Viva Las Vegas

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Then again, no one goes to Vegas to think about geopolitics. Look at today's Vegas shows and ask whether America's morals are more progressive or more conservative, and you have to answer yes and yes. Las Vegas, after all, is about sin, but also limits. As on Spelling's '70s soaps — in which characters learned pat little lessons when they overindulged — these shows offer both titillation and retribution. On CSI we get the former stripper who puts murderers in jail; on Dr. Vegas, the hot singer whose drug problem nearly kills her; on Single in Vegas, the party girls longing to settle down; on The Casino, the skirt-chasing high roller who picks up a woman — who turns out to be a man.

All this makes the perfect setting for an America in which Rush Limbaugh can be a recovering druggie and conservative icon — an America that wants the binge and the purge, the sin and the penitence, all in one neon package. Until we find a better metaphor for our split moral personality, what happens in Vegas will stay ... on TV.