Gov. Diva takes ball, goes home

WHEN GOV. JIM GIBBONS FOUND OUT the Senate was having a Yucca Mountain hearing on Halloween, but that he wasn't invited, he went into full diva mode.

He whined. He cried. He bitched. He claimed he was "snubbed." His aides called U.S. Sen. Harry Reid to wrangle an invite, and phoned U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who leads the Environment and Public Works Committee. He got U.S. Rep. Jon Porter to trash a Gibbons-free hearing as a "dog and pony show." He even wrote a letter, hinting that Boxer didn't want him speaking because he was a Republican.

(The equally credible explanation: She just didn't want him trying to walk her to her car after the hearing.)

But ultimately, Boxer relented, shifted the hearing schedule around, and invited Gibbons.

At which point Gov. Diva promptly bailed.

Too busy, he said. Got to deal with the budget crisis.

Is he kidding? Or just being a Grade-A political jerkoff?

Bet the over on the latter.

Gibbons was fully aware of the budget crisis when he begged everybody within miles of Washington D.C. for the chance to come out and testify on the nuclear waste dump. (The only interesting thing would have been to see what side his testimony would have favored; Gibbons has been heard to say that the science behind Yucca Mountain is sound.) By basically making a pest of himself by demanding to sit at the grown-ups' table, he committed himself to attending.

Besides, Gibbons (hard as it is for many of us to admit) is the governor. He can set budget meeting whenever he wants. His staff will wait for him. So if he had to be in Washington on Halloween, he could easily schedule the budget meeting for the next day. Or better yet, if the budget was such a big crisis, Gibbons could have scrubbed the tour of military bases he went on with his homeland security chief Oct. 29.

Instead, Gov. Diva just fed up excuses.

"Unfortunately, we are working with timely information [on the state budget] and at the end of the day, the governor felt the budget challenges took precedent [sic]," said spokeswoman Melissa Subbotin in the Review-Journal.

Better still, in the Las Vegas Sun, Subbotin all but acknowledged Nevada's congressional delegation would do the job just as well as if Gibbons had been around. "He has great confidence in the delegation."

Oh, really? Well, if his confidence in the delegation was so great, why not let the delegation handle it in the first place, especially with the looming budget crisis? Why not let Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto represent the state (as surely her legal knowledge of the Yucca fight exceeds that of Gibbons)? Why not let U.S. Sen. John Ensign -- a prominent Republican -- speak to the politics?

In fact, what the hell would Jim Gibbons have added to the discussion at all, save for the usual anti-Yucca platitudes and dire warnings common to all Nevada politicians?

No, this was just another chapter in the sad saga of Gibbons' administration, stumbling from one politically tone-deaf move to the next, suffering from self-inflicted political wounds all the way.

But he sure showed Boxer, didn't he? So what if she didn't ask him to speak. He doesn't need her hearing. He wouldn't come even if she begged. (Or he did.)

It all spells one thing: A-S-S C-L-O-W-N.

What's different about us?

Also this week, you may notice something different about your copy of CityLife. No, you're not intoxicated by California fire fumes. It's a new font for our text.

About a year ago, we introduced a new look for the paper, part of which was a new font for what we call the "body copy." It was called Dispatch, and it was bold, blocky, and, as it turns out, not all that easy to read, even when we increased the size of the letters.

That led us on a search, conducted by our lead designer, paginator and all-around indispensable graphics person, Maureen Adamo. She found Quiosco, the font you're reading right now. We think it's more readable than Dispatch, and it better fits with the overall look of CityLife. We hope you agree.

Steve Sebelius is editor of CityLife. He can be reached at 871-6780, ext. 306 or Ssebelius@lvcitylife.com