I had to go dumpster-diving yesterday to retrieve what is without question the strangest casino ad I've ever seen. Since I don't read the Las Vegas Review-Journal in its ink-and-paper form, I'd missed a full-page ad from the Las Vegas Tropicana. (This picture was taken by "mike_ch" of Two Way Hard Three.

Over the image of a knife, fork and empty plate (symbolism whose meaning still eludes me) are eight paragraphs of copy, crowned by the headline ...

There's a new oxymoron in Las Vegas: Journalist (Jeff) Simpson

Why Simpson's first name is in brackets is another mysteries of this attack ad, which brands his Jan. 27 story about reports of uncashable Tropicana paychecks "utter fiction" and calls him a "dupe" of the Culinary Union and its parent, Unite Here. According to the ad, Simpson is passing along a fable concocted by the Culinary Union. As for Unite Here, "this union will stop at nothing ... perhaps even bilking their [sic] own members."

In order to make its case against Unite Here, the Trop dredges up allegations it used when trying to excuse unsanitary conditions at its Atlantic City Tropicana, confiscated last month by the state of New Jersey. "Union workers filled urinals with sand, didn't show up for work, refused to clean, threatened customers," the ad reads, going on to allege a conspiracy between Unite Here and The Press of Atlantic City, which had run an editorial criticizing Trop owner William Yung III's "slash-and-burn business model," an editorial to which Yung was allowed to respond in print.

This is the first time I've read the "threatened customers" allegation but the others were considered by New Jersey Casino Control Commission and dismissed out of hand (see p. 56). As for a conspiracy between The Press and Unite Here, you decide for yourself whether that passes the laugh test or not.

The conspiracy theories pile up: D. Taylor is accused of orchestrating the whole affair so that membership will "forget" the Culinary's nationally televised face-plant "in the Nevada presidential primary [sic]? Food for thought, perhaps?"

Perhaps not. The the Culinary's failed power play on behalf of Sen. Barack Obama isn't likely to be forgotten soon, especially by people who follow Nevada politics. It's going to dog the Culinary for years. Nor is Columbia Sussex in the best position to proclaim itself the bearer of "the whole truth," fresh off its executives having been branded as liars several times over by the NJCCC.

"We believe in the Las Vegas dream, too," reads the ad's sonorous peroration. "But the dream won't come true if the city lets unions rule and business flee."

And here the penny drops. Columbia Sussex is threatening to take its ball and go home. Or setting up a cover story for selling the Trop, in order to retire senior debt. Or laying the groundwork for locking out its 700 remaining Culinary workers, rather than accede to contract terms abided to by every other major Strip casino.

Or maybe somebody back in Fort Mitchell just got a bee in his bonnet after reading Simpson's description of the Columbia Sussex brain trust as "Kentucky-based half-wits."

"Perhaps even" all of the above, as Columbia Sussex would say.