Question of the Day - 16 May 2024

That sounds like a typical episode of “Las Vegas,” at least in terms of its level of veracity. We watched a number of shows in the series over its five-season lifespan and found just about everything, from the premise (a surveillance director quadrupling as the casino manager, hotel manager, chief operations officer, and chairman of the board) to the Montecito resort-casino itself (which never existed outside of a computer processor) to be as far away from Las Vegas as Hollywood is from Kyiv. 

That said, it was flashy, trashy, fluffy, fast-paced, and actually somewhat tongue in cheek, so we kept tuning in until it simply became too rebarbative. 

Anyway, Josh Duhamel's character Danny (head of security for most of the run) organizing a labor action on behalf of strippers is on a par with James Caan’s character Ed Deline, the surveillance director, winning a judo fight. (Yes, that happened on “Las Vegas,” too.) 

There are several good reasons a stripper union could never happen, but the main one is that exotic dancers aren't employees at all; therefore, they can't be organized in the traditional union sense. Not only are ecdysiasts independent contractors, not paid by the clubs, earning their living strictly from dances and tips from the customers, but they actually pay the clubs to rent their dressing-room space and time on stage.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world among exotic dancers and the clubs are the unquestioned beneficiaries, masters at divide and conquer. It would certainly be interesting to see exotics band together and take on the establishments, but that’s almost as much pure fantasy as that “Las Vegas” episode … and purer than what transpires in a strip club.