From the report on East Haven, CT, Mayor Joseph Maturo's self-inflicted troubles in today's New York Times:

Asked what he was doing for the Latino community in light of the indictments and accusation of harassment, illegal searches and seizures and assaults on Latinos, Mr. Maturo responded on camera: I might have tacos when I go home. Im not sure yet.Facing a blizzard of criticism Gov. Dannel P. Malloy called his comments repugnant and said they represented either a horrible lack of judgment or worse Mr. Maturo apologized, at first grudgingly and then with a long statement offering his sincerest apologies for what he called an insensitive and off-collar comment.

It's not the most important part of this story, not by a long shot, but what I want to look at for the moment is the mayor's coinage in that final quote. "Off-collar"! I'm always fascinated by the weird things people do with language and the ways the news media respond. In this case I could not find an original of the statement of apology, but I assume it was a written document and is rendered faithfully by the NYT, which does not remark on the novelty. The New Haven Register likewise let it stand; CNN silently changed it to "off-color"; the Hartford Courant added "[sic]." I think the Courant's approach is the right one, and CNN made the wrong call. It's not clear that "off-color" is what Maturo meant, or at least not all of what Maturo meant. I'm guessing "off-the-cuff" was the expression he really had in mind, but that, too, may not capture all of what he was trying to say. His remark was off-the-cuff, but that's not what he needs to apologize for. And while it wasn't "off-color," it was offensive. So to say it was both spur-of-the-moment and wrong, Maturo comes up with a different part of the shirt -- off-collar. The "refudiate" of 2012?