What took them so long?

Image via Wikipedia

Two columnists for The Record of Woodland Park surprised me today with radical departures from their usual drivel.

On the front of Local, Road Warrior John Cichowski finally came to the defense of NJ Transit bus riders and slammed Governor Christie for forcing a planned 25% fare hike. And on the front of Better Living, Restaurant Reviewer-on-leave Elisa Ung finally found a meat purveyor who lives up to the word she's been throwing around indiscriminately for a couple of years -- quality.

I have no doubt Cichowski will return to writing about every idiotic driver who e-mails him, every pothole, every street and every lamp post on every highway, but maybe, maybe, he'll actually get off his duff and ride one of the contraptions that pass for a local bus. That would really put the fare hike and service cuts into perspective.

And does one profile of a butcher by Ung make up for all the times she declared conventionally raised beef served in a restaurant or sold elsewhere as "quality" or "chef's quality" or some other promotional nonsense that distorted reality and insulted the intelligence of her readers? No. But maybe it's a start.

Of course, through all these months and years that Cichowski and Ung knew not of what they wrote, where were their editors? Where was head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and where was Food Editor Bill Pitcher, reading this tripe and sending it along the production chain with nary a question, nary a concern, secure in their own ignorance?