lipstick on a pig
By Josh Resnek
Last week, Wynn Resorts seemed to be chugging along in an attempt to rehabilitate itself in order to give the Massachusetts Gaming Commission a reason not to take its license away.
By naming three prominent women to its Board of Directors, Wynn Resorts sought to silence some of the negativity surrounding its efforts to hang on to its property here in Everett.
Even those of us skeptical of the Wynn team and its culture of sexual harassment and corporate moral and social bankruptcy nodded our heads as if to say: “Good move. A step in the right direction.”
Even if it was a weak and rather ineffectual self serving move, it signaled the company apparent willingness to change its corporate culture.
There remains great wonder about the company’s new president Matthew Maddox, who, according to the Wall Street Journal, knew about the $7.5 million payment made in a paternity suit leveled against Wynn founder Steve Wynn.
He failed to note this, among other things, on the Wynn application for a casino license, a rather glaring omission of fact about a rather glaring incident.
Maddox introduced the new directors, which includes Dee Dee Meyers, President Bill Clinton’s former press secretary.
Her record is said to be exemplary and yet she worked directly for a president who was having sex in the Oval office with an intern, among others as history has instructed us.
We’re not being negative here.
Far from it.
We’re not printing lies, as suggested by the mayor at a council hearing Monday evening.
“The media just prints lies,” he said looking our way during a question and answer period with the city council.
We don’t print lies. Rather, we remain disappointed that a company so well thought of and pretending to be legal and just about everything it did, has turned out to be just the opposite and we are left picking up the pieces from this broken dream.
The mayor remains adamant that we need Wynn and only Wynn.
Wynn is better than anyone else, he pleads.
They may be a better corporation to build out the casino and hotel, and to buy property everywhere at obscene prices and to remake an entire ward of the city, but at what price to the city’s reputation?
Does Wynn Resorts reputation mean anything?
Obviously, the mayor is not concerned about reputation.
He just wants the casino and hotel finished and open and run by Wynn.
Reputation doesn’t mean much to him.
But then, the mayor doesn’t understand that our good name and reputation, our loyalty and our word, is all that we have when you boil our lives down to its essence.
You can’t put lipstick on a pig.
The Wynn Resorts right now is the pig.
No amount of lipstick is going to change its persona.
At least not right now.