So that empty-desk ad Tom Menino ran during the Boston mayoral preliminary election is looking a little different now, isn’t it?

Suddenly Menino’s empty desk is a stand-in for his consigliere Michael Kineavy’s empty desktop – both the compulsively Windexed one, and the one on his computer, which led to Secretary of the Commonwealth Willam Galvin’s rummaging through City Hall hard drives like some bottlenik on recycling night.

Which in turn led to Menino’s empty rhetoric, exemplified in this reaction (via Thursday’s Boston Globe) to Attorney General Martha Coakley’s belated jumping in the pool to investigate the email rumpus.

“I think it’s great that she’s getting involved,’’ the mayor said after [a West Roxbury schoolyard] ribbon-cutting. “We can finally come to finality on this issue. She will look at what we’ve given them and bring finality to the issue, finally.’’

Clearly, Menino would like that to be the final word on this e-millstone.