Christie-lovers insult readers' intelligence

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Why is Governor Christie smiling? (Photo is of Christie as U.S. attorney).

Two columnists for The Record of Woodland Park take aim today at all the turkeys out there -- just two pages apart -- but sadly, they're among the many staffers who labor under the illusion they are practicing great journalism.


You have to struggle through Mike Kelly's annual Thanksgiving column on L-3 before he thanks his wife and daughters, "who endure ... long-winded stories about the people and places I visit." But it's readers he should be apologizing to for all the dreadful writing and reporting he's unleashed in the past year.


Hot as lard


Can you believe he wrote this? "Behold [Governor] Christie, the suddenly hot and hip Republican."


Hip, I can see. Christie has two massive ones. Hot? He's as hot as several hundred pounds of lard.


Both Kelly and Columnist Charles Stile (Local front) are part of the Record team solidly behind the governor's burn-and-slash campaign -- an unprecedented assault on programs and policies that serve the middle and working classes.


At the same time, the governor is paying back all his wealthy supporters by refusing to tax millionaires during the state's continuing financial crisis or even raise gasoline taxes on their gas-guzzling limos and luxury SUVs to rescue the Transportation Trust Fund, which repairs roads and helps mass transit.


Fat jokes


Eye on The Record is angry at the political turn of events in New Jersey -- and how the paper I  loved for decades often ignores the damage Christie has done. 


But I am as powerless as other readers, and all I'm left with are cheap fat jokes at the expense of the governor and some of The Record's elephantine editors, including Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand.


On Page 1, the Christie-loving paper reports the governor has cut state aid to Paterson, one of the state's poorest cities, and on the Opinion page (A-21), Ray Castro says the number of food stamp participants in the state has soared by 60 percent, to 685,000, since the recession began.


Yet the "Giving Thanks" editorial on A-20 doesn't even mention how Christie has driven a wedge between the rich and the middle class in New Jersey.


Let's hope readers don't choke on today's paper from Editor Francis Scandale and the Borgs.