Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman and His Ruthless Censorship of the Word "Suck"

Attention Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman: censorship "sucks."

​The word "suck" is apparently too offensive for Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman to utter -- at least in the middle of a city council meeting.

At last night's meeting of the Tempe City Council, Hallman presented two Phoenix New Times "Best of Phoenix" awards to the city-owned Ken McDonald Golf Course. Hallman read the blurbs written by New Times staffers attached to the awards, and in one, he replaced the word "suck" with the apparently less-offensive "stink."

Hallman probably didn't anticipate a New Times writer to be in the crowd to call him on his malicious censorship of our work, but we just happened to be there for other reasons and noticed the switcheroo.

The portion of our original blurb for the award given to the course for having the "Best Winter Golf Course" reads: "We all love to play the pro courses, and in the Valley there's no shortage of great greens. The problem, however, is that if you want to play them in the winter, you may have to find a second job. That's why summer golfers at Troon North or TPC Scottsdale often find their way to the public courses once the rates go up. Public courses -- for the most part -- suck."

In Hallman's reading, he replaced that concluding "suck" with the much nerdier "stink" -- a word that really sucks. 

We were crushed. We spent about five minutes a lot of time writing that blurb, and the word "suck" really tied the paragraph together -- until Hallman butchered it.

In other words, censorship under the Hallman regime completely "sucks."