Goodman is egocentric as usual

By Jon Ralston

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 | 2:01 a.m.

The pointless provocateur has struck again, providing us with a reminder of why not to take Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman seriously.

With a presidential race in full flower as state and local races take shape, with important issues such as budget cuts and a foreclosure crisis, Goodman’s shtick hasn’t just grown old it’s become virtually irrelevant.

But every once in a while, Goodman will mouth off on an important subject and garner what he loves almost as much as he loves himself media attention on himself and disregard the consequences. He gets his headlines by repeating hackneyed jokes about his mob pals or by inculcating fourth graders about gin being man’s best friend. The joke’s the thing with Oscar, and everyone, including his council dwarfs, just yuk it up.

I had hopes that the mayor might, as a lame duck unless he can get term limits overturned, focus on important issues such as the tax structure. Perhaps he might harness his popularity and use it for something other than his solipsistic endeavors. So far, though, just chatter without purpose. Par for the course.

And then last week, Goodman, much to his delight I am sure, touched off what one California newspaper called a “water war” with flippant, uninformed comments his specialty. Imagine “Chinatown” as a comedy and you get the picture.

Asked at his weekly “news” conference about a recent report that Lake Mead might dry up by 2021, Goodman first responded as some experts might have to San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography study. “I think it was a silly story, to be honest with you,” Goodman declared, echoing others who think it is Cassandra-like to believe the lake has even odds of drying up in 13 years.

So did Goodman then proceed to give a substantive, thoughtful rebuttal to the study? That’s rhetorical, dear readers.

No, instead Goodman decided it would be better to declare war on California farmers. “No one is going to allow us to dry up here,” the mayor continued. “The Imperial Valley farmers will have their fields go fallow before our spigots will run dry.”

It didn’t take long and I am sure Goodman reveled in this for the California media to pick up the comments. Unless you live here, it’s hard to understand that you should ignore 99 percent of what Goodman says. But they don’t know that in Coachella Valley.

“Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman brings water war to boil,” blared the headline in The Desert Sun. The water district manager there called Goodman’s comments “inflammatory” and “ridiculous.” Welcome to our world.

When one of his sycophants placed the article on his desk the next day and other California papers picked up on it, too I am sure Goodman smiled broadly. He had achieved what he wanted: media coverage.

One part of Goodman’s ridiculous news conference remarks that didn’t get printed came after a reporter facetiously challenged the mayor on his desire to take the farmers’ water. “How are you going to do that go down there with guns?” the Sun’s Joe Schoenmann wryly asked the performing mayor.

Goodman then invoked water czar Pat Mulroy and transportation overseer Jacob Snow and pointed out they were in Washington, D.C., with him recently on a convention authority junket. And he included them in this: “These are all the things we talk about in order to promote tourism.”

Yes, he said that, as if Mulroy, Snow and others reassure anyone worried about Southern Nevada’s breakneck growth that, if need be, we will simply take the Imperial Valley water.

A University of Utah law professor told The Desert Sun that Goodman “was making a kind of a political statement, rather than a statement based on legal rights.”

Sorry, professor, but it’s much simpler: He had no idea what he was talking about.

The point here, of course, isn’t whether the Scripps study has too many questionable assumptions, as some might argue, or whether it is a warning beacon that should be heeded, as others believe. It’s that Goodman has no idea and doesn’t really care.

He is unconcerned with the consequences of his actions, so long as he gets attention. Mission accomplished.

I’d like to believe that for once His Honor would put some serious thought into a subject, that he would study before he speaks, that he would be serious about something other than himself. And then, as Jake Gittes once heard about venturing into the dark heart of Chinatown, I remember the admonition:

Forget it, folks; it’s Oscar Goodman.