[maxbond]

Well, this is a more literal interpretation of the metaphor than I intended, so allow me to clarify. I don't mean to police people's phrasing and the connection I was drawing was about unintended harm and not safety and danger. In my mind, adding your thoughts to a thread is completely different from editing someone else's comment. Telling someone they should've made a joke a certain way seems a bit much.

I tried reframing your question to, "how would you have made this joke, preserving the slight", but the joke isn't to my taste personally, which is only a problem if you ask me to rewrite it - I'm not expressing this as a criticism of the joke, I'm just the wrong person to ask, because when I try to imagine how I would've made the joke, the answer is I wouldn't because it isn't my sense of humor.

I don't really have a problem with the way events unfolded with joke being made & getting a footnote. That honestly seems fine to me, I don't think it requires tinkering.