Thursday, November 22, 2007

Rack 'em

What do you see when you look at this rack?

Did you say "a pressing First Amendment issue"?

No? C'mon — wasn't that the first thought that came to mind?

Yeah, me neither.

But that's the attitude of the ACLU types now that Clark County (most of The Strip is in Clark County, not Las Vegas proper) has quadrupled the fee for news racks in the "resort corridor," to $100 from $25. There are about 2,700 of these things — who knew? — but I'm not sure if all of those are on The Strip.

The ones that are on The Strip are almost exclusively ads for escorts and strippers. (Ahem: "This is not an offer of prostitution. Any money exchanged is for time and companionship only" blah blah etc.)

There is a civil liberties point, though, in that it looks like Clark County is targeting these naughty advertisements by making distribution prohibitively expensive. That's what the law school types call a "content-based restriction," which is a big First Amendment no-no.

Ah, schizophrenic Vegas. We play up Sin City and the "what happens here, stays here" line, then get all in a tizzy when someone actually tries to lead a tourist to temptation. Or when our mayor says brothels should open downtown. Or when a strip club tries to get downtown redevelopment money. Amazingly, we were a little late to the lingerie-and-coffee business — no protests yet, as far as I know.

Anyway, Clark County has gotten itself dinged before on free speech issues. An effort to ban people from handing out escort fliers failed — sadly, I think, because those hawkers are annoying. And now I'm guessing we'll get another court fight over the right to distribute poorly produced smut.

God Bless America!

(Related stories here and here.)

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