Letter: Slogan touting Las Vegas has a familiar ring

Friday, July 8, 2005 | 4:53 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

July 9-10, 2005

I don't understand the big to-do about the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority transferring the rights to the marketing jingle, "What happens here, stays here" to R&R Partners, its advertising firm that came up with the idea. The rights were transferred in exchange for $1, but is this old saying really worth even that?

Although in different words, this saying was popular when I was a boy during World War II. It went like this: "What you see here, what you hear here, what you say here: When you leave here, let it stay here." Its purpose was to make everybody more conscious of the need for secrecy, so information wasn't inadvertently passed to the enemy.

The people who paid a dollar overpaid, and those who took the dollar didn't own the saying in the first place.

JOSEPH D. OLSON

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