Oh shit, readers mutter, Kelly is back

An example of a heart attack shows plaque buildup on vessel walls. (Wikipedia)

After an absence of many weeks, the unflattering photo of Staff Writer Mike Kelly and his column appear again in The Record.

Today, his shit-eating grin is on Page 1 with another in a long line of poorly written columns, this one a breathless account of "a mystery" left behind by Superstorm Sandy.

Kelly has been away while he recovered from a heart attack, but his near-death experience hasn't done much for his style.

Out of ideas

Here's another overwritten column that poses an endless series of questions that bother no one but Kelly, who long ago ran out of ideas.

A natural would to be to write about his heart surgery and to try and educate readers about coronary health, a subject newspapers and their food writers devote little room to. 

Hey, Editor Marty Gottlieb, what's the big deal about a firefighter rescuing an elderly woman from the "knee-high floodwaters in Little Ferry"?

Compared to all of the death and destruction on Oct. 29 and 30, this was a minor act, just another instance of a first-responder doing his job.

Everyone is a 'hero'

But Kelly can't resist hailing the firefighter as a hero, and here is an entire column guessing at the rescued woman's identity. 

The hack columnist even gets 9/11 into the column.

Kelly calls Sandy "a dramatic disaster."

Tell that to the survivors who lost loved ones. Tell that to shore residents whose homes were literally blown away. 

Is "dramatic" really the right word? 

Basically, Kelly spins an entire column out of The Record photographer failing to get the identities of a firefighter and an old woman, and minor events that are nearly two months old.

Chief word pusher 

Kelly didn't lose his ability to push around words.

He describes "universal pain and fear" on Oct. 30, the day flood waters rose in Little Ferry, Moonachie and other towns, and "the heartbreak that would mount in scores of communities in the weeks that followed."

"First responders," he writes, "left their own damaged homes to pick up the pieces of broken lives."

Where are the violins?

As usual, no editing

And his A-1 column goes on and on, taking up more than a third of A-8.

Where are the editors who allow this tripe into the paper? Who is Kelly's assignment editor, and why isn't anyone editing him? 

Is it head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza or one of their minions who spell-check this garbage and unleashed it on readers?    

New park entrance?  

In Local, readers get to see some of the terrific staff photos that ran in 2o12 (L-3), a welcome break from all the ambulance chasing that photographers did under orders from Sykes and Sforza.

One of the photos shows Overpeck County Park, reminding readers how the paper hasn't reported on the recent opening of a new entrance to the New Overpeck.

A long, two-lane road passes over two unusual wood-truss bridges, whose warm tones seem especially appropriate in a park setting.

Editors' gift to readers

Today's paper is a Christmas gift that will keep on repeating like a bad meal -- thanks to Gottlieb, Sykes, Sforza and Kelly.

Happy holidays!