Boring columnists insult readers' intelligence

It's smooth driving after years of slow going over roughly patched pavement on Hackensack's Euclid Avenue, between Main Street and the railroad tracks.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

The Christie Apologist (Charles Stile). The Shit-Eating Grin (Mike Kelly). The Vagina Monologue (Tara Sullivan). The Addled Commuter (John Cichowski). The Momma's Boy (Bill Ervolino).

The Record's sorry lot of columnists are on full display in today's Sunday edition, with two of the morons on the front page.

How can Charles Stile call Governor Christie "the Jersey savior" and a "moderate" or compare him to Bill Clinton after the GOP bully used numerous vetoes to get his way, and broke his promise to lower local property taxes (A-1)?

Egypt, trollies

Why is Mike Kelly writing about a Jersey City jewelry store owner who can't retire to his native Egypt, and ignoring thousands of Jamaican-Americans in North Jersey whose island homeland has been in crisis for far longer (A-1)?

And the A-1 photo that accompanies Kelly's column is initially confusing. That's not the "Ahmed" he is writing about.

Why is the increasingly irrelevant Road Warrior waxing nostalgic over a form of mass transit that hasn't run for more than 80 years or is this just another way John Cichowski can avoid getting out of the office and doing some legwork (L-1)?

Selling out

You have to sympathize with Your Money's Worth Columnist Kevin DeMarrais, a lone voice for consumers in The Record, which continues to promote business and developers, including those with ties to the Borg family (B-1).

A couple of years ago, DeMarrais himself wrote a story for the Business section about a woman who sold a multimillion-dollar private jet to Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg and his pal, real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson.

Today, the Real Estate cover story eagerly quotes Edgewater builder Fred Daibes, without ever telling readers the multimillionaire who has skirted environmental regulations has agreed to buy the Borg family's 20 acres in Hackensack to build luxury apartments (R-1).

Farm to garden

It's only been a few weeks since Elisa Ung returned from her second maternity leave, but the restaurant reviewer has quickly abandoned the consumer focus of her Sunday column, The Corner Table (BL-1).

The chef and restaurant she writes about today is in Princeton. Hey, let's jump in the car and drive almost 60 miles for dinner.

Don't we all have 150 cookbooks and throw dinner parties?

You'd think so from the Better Living cover story by the new food editor, Esther Davidowitz (BL-1).

On BL-3, in another boring column about his family, Bill Ervolino writes about homeowners who grow huge zucchinis or what amounts to penis envy among gardeners.