Kelly's self-promotion insults readers

Mike Kelly, a defense official in Australia.

U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa.

 

Unlike thousands of us, Editor Marty Gottlieb hasn't been reading Mike Kelly long enough to know the columnist has worn out his welcome.

Even a decade ago, The Record's news copy editors were so sick of reading Kelly, they would choose almost anything else to edit. As deadline approached, supervisors had to order copy editors to process his drivel.

Today, Gottlieb put Kelly on Page 1, where he congratulates himself for the reappearance of an old writing desk that may have been used by Abraham Lincoln and was kept in Teaneck High School.

Who cares?

On Monday, Kelly's original column about the desk ran on and on in Local, examining the disappearance from every angle but the reporter's own asshole. 

Few people in Teaneck, where Kelly lives, and no one outside the township really care about the desk or what happened to it. This is such a waste of space. The follow-up could have been a brief in Local.

At least Gottlieb again gives front-page play to testimony in the trial of Dharun Ravi -- who is charged in the suicide of Tyler Clementi of Ridgewood -- after a couple of days on the Local front.

More road kill

Kelly has a lot in common with Road Warrior John Cichowski, another columnist who has run out of original ideas (L-1).

As with nearly every Road Warrior column, Cichowski relies on e-mails from readers, some of whom hide behind pseudonyms, such as "my lawyer-friend Grumpy John."

His "lawyer-friend" is a moron, claiming North Jersey's potholed roads are "almost Californian." 

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes prizes Cichowski and Kelly for their ability to fill space three times or more a week as her incompetent assignment flunkies scramble to find local news.

Ambulance chasers

There's more filler on L-3 today in a photo and story about a house fire in Upper Saddle River that injured no one, and in a photo on L-6 of an SUV that crashed into the Crow's Nest restaurant in Hackensack.

The photo is by Tariq Zehawi, a talented photographer who has been reduced to an ambulance chaser. 

It's not known whether the SUV driver was unhappy with the food at the Crow's Nest or was just an older person who confused "drive" and "reverse."

Who says Sykes doesn't cover Hackensack?

Hot diggity dogs

I stopped reading the lukewarm review of The Bouwerie in Old Tappan when Staff Writer Elisa Ung said the family of co-owner Dan DeMiglio owned "the late, beloved Callahan's hot dog stands" (Better Living centerfold).

"Beloved"? By whom? Customers who couldn't get enough harmful additives and preservatives, and fried foods?

Ung didn't care much for the food at The Bouwerie, but loved the desserts and the service. But, really, how many readers are going to shlep up to a golf course in Old Tappan to eat out?