Who edits editors?
   The text at left is me, in a letter to the editor of the Free Press, replying to an editorial-page column by reporter Joe Belanger in which he blasted an earlier article by freelancer Herman Goodden. Herman lives just across the river from Harris Park and the noise from festivals there, like Rock the Park, nearly rock him out of bed. (They rocked me too, in a condo overlooking the park; soon after its bandshell went in, I got out.) Herman also has to suffer the sonic assaults from Victoria Park.
   Joe seemed mostly angry at Herman's distaste for the kind of music being blared, but he was also incensed that downtown residents should see their need to sleep as a priority over festival revellers' desire to keep rockin' far into the night. There were only a few of these spoil-sports, Joe said, and it wasn't very often. The implication was that they ought to be glad to go sleepless a few weeks every year for the sake of the tourist trade.
   I fired off a tiny squib citing what I felt to be Joe's errors. It was only six sentences, but some editor felt the need to shorten it (the line greyed out here; presumably it was none of my business where Joe lives) and in doing so managed to reassign Joe's quoted words to quite another Joe: our mayor, whose dippy proposal for louder and longer noise-fests started all this in the first place. Way to go, guys.