What Happens in the Blogosphere Stays in the Blogosphere (Yeah, Right)

I’m sure by now, if you live in America and come within one linear mile of a television set now and then, you have seen the commercials hawking Las Vegas as a place where you can do things you normally wouldn’t do, with the knowledge that your dirty deeds (or at least your embarrassing ones) won’t become gossip fodder back home. You’ve no doubt heard the slogan that sums up the philosophy:

WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS
STAYS IN VEGAS

As it usually happens with catchy slogans, this one has caught on and is being copied and modified all over. The other day, I even saw a student on the campus of America’s largest Baptist university with a T-shirt that read

WHAT HAPPENS AT BAYLOR
STAYS AT BAYLOR

This got me to thinking (which is always a dangerous turn of events). What if this slogan concept had been available much earlier in world history? What kind of T-shirts would have been in evidence?

I think all the way back to the 1500s on the North Carolina coast, the site of England’s first North American colony. No doubt Virginia Dare and her fellow “lost” colonists were wearing clothing that said

WHAT HAPPENS ON ROANOKE ISLAND
STAYS ON ROANOKE ISLAND

In the same way, Amelia Earhart’s support team should have worried when they saw her step into her plane after refueling in Lae, bound for Howland Island, wearing a T-shirt that said

WHAT HAPPENS IN OPEN WATER
STAYS IN OPEN WATER

These types of shirts likely would have shown up at other points in history. Imagine the guards watching Tsar Nicholas II and his family in that cellar in 1918, wearing T-shirts with hammers and sickles that proclaimed

WHAT HAPPENS IN EKATERINBURG
STAYS IN EKATERINBURG

And what good Nazi anxious to impress Hitler and Himmler would have been caught dead in 1944 without a brown T-shirt that read

WHAT HAPPENS IN AUSCHWITZ
STAYS IN AUSCHWITZ

I think other criminals would have been attracted to the slogan concept as well. Too bad Scotland Yard didn't stop and question the surgeon’s assistant wearing the bloody smock that read

WHAT HAPPENS IN WHITECHAPEL
STAYS IN WHITECHAPEL

And people should have been a bit suspicious about Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski when he came into town for supplies wearing sunglasses and a smelly, torn sweatshirt that read

WHAT HAPPENS IN LONELY, REMOTE SHACKS IN THE WILDS OF MONTANA
STAYS IN LONELY, REMOTE SHACKS IN THE WILDS OF MONTANA

Politics would be a natural for these as well. In fact, I’ve learned that Deep Throat didn’t decide to reveal his identity because he wanted to. He was forced to, being outed by neighbors who saw him mowing the lawn in shirts that said

WHAT HAPPENED IN EMPTY WASHINGTON D.C. PARKING GARAGES AT NIGHT DURING THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION
WILL STAY IN EMPTY WASHINGTON D.C. PARKING GARAGES AT NIGHT DURING THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION
(AT LEAST UNTIL I’M DEAD)

Speaking of Nixon, the T-shirts he and Bill Clinton had made didn’t work like they hoped:

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE OVAL OFFICE
STAYS IN THE OVAL OFFICE

Those guys should have learned from President Harding’s cabinet members back in the 1920s during the Teapot Dome Scandal, when they wore little pins on their starched white dress shirts that said

WHAT HAPPENS IN SMOKE-FILLED ROOMS
STAYS IN SMOKE-FILLED ROOMS

I see this slogan working on TV shows as well. Of course, there needs to be a bit of sex or other salaciousness to make it work right. For example, Aunt Bee wouldn’t have drawn in any more viewers wearing an apron that said

WHAT HAPPENS IN MAYBERRY
STAYS IN MAYBERRY

Surely one of the saddest, most frustrating T-shirts on television was the one worn by Gilligan and his friends that said

WHAT HAPPENS ON THE ISLAND
STAYS ON THE ISLAND

And we should have kept a better eye on Pee Wee Herman when he began wearing shirts that said

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE PLAYHOUSE
STAYS IN THE PLAYHOUSE

Finally, will we see this T-shirt on the Sopranos anytime soon?

WHAT HAPPENS IN NEW JERSEY
STAYS, WEIGHTED DOWN BY CONCRETE AND DUMPED IN A CANAL SOMEWHERE, IN NEW JERSEY