Times restaurant reviewer Pete Wells has an unfortunate habit of allowing his political views to seep into his restaurant reviews, and today's review offers another example:
As Hearth approaches its 10th anniversary next month, you can tell the kitchen is paying attention most of the time. Not always: one night the gnocchi would have had no flavor if not for the melted butter and grated cheese on top. Dry, stringy salt cod mantecato needed more richness, and it was stuffed in a bitter roasted yellow Hungarian pepper that needed more sweetness. Siobhan DeCarlo's desserts were variable, too. I had a nearly perfect cardamom panna cotta with a coffee-caramel sauce one night, and a dry, drab pear spice cake with almost no hint of spices on another. I noticed the lapses because they were so out of character, like John Boehner vaping on an e-cigarette.
What does Pete Wells know about John Boehner's character? Has the Times restaurant reviewer been slinking away from the table to cover Capitol Hill? Why make fun of Mr. Boehner's cigarette habit rather than, say, President Obama's, if not to convey the reviewer's sense (doubtless shared by a large portion, but not all, of the Times readership) that Mr. Boehner is somehow uncouth, or evil, or irredeemably out-of-date.
Some editor should have just ended the sentence at the comma, and deleted the cheap political pot shot. It has no place there. If readers want Maureen Dowd or Gail Collins, they can read the op-ed page. Instead that tone is infecting the rest of the paper.