Editors finally wake up to darkest days in American history

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is "Dracula in Aleppo" in this cartoon about the Syrian civil war from Arend van Dam. President-elect Donald J. Trump's praise for Putin has been widely reported by the news media, but rarely condemned.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We have women to thank for returning the focus to just how dangerous President-elect Donald J. Trump is to our democracy.

"Across North Jersey," The Record reports on Page 1 today, "woman are booking buses, reserving hotel rooms, planning car pools and rallying their mothers and daughters to descend on Washington" the day after the wacko racist is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

"There needs to be a really clear message sent to our president-elect and to Congress," says Jen Kistner, a photographer from Edgewater.

"This is not about a Republican being elected -- I've seen plenty of Republicans elected -- this is about a really dangerous person with dangerous ideas who is not qualified for the job" (1A and 8A).

Like the women who will March on Washington on Jan. 21, I'm not buying all the B.S. about Trump uniting the nation, especially in view of his White House and Cabinet picks.

And like those women, I see Trump's election as a vote against women, women's rights and Hillary Clinton, who got up to 2.5 million more votes than Trump and would have been the first woman elected president. 

'Madman of the Year'

Leave it to the sorry print journalists at Time magazine to name the president-elect as Person of the Year (1A and 6A).

"But they did so with a headline that read, 'President of the Divided States of America,'" says Op-Ed Columnist Charles M. Blow of The New York Times.

He continues, "In an interview with the 'Today' show, Trump huffed: 'When you say divided states of America, I didn't divide them.'

"Donald, they name is division. You and your campaign of toxicity and intolerance have not only divided this country but also ripped it to tatters....

"This is our challenge: To see clearly what this deceiver wants to obscure; to be resolute about that to which he wants us to be resigned; to understand that Time's man of the year is, by words and deeds, more of a madman of the year."

Forced busing

Today's front page shows how NJ Transit bus riders still are second-class citizens at Port Authority bus stations in Manhattan (1A).

Reopening of the George Washington Bridge Bus Station is being postponed again, and isn't expected to be completed until April, Staff Writer Paul Berger reports.

Bus commuters also are second-class citizens in The Record's newsroom, where Road Warrior columnist John Cichowski and other reporters ignored them until a couple of years ago, when the editor started receiving angry letters about massive delays at the midtown Manhattan bus station.