Editors play politics with Christie's reelection bid

To Staff Writer John Cichowski, a big problem for commuters is keeping their tires inflated properly, as the airhead explains in his Road Warrior column on the Local front today. Traffic inching toward the Lincoln Tunnel, above, isn't his concern.

By focusing on the politics of Governor Christie's bid for a second term, The Record's editors continue to hide the GOP bully's many policy failures.

In a negative story about Democratic challenger Barbara Buono, Christie is called "her popular opponent" (A-3).

Popular with whom? The millionaires and special interests he serves exclusively?

That story from The Star-Ledger commits the same sin as others by The Record's own staff: 

It quotes Brigid Harrison, a political science professor at Montclair State University, without mentioning she is one of the Woodland Park daily's Opinion columnists.

Harrison's column today is all about the politics of President Obama's joint appearance with Christie on the Jersey shore (O-2).

Boring politics

Politics are dividing the nation. They put readers to sleep, whether in news stories or columns by Harrison and Staff Writer Charles Stile.

Yet, Editor Marty Gottlieb and other media leaders are news junkies who are hooked on politics for all of the supposed controversy they offer.

Is anyone going to vote for Christie in November, because he appeared with Obama or Britain's Prince Harry at the shore, as the story on A-3 suggests?

Another thin paper

Readers have to scour today's Page 1 story on state police diversity for any numbers, such as the size of the force or the current training class (A-1).

The size of the force and how that compares with past decades isn't given, but readers are left to do the  arithmetic on A-6 to get the size of the training class (6% of 20,000).

Crippled thinking

A concerned reader didn't think much of Road Warrior John Cichowski's idea for colored-coded handicap parking stickers:

"The Road Warrior continues on his merry mistaken ways in his May 29 column. He promulgates an ineffective, impractical idea about disability parking tags and irresponsible, derisive, misleading, and negligently incomplete responses to readers' comments.

"He should offer a retraction to his endorsement of a faulty, poorly thought-out idea for 3 color codes for disability parking tags. It would NOT cover many circumstances and would create too much confusion, contradictions, & complexities for law enforcement, bureaucratic oversight, and those eligible for disability parking.

"He should focus on taking responsibility to correct the hundreds of mistakes and faulty advice or conclusions in his columns over the past 9 months and prevent future problems.

"Instead, he tried to fault me and mislead readers by taking one of my comments completely out of context on a previous column regarding potholes.  

"It shows how small minded and negligent the Road Warrior is for his readers and The Record. 

"I presented facts/comments about a business owner's ineffective response and culpability for his own problems and accidents based on potholes near his Carlstadt business."  
  

To read the full e-mail, click on the following link:

Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers

Where's the aspirin?

My Medicare coverage was set years ago, so I pity readers who have to plow through Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais' confusing columns on the health-insurance program for seniors (B-1). 

Don't look for any food coverage in today's Better Living section, which had to make room for a T&A cover story on that TV show, "The Real Bimbos of New Jersey" (BL-1).

The Real Estate cover story -- "Will house hunters pay for green?" -- appears to be based on a commission-hungry real estate agent's claim that a Ramsey "home's energy efficiency should add $100,000 to its value" (R-1).

That's preposterous.