They was just bein rebellion?

[captainsblog]

Our local fishwrap featured a surprisingly sympathetic interview this morning with our local King of All Nude Media: Rick Snowden, the eponymous proprietor of the Rick's Tally-Ho strip clubs in suburban Buffalo (Cheektovegas) and Rochester (Henrietta).

I always gave the guy a little credit for truth in advertising- how many of these joints actually put the word "Ho" right in their name?- but his latest troubles with the law have me a bit less than crying in my overpriced beer for him.

First, it is reported that he was shocked, SHOCKED!, to find prostitution in this establishment:

According to SLA officials, it doesn’t really matter from a legal standpoint whether Snowden knew about the drug dealing or the prostitution. Under the law, Snowden had the responsibility to know and to prevent such illegal activities from happening, Crowley said.

In documents filed publicly last month, the SLA quoted two of Snowden’s former employees — former deejay Robert Oliver and former manager Joseph “Vegas Joe” Guarino — as saying they tried to warn Snowden that dancers were committing illegal sex acts at Tally-Ho.

In both cases, Snowden ignored the warnings, the SLA said.

“Guarino indicated that sometime in 2009 he fired a dancer for fondling a customer’s exposed genitals in a private room, but that the licensee, Rick Snowden, directed him to rehire her because her conduct was permitted,” the SLA said in seeking the emergency removal of Snowden’s liquor license.

“I have given a few of the dancers second chances, but I haven’t broken the law,” Snowden said. “I have fired dancers over the years for prostitution and involvement with drugs.”

("SLA," incidentally, is the State Liquor Authority. We have yet to resume diplomatic relations with Symbonia after its coup government kidnapped Patty Hearst.)

 “Every dancer we have signs a contract, specifying that if they sell drugs or engage in prostitution, they are terminated,” Snowden said.

Women who work as dancers in the clubs are considered “private contractors, not employees,” Snowden said, and the women are not paid by Tally-Ho. They receive all their pay from customers.

Now THAT sounds like the work of a good corporate lawyer, trying to keep his client's employees from unionizing. Hmmmm.... which party do ya think those lawyers might be from?

Snowden is trying to get his liquor license back, and a hearing will be scheduled soon before an SLA administrative law judge. Snowden has hired two attorneys with strong political ties — Dennis C. Vacco, former state attorney general, and Ralph C. Lorigo, chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party — to represent him.

“We’re going to do everything we can to get Mr. Snowden’s liquor license restored,” Vacco said. “We think it an important consideration for the SLA that, after this very comprehensive federal investigation, [Snowden’s] name was not even mentioned once in the federal court papers.”

The article doesn't say, because everyone here knows- Vacco, as well, is a right-of-the-dial Republican, who lost as an incumbent to Eliot Spitzer for Attorney General in 2002 and basically barricaded himself in his office until the landlord evicted him.

What is the fascination of these parties- Grand Old, Tea, Bachelor- with sex and sleaze? Rick, a longtime big-money Republican donor, is only the second sleaziest to come through the door in the past week with no shame about his sexual preferences. (The first, of course, was another local boy, Carl Palomino Paladino, who became Buffalo's LATEST Worst Person in the Worrrrld! on KO earlier this week for, among other things, circulating emails of skanks having sex with horses.)

Yet if two OTHER people want to have dull, repressed, middle-aged sex and they happen to be of the same gender. THAT's when the Party of No suddenly regains its morals.

Oh well. I guess this noted Republican spokesman said it best:

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Comments

[ellettra.livejournal.com]

In news of the not-at-all-related-to-your-post, I dreamed of you and Eleanor and Em this morning! How's that for weird! I dreamed first that we all were neighbors, and then that you moved out totally out of the blue and I was confused and upset and went to find you to say, "Is everything ok? Why did you guys move without saying goodbye?" This morphed into you and I going SURFING together(???!!!!) except it was more like we were surfing at the same time and ran into each other on the way back into shore. HOW RANDOM AND CRAZY IS THIS? Then Eleanor was singing and you kept jumping around and making these silly faces and she would stop singing and laugh and laugh and her laughter made ME laugh. It was really strange, but I woke up with a smile. :)

[troubleagain.livejournal.com]

I'm stealing your icon to post elsewhere. :-)