Pascrell error is a national embarrassment

NFL Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Unfortunately, the building looks like it would be good for squeezing juice from oranges. (Wikipedia)

The boneheaded error on Page 1 of The Record on Sunday  -- "NFL HALL OF FAME TAPS PASCRELL," a reference to the Democratic congressman from Paterson -- has proven to be a national embarrassment to the paper and The New York Times veteran who is presiding over its meltdown.

Editor Marty Gottlieb was probably home and in bed on Saturday night, when the paper was printed in a Rockaway Township press building that shows no signs of intelligent life.

But the blame falls squarely on six-figure Production Editor Liz Houlton, whose crew failed to catch this booboo -- the latest in an endless stream of inaccurate headlines, photo captions and Road Warrior columns; typos and errors in graphics and news stories.

The Hall of Fame error is being lampooned by RollCall.com., PolitickerNJ.com, I4U.com and SpeedTV.com, among others, and it has earned numerous "Likes" on Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr.'s own Facebook page.

Of course, the Woodland Park daily meant to say the pro football Hall of Fame had tapped Bill Parcells, the former Giants coach.

Can he climb stairs?

Another national embarassment is our morbidly obese governor and how little he has done to fight the obesity epidemic in New Jersey (A-4).

I was amazed at the straight faces of David Letterman on Monday and media members in Sea Girt on Wednesday when Governor Christie asserted that he is "the healthiest fat guy you've ever seen" or "the healthiest 50-year-old you've ever seen."

The GOP bully launched a personal attack on former White House physician Connie Mariano, who expressed concern he might "die in office."


Christie has refused to make his health records public, he's only gained weight since he took office in January 2010 and he has only "a plan" to get in shape.

Too busy eating

Most of the questions about his weight have come from the national media as The Record and other New Jersey media basically sit on the story.

At the Woodland Park daily, two obese editors, Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand, have consistently squelched any project on a leading cause of death in the United States.

Our fat savior

The story on A-4 today reports Christie was "trotting around the state, from the Shore to Hoboken during 18-hour days, barking orders, hugging residents and guiding New Jersey" through Superstorm Sandy.

I get it: He is selling himself as an obese Santa Claus who will bestow millions in federal money on state residents, ensuring his election to a second term.

But this kind of fuzzy writing is dangerous and minimizes Christie's health problems. He can barely walk or fit into most conventional chairs.

Derailing readers

I found the front-page story on rising rail fares impossible to follow, and wonder why the A-1 graphic didn't label all the stops.

I also suggest that commuter Christine Lawrence, who will be paying about $1 more a day, ask a therapist why she "feels sad" when fares go up (A-8).

Why is this story on Page 1? What doesn't go up in price? 

Burying the dead
    
In Sykes' Local news section today, a non-fatal auto accident (L-3) gets better play than the obituary of world champion bridge master Ira Rubin of Paramus (L-6).

On the cover of Wednesday's Better Living section, clueless Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill and Staff Writer Elisa Ung promoted a Hawthorne woman's artery clogging recipe, which might have come close to killing her husband (BL-1).

Chicken Kiev -- "chicken stuffed with butter and herbs and deep-fried" -- apparently is linked to Arthur Deutsch's "recent heart problems" (BL-2).

I can't understand why Deutsch, 72, is smiling in the cover photo with his wife, Eileen, or holding her specialty, a heart attack on a plate.

Another road wreck

A concerned reader's repeated e-mails to management may have prompted Road Warrior John Cichowski to finally write an accurate column, but the reader found other problems:

"The Road Warrior provided easy, sometimes clueless or senseless answers to people's questions about getting special license plates for members of community organizations, problems with getting a drivers license at the MVC, and why both drivers frequently leavethe scene of many accidents at a Hackensack intersection. 

"He left unanswered issues that would have better helped people in his Feb. 6 column.

"How do the Road Warrior and Record management continue to allow questions to be published that don't make any sense based on presented information?

"How does the Record management allow Road Warrior answers that are useless, clueless or senseless without any supporting facts, or lead to even more questions?"

See the full e-mail on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers:

Answers raise more questions