It’s a special live edition of Nevada Week in Review tonight, people. Anything could happen! Will somebody utter a bad word? Will there be a wardrobe malfunction? Will a bat fly around the studio, disrupting the show? Who knows? It’s live TV!

I’ll be on set with political commentator Jon Ralston, Nevada News Bureau Editor Elizabeth Crum and KVVU Fox 5 anchor John Huck. We’ll be talking about the sudden and saddening death of former Gov. Kenny Guinn, Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s curious media strategy (motto: Run away! Don’t call back! Hide!), public financing for a sports arena and much more. Tune in at 7:30 p.m. tonight to VegasPBS Channel 10. If you miss the live show, you can catch the repeats at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, noon Sunday or anytime you want, via the Nevada Week in Review podcast.

Editor’s note: This column appears in this week’s Las Vegas CityLife.

Nobody should blame the late Charlotte McCourt for the anti-Harry Reid jeremiad that was the graceless, classless obituary that appeared in the Review-Journal July 13.

It was not McCourt who scandalized her own memory, but rather members of her family, who felt it appropriate to include in the 84-year-old’s sendoff the following: “We believe Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to the U.S. Congress. Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work,” and, “in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.”

So we’re to believe that a woman who lived 84 years, who raised a family of five children and lived to enjoy 20 grandchildren and 65 great-grandchildren had as her final wish before departing this vale of tears the defeat of a politician with whom she apparently disagreed, and to whose cause she regretted rendering aid? This cannot be true, in which case it’s a libel. Allowing, however, for the possibility that it is true, it speaks more of the departed than of Reid, who gracefully held his fire in light of the insult.

It’s true modern politics are more polarized. But to use a family member’s obituary — for which the R-J charges money and in which nearly anything may be said — to mount an attack on a political figure seems a waste of more than just money.

“We didn’t mean to create a stir,” said McCourt’s daughter, Lanny Shea of Pahrump, to the R-J. But of course they did; otherwise, why do it at all? Or could this family come up with no finer way to memorialize a lost love one than a political polemic?

The McCourt family’s enmity toward Reid seems to stretch back decades, to a time when the just-elected Congressman Harry Reid allegedly failed to return the phone calls of Patrick McCourt, Charlotte’s husband, over a matter of Social Security benefits. And since at least one member of the family — Shea — told the R-J she’s leaning toward supporting Reid’s Republican rival, Sharron Angle, it bears repeating that Angle has, at various times, said she wants to “transition out” of Social Security. Mr. McCourt should fear getting that return phone call, although it’s doubtful he’d do much better than before. If Angle is to be believed when she says she wouldn’t pick up the phone to assist the state’s largest employer save thousands of jobs at CityCenter, it’s not likely she’d take the time to help someone solve a problem with a program her own father compared to welfare.

Another point of contention seems to be the matter of “big government,” especially with respect to the recently passed health-care law, according to another sister, Sherry d’Hulst. “We have all become more conservative,” d’Hulst told the R-J. This explains why many McCourt family members were big supporters of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who unsuccessfully ran for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2008.

What it doesn’t explain is why they’d dislike the health-care plan Reid helped shepherd through the Senate, as it’s very similar to their man Romney’s reform plan enacted when he ran the Bay State, complete with the individual mandate that conservatives so detest when applied by a Democratic administration at the national level.

In the end, this appears to be nothing more than a personal grudge nursed over the decades, raising its ugly head at a time that should be set aside for celebrating the life of a loved one. More’s the pity the McCourt family cheapened that occasion with political bile.

After all, he’s already wealthy. But a new ad from Americans United for Change touts financial reform as proof that big banking interests can’t get everything they want in Washington, D.C.

Sharron Angle has a new ad out today that attack’s Harry Reid where he’s strongest, i.e. his tenure and power as majority leader. Reid’s slogan — “No one can do more” — comes under assault as Angle blames Reid for Nevada’s high unemployment rate, foreclosure rate and bankruptcy rate.

But if, as Angle suggests, it’s not the job of a U.S. senator to create jobs, then isn’t it hypocritical for her to attack Reid for failing to create more jobs? Or is it only the fact that Reid believes it is part of his job to increase employment that leaves him exclusively vulnerable to that charge?

How, then, should we judge Angle, if she wins? If Angle fails to eliminate the Department of Education, transition out of Social Security and Medicare or make alcohol illegal (the same as marijuana), should she be vulnerable in a hypothetical re-election bid six years hence to an ad that questions her effectiveness?

As an incumbent, Reid is a victim of the economy, although it’s difficult to argue that Reid personally caused a foreclosure crisis or a recession that led to more bankruptcies. (Even before the recession, Nevada saw a thriving bankruptcy industry, it must be noted.) Inasmuch as people are upset about the economy and trying to fix blame, the ad will have some effect. But inasmuch as Reid can — and has — countered with a long list of things that he personally has done for Nevada, those effects may be limited.

Gov. Jim Gibbons sure looked happier on Wednesday, after his divorce was finalized in Family Court in Reno…

Than he did, say, back when the case was still winding it’s way through court and he had to carry around big boxes of evidence…

On Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle said she was ready to start answering some questions from reporters, something she’s been dodging since she won the Republican primary June 8. (My own list of unreturned calls and e-mails has now reached double-digits). Here’s Angle, quoted by Politico from an interview on her favorite media network.

“We have been staffing up for over one month and we’ve also been building our war chest,” Angle said Monday night during an interview with Fox Business Network. “We’re ready to go to war with this communication problem that we have.”

Sadly, less than a day later, Angle was once again literally running away from reporters seeking to ask her questions. This time, it was U.S. Rep. Dean Heller’s comments contradicting Angle, who has said unemployed workers are spoiled because of unemployment benefits (which Angle, unlike Heller, opposes extending).

Last time, Angle ran away from my 8NewsNow colleague Nathan Baca, who was trying to figure out what she meant when she said people would look to “Second Amendment remedies” if Congress didn’t change.

Perhaps somebody should tell Angle that you don’t win a war by running away from the enemy; you win a war by confronting the enemy. Then again, if Angle’s enemy is reporters who simply want a U.S. Senate candidate to explain to her constituents her views on the issues, then perhaps there’s a larger problem.

Sharron Angle’s media campaign for U.S. Senate is nothing if not nostalgic. Could her campaign, for example, really not have known it was cribbing a recent tagline — “Help is on the way” — from John Kerry’s unsuccessful bid against George W. Bush in 2004? She references Ronald Reagan endlessly on the campaign trail, especially when discussing Reagan’s unfulfilled promise to erase the Departments of Education and Energy from the federal bureaucracy. (Reagan failed to do either, and then created a new one, Veterans Affairs.)

Angle’s most recent ad borrows again, directly quoting Reagan’s famous remark that government is the problem. And it’s title — “Right Here Right Now” — which is also the title of a Jesus Jones song about historic change brought about, in part, by Reagan’s policies. Oh, and she’s wearing red. Whatever else may be said of Angle, it cannot be said she’s subtle.

A final note about this ad: Angle is partially right when she says there’s fear in the country. But might it not be that the fear stems in part from Angle’s promise to dismantle or truncate some of the very key functions of government (Social Security, unemployment benefits, constituent service) at the very time they are most needed? Does it not seem logical to her that a person who is currently jobless and unable to afford his mortgage is more concerned in the present about survival than he is about long-term deficits and debt? And is she not expanding that fear instead of mollifying it?

I’m off to attend the annual meeting of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies in cosmopolitan Toronto, Canada, so the blog will be dark for the rest of the week. I sure hope nothing happens while I’m gone.

I’ll be back Monday with all-new episodes. See you then.