They Edit Dave Barry Too

You might have read Dave Barry's letter to S.Fla. fans today. It's the first new piece the world's favorite humorist has had in the Miami Herald in a long while.

And apparently it got some tweaking from Herald editors. The edition that appears on this morning's front page and on-line includes this line about Heat mania:

"This is more the hasty groping backseat passion of Prom Night."

But, as the inestimable Sam Eifling pointed out to the Pulp, the original edition of Barry's piece posted on the Herald web site yesterday was just a little different:

"This is more the hasty squirting backseat passion of Prom Night."

Once again, a master being sanitized by his lessers, who clearly believed that Herald readers couldn't handle the startling -- and potentially embarrassing -- imagery of youthful lust. Clearly, this was a case of premature posting. And Eifling knew he'd seen it that way -- and had a second-hand e-mailed version to prove it -- but for a moment it looked like all vestiges of the original work had been scrubbed from public view by the newspaper's overlords. Not so. The cached line remains entombed here on Google forever, historic verification of Barry's intent.

And, in the name of Jack Kerouac, that's a good thing.