Fast Food Nation - Eric Schlosser [133]
The latest slot machines are electronically connected to a central computer, allowing the casino to track the size of every bet and its outcome. The music, flashing lights, and sound effects emitted by these slots help disguise the fact that a small processor inside them is deciding with mathematical certainty how long you will play before you lose. It is the ultimate consumer technology, designed to manufacture not a tangible product, but something much more elusive: a brief sense of hope. That is what Las Vegas really sells, the most brilliant illusion of all, a loss that feels like winning.
Mikhail Gorbachev was in town to speak at the Twenty-sixth Annual Chain Operators Exchange, a convention sponsored by the International Foodservice Manufacturers Association. Executives from the major fast food companies had gathered to discuss, among other things, the latest labor-saving machinery and the prospects of someday employing a workforce that needed “zero training.” Representatives from the industry’s leading suppliers — ConAgra, Monfort, Simplot, and others — had come to sell their latest products. The Grand Ballroom at the Mirage was filled with hundreds of middle-aged white men in expensive business suits. They sat at long tables beneath crystal chandeliers, drinking coffee, greeting old friends, waiting for the morning program to begin. A few of them were obviously struggling to recover from whatever they’d done in Las Vegas the night before.
On the surface, Mikhail Gorbachev seemed an odd choice to address a group so resolutely opposed to labor unions, minimum wages, and workplace safety rules. “Those who hope we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed,” Gorbachev had written in Perestroika (1987), at the height of his power. He had never sought the dissolution of the Soviet Union and never renounced his fundamental commitment to Marxism-Leninism. He still believed in the class struggle and “scientific socialism.” But the fall of the Berlin Wall had thrown Gorbachev out of power and left him in a precarious financial condition. He was beloved abroad, yet despised in his own land. During Russia’s 1996 presidential election he received just 1 per-cent of the vote. The following year he expressed great praise for America’s leading fast food chain. “And the merry clowns, the Big Mac signs, the colourful, unique decorations and ideal cleanliness,” Gorbachev wrote in the foreword of To Russia with Fries, a memoir by a McDonald’s executive, “all of this complements the hamburgers whose great popularity is well deserved.”
In December of 1997, Gorbachev appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial, following in the footsteps of Cindy Crawford and Ivana Trump. A group of patrons at a Moscow Pizza Hut thanked him in the ad for bringing the fast food chain to Russia and then shouted “Hail to Gorbachev!” In response Gorbachev saluted them by raising a slice of pizza. He reportedly earned $160,000 for his appearance in the sixty-second spot, money earmarked for his nonprofit foundation. A year later Pizza Hut announced that it was pulling out of Russia as the country’s economy collapsed, and Gorbachev told a German reporter that “all my money is gone.” For his hour-long speech at the Mirage, Gorbachev was promised a fee of $150,000 and the use of a private jet.
The Twenty-sixth Annual Chain Operators Exchange officially opened with a video presentation of the national anthem. As the song boomed from speakers throughout the Grand Ballroom, two huge screens