The Atlantic City Alliance, a non-profit group funded by casinos in hopes that you'll spend money at casinos, cannot change the fact that Trump Plaza, The Showboat, Revel, and the thousands of jobs they support are all going away. But they can digitally plug the gaps in a crowd at a Lady Antebellum concert and at this point, why not?
The ACA bought full-page ads [PDF] in the Star-Ledger, the WSJ, and the Philadelphia Inquirer as a media tourniquet for the ruptured vein of casino closings and grim headlines.
The result is an Atlantic City that defies space and time, where you come to gamble and maybe swim in a pool and catch a concert or something but instead must confront multiple versions of yourself, each clone more horrifying and mutated than the last, with all of the same flaws, and all of the same dumb red shirts.
(Jen Chung / Gothamist)
"It didn’t alter the message. A picture is worth a thousand words and the ridiculousness of the question is the picture shows what was here," Jeff Guaracino, the ACA's chief strategy and communications officer, told the Press of Atlantic City. Guaracino added that the image is three photographs of a recent Lady Antebellum show stitched together (for the record, 60,000 people attended).
"If there were 500 people here and it made it look like more, then it’s a valid question." The point, he said, was to publish "three vantage points to make a statement. No additional altering was done."
Meanwhile, Governor Chris Christie is engaging in a political form of Photoshop, announcing an "emergency summit" to discuss Atlantic City's fate. The conference is set for early September, and according to Reuters will "include both Democratic and Republican state legislative leaders, as well as Christie administration officials, county and city officials, organized labor and casino industry representatives, among others."
Cloning can save Atlantic City, but couldn't they just build a water park?
Check back in a few weeks for a more thorough accounting of what's going on in the city formerly known as "America's Favorite Playground."
