A reader sent in a good point about the transcript of the classically juvenile exchange between City Attorney Mike Aguirre and U-T Editorial Page Editor Bob Kittle I posted the other day (and which appears to be quite popular).
Your transcript of the Editor’s Roundtable could mislead people as to what Aguirre and Kittle were talking about in the Peters email. I propose a simple fix:
What Aguirre actually said was “F dash dash dash You” — which is also what Kittle literally typed in the email.
Your use of dashes might lead people to believe Aguirre said (and Kittle typed) the offensive word, and you cleaned it up, as that is the most common understanding of the use of dashes.
Great point. I went back to listen to the mp3 and confirmed that Aguirre actually said “F blank blank blank.” The change has been made, and as long as I was listening to it, I cleaned up a couple of punctuation and other errant words. There was the part when Aguirre accused Kittle of coming up with his editorial out of “cold cloth.” The correct term, as another reader reminded me, should have been “whole cloth,” and listening again to the recording, that’s indeed what Aguirre said.
Taking a transcript is pretty difficult and I was remiss not to thank Molly Bettiga for doing it. It’s not like she didn’t have other things to do. Molly is our fearless assistant (who writes the occasional review of musicals and such).