I never considered myself morally uptight, but I've got to wonder if I'm the only person who is slightly discomfited by Las Vegas' new ad slogan, "What Happens Here, Stays Here?" The point seems to be that you can do stuff you wouldn't even consider at home:
"'I think it pretty well captures the pervasive feeling people have about Las Vegas,' said Erika Brandvik, manager of public relations for the LVCVA. 'We wanted ads that say you can come to Las Vegas and be a different person than you are back home.'"
I'm just waiting for the first nut job to drift out there, kill a prostitute, then use that as a defense in court.
Now these same people who are telling us "What Happens Here, Stays Here" have their panties all in a bunch about "Hunting For Bambi" (unless, of course, it's all a hoax):
"'As soon as I found out about this, I called for an investigation," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said. "Las Vegas is a place where anything goes, but this crosses the line if this is real.'"
That statement is an oxymoron, yerhonner--either 'anything goes' or something crosses the line. It can't be both.
Maybe what he meant to say is "Anything goes as long as you dump your wallet into our bucket before you leave and don't do anything to tarnish our new family-friendly image."
Update 15 AUG 2003: Snopes thinks it's a hoax designed to sell... wait for it... videos of naked women being hunted by paintballers! (hat tip: W.V.O. Quine (which is either a pseudonym or a visit from Beyond)
Just as you point out the inconsistency in Mayor Goodman's thinking, I should point out your inconsistent thinking: How can you view the LVCVA's solgan as morally "discomfit"ing and at the same time accuse them of promoting "new family-friendly image"?
(Has it occured to you that they may be pushing an adult-centered tagline to GET AWAY from the family image [after all, kids don't gamble, pay for hotel rooms or eat gourmet food]?)
Vegas (the tourist destination) is a place for adults and adult behavior. "What happens here stays here" provides a permission structure for that kind of behavior (whether the visitor acts on it or not).
By the way, to read Goodman's "anything goes" statement so strictly for the purpose of your attack leads to strangeness like "I guess he must be implying that physical objects can defy gravity in Vegas when he says ANYTHING goes."...
Come on. Lighten up. It's Vegas.
Fair enough on the 'family-friendly' thing; I had missed where they had considered that a failure and were going back to more, ahem, adult-oriented tourism (additional story at http://www.gamblingmagazine.com/managearticle.asp?c=430&a=579).
However, that doesn't invalidate my main point: if 'anything goes,' why _not_ hunting naked women (participating freely and who get paid) with paintball guns? What, exactly, is illegal about that? Especially in Nevada, where you can drive not much further out in the boonies and have naked women do entirely different things to you?
Fair enough...Goodman's comment is a mistake of logic. However, I think the point is moot (see http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/bambi.asp)