WHHSH Shame: O.J. Simpson Edition

It's a losing cause, I know. But as the world focuses on the O.J. Simpson mess in Vegas, let's see if you and I can't use this space to shame some of the slovenly reporters, headline writers and commentators who will inevitably invoke the Mother of All Vegas Cliches, What Happens Here Stays Here. (Oh, and fyi to all you lazies, it's WHHSH, not WHiVSiV.)


Exhibit A, above, is the worst because it comes from usually brilliant Las Vegas Sun cartoonist Mike Smith, whose comics get picked up by newspapers around the nation and are often reprinted in Newsweek. He's clever and smart and this panel was totally a phone-in if there ever was one. We expect better from Mike, especially since he's Vegas-based and must be as sick of this as we are.

Of course, headline writers and journalist-hacks the world over can't think of anything better or think it profound, too. Consider:

* This headline from Cinema Blend.
* E! Online writer Marcus Errico, who thought it profound to open his Monday piece with: "O.J. Simpson's learning the hard way that what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. Or more specifically, Vegas jails."
* Long Beach Post-Telegram writer Tony Castro in SoCal: "Betraying the advertising motto 'What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,' O.J. Simpson's recent arrest in Sin City has thrust the former football star into the international spotlight again amid withering speculation about the psychological health of the once-accused killer."
* Sun-Herald columnist Jim Mashek in Mississippi couldn't think of another way out of his column, so he concluded: "Goes to show what happens in Vegas can make you stay in Vegas."


O.J. himself thought the phrase was inventive, too. Then again, he also seemed amused by the bloody deaths of his ex-wife and her friend. Simpson apparently told a fellow attendee at that wedding he went to the night after the alleged robbery, "What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas" or some such construction. (Various papers have reported it differently.) Maybe if he beats the armed robbery rap, we can bring him up on charges for this!

Finally, not to be completely negative, I'm going to cop to just one use that was even vaguely inventive. AOL's Vegas Pop Blog's "Dry Heat" dude, who does his job anonymously for no apparent reason, nonetheless did invoke WHHSH -- although he went with WHiV, which is not the slogan -- in directing Simpson to the LVCVA's Vegas Alibi Kit. Cute. Bearable, even.