June 8, 2007 *
THE STRIP SENSE
WHHSH = Nails On A Blackboard
By STEVE FRIESS
Not long ago, my biggest irritation with the national media
as it pertained to Vegas was the knee-jerk insistence on inserting
gambling and neon-jungle references into every story no matter
how irrelevant. Somehow a sentence in a story I wrote about
a 10-year-old HIV patient came out the other end with this phrase
tacked onto the front of it: "In the shadow of the Las Vegas
Strip…"
Now I'd long for that kind of problem. My newest complaint
is what I refer to on my other blog as "WHHSH Shame." That is
- and it almost pains me to actually have to write it out so
I'm only going to do it one time: "What Happens Here Stays Here."
You know WHHSH. That tired old saying that was repurposed
to brilliant effect to capture the essence of the naughtiness
and alternative reality of why people love Las Vegas. As an
ad campaign, R&R Partners has done smashingly on behalf of the
Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority to promote the destination.
In a blink it became a pop culture moment that rose to the level
of being deployed by Billy Crystal on an Academy Award telecast.
No quarrel with that. But in recent months I've started to
notice that WHHSH is now the crutch of choice for journalistic
hacks everywhere. And frequently, it's not even used in a way
that's accurate. Example: An Associated Press piece on the mini-Vegas
built at Legoland began, "What happens in Legoland Las Vegas
will stay in Legoland Las Vegas -- if the designers have anything
to say about it." Not just unclever, but untrue. The Legoland
folks want word of their $1 million exhibit to get out, don't
they?
Try this one on: The sheriff and undersheriff in San Mateo,
Calif., were arrested in Vegas in a prostitution sting in April.
It's a sensationally tawdry tale and the cops' denials are painful
and silly, but San Francisco Chronicle scribe John Cote deserves
to be jailed, too, for beginning his juicy story with: "What
happens in Vegas doesn't necessarily stay in Vegas after all."
It's worth noting that the slogan is WHHSH, not WHiVSiV. And
please don't make me spell that out for you.
Out of town papers aren't the only guilty parties here, which
makes me even sadder. The Las Vegas Review-Journal committed
two almost identical WHHSH violations in recent months. In April,
atop a Corey Levitan piece about how the Internet is being used
to embarrass, entrap and otherwise observe Las Vegans, the headline
read: "What happens in Vegas ... goes on the Web." And on June
2, the front page headline over an Omar Sofradzija piece about
Google's new street-level Strip photo tour read: "What Happens
Here is Now on Google." In the second case, like the instance
with Legoland, it's a lie: Google took snapshots at one moment
in time - before the Stardust implosion, in fact -- and there's
nothing in any of those pictures that anyone would reasonably
view as showing something "happening" unless by "happening"
you mean people waiting for lights to change.
There are signs this affliction will get worse before better.
Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz will star in "What Happens in
Vegas," described by the Hollywood Reporter thus: "Following
a night of debauchery in Vegas, two strangers (Diaz and Kutcher)
discover they have gotten married and one of them wins a huge
jackpot with the other's quarter. In trying to determine the
rightful beneficiary of the winnings, the duo embarks on a series
of plots to undermine the other, falling in love along the way."
(Isn't Diaz a little young for Ashton?)
I know I'm fighting a losing battle when, like that AIDS story
mentioned earlier, my own work is being perverted in this way.
The headline over a New York Magazine piece I have running in
the June 18 issue about why Broadway is failing here reads:
"What opens in Vegas closes in Vegas."
I fought as hard as I could without offending my high-paying
editors. And I lost. But hey, at least it's true.
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