is quite another thing to enthusiastically condone what Vegas stands for. It is everything that people hate about America-all in one city. I'm sure it is the venue for committing every one of the seven cardinal sins, and may even have given birth to an eighth and a ninth. Those sins are not only there, but encouraged and binged upon, in an unhealthy-not to mention expensive-fashion.

Just this summer, The Los Angeles Times' Op-Ed section pioneered a new section, called "Wiki-torials." Modeled after the famous online participatory encyclopedia, wikipedia.com, it was an editorial that could be edited and rewritten by any of its readers as deemed appropriate.

As a pioneer in the field of wiki-academics, I am going to redefine and edit this professor's statement. My new definition: Las Vegas is the realization of the Kingdom of Social Bulimia on Earth.

Allow me to expand.

The United States was founded on the Puritan ethic, a thought-process that came to be the basis of both political mentality and social morality. People work hard with the idea of future payoff. They avoid excesses and evils and everything bad, running backward while forming the sign of the cross in front of their faces as they go. They maintain this image for the vast majority of their lives, starving themselves of even a taste of anything that might be labeled as "sinful."

Then they go to Las Vegas for the weekend, and they binge. They binge in a big way. There exists easy gambling, easy marriages, drinking, stripping, and prostitutes-who, incidentally, are both legal and taxed by the state-and restaurants and hotels that charge too much money and exercise too little taste.

They binge, and then they purge. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And then they return to the strict moral diet that is their life.

The starve-binge-purge cycle exists in many arenas of our lives. In food, it is the symptom of disordered eating, and so with luxuries and excesses, it is the symptom of disordered living. Maybe this is just a rant on hating Las Vegas, or maybe this is the realization of a symptom of something bigger. Think about it.