So in public communications in a big cosmopolitan and diverse city like San Francisco, words with any potential dogwhistle implicatoins matter. It will be quite

So in public communications in a big cosmopolitan and diverse city like San Francisco, words with any potential dogwhistle implicatoins matter. It will be quite distracting to many who read this op-ed all the way through that the author, smart expert that he is, chose to invoke a metaphor about a ROPE with respect to a black man in leadership. I absolutely have zero reason to believe the author ever thought through those possible implications. But the particular choice of invoking a rope is an unforced error, and the metaphor wasn't particularly useful to the broader point he is making.