Are the obese letting paper, state go to hell?

Rush hour. Drivers won't see any relief until the rail and bus systems are expanded, but that is far from a priority with Governor Christie or The Record's editors.

Is there any connection between being obese and the quality of the job you do -- whether running the local-news operation at The Record or the state of New Jersey?

Those questions are raised by today's confessional from feature writer Erin Connor -- about her self-loathing and how she set out to lose 60 pounds and 12 dress sizes (Better Living cover).

Unlike Connors, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes nor Governor Christie haven't come to grips with huge waistlines and unhealthy eating habits.

Does their more-for-me, less-for-you approach to life translate into doing a poor job of providing local news to readers of The Record, as well as economic prosperity for all residents of the state, not just the wealthy?

Ignoring obesity

As obesity worsened in New Jersey in recent years, Sykes virtually ignored the epidemic or the opportunity to launch a newspaper series with herself and other fat, unhealthy editors as examples.

What was Christie's response to childhood obesity in New Jersey?

He continued to gorge on pizza, beer and who knows what else; refused to disclose his weight or health problems, and cut the state's $3 million contribution to the school-breakfast program for poor kids. 

Two dysfunctional slobs, and look at what has happened: declining municipal-news coverage and a state economy that gets worse every day (A-1 and A-3 on Saturday).

Sykes and Christie have more than that in common. 

The editor's friends are among the least-productive members of the news staff, and Christie's friends and former associates are eating high on the hog with money from their cushy, high-paying jobs in his administration or at the Port Authority. 

What a sport 

After too many front pages with a sports focus, Editor Marty Gottlieb finally turns his attention to other matters, but the two major stories on A-1 today are poorly reported.

Nowhere in the lead piece on the emergence of Korean-Americans as a political force does The Record deal with whether North Jersey's long-established Japanese-American community has been eclipsed.

There is no love lost between Koreans and their former occupiers, but Sykes and her minions have totally ignored tensions in Fort Lee and other communities.

In the main element -- a heart-breaking account of the destruction of the Passaic River -- the editors shy away from placing the blame squarely on greedy corporations and lawyers, who are doing their best to blunt efforts to clean up the once majestic river.

Is this what Republicans, who take millions from lobbyists, mean by less regulation of business?

More love for Christie 

On Sykes' Local front today, a second Road Warrior column praises Christie for cutting out free rides for NJ Transit workers as the governor continues to ignore the state's mass-transit woes.

Today's column piles on a Page 1 story and an editorial that praised the governor, who only rides in a huge SUV or state helicopter.

Of course, Christie should be condemned for putting the kibosh on the biggest expansion of the NJ Transit rail system in decades and aggravating North Jersey's traffic woes, but Sykes and her puppet, Staff Writer John Cichowski, don't have the balls for that. 

Treating locals as yokels 

Don't look for Hackensack, Teaneck or Englewood news in Local today or anything from several other large North Jersey communities. 

'A new her' 

The Better Living cover story by Connor -- "A new her" -- informs readers the section is launching an occasional series, "Your loss, your gain," on losing weight.

Conspicuous by its absence today is The Corner Table column by the dessert-obsessed Elisa Ung, the paper's full-time restaurant reviewer.

A new Geist 

Two days after a glowing Page 1 profile of Willie Geist of Ridgewood -- the new co-host at NBC's "Today" --  Ung  sent out a Second Helpings blog post revealing the idealized North Jersey family man has a filthy mouth.

Geist spoke at a celebrity chef-packed roast of chef and world traveler Anthony Bourdain, as reported by New York Grub Street.com:

"Mario Batali is a brilliant chef, we can’t deny that. In fact, Babbo is so hard to get into that Mario has to blow himself to get a table. Sometimes, he even does it on slow nights, just for fun." — Willie Geist

"The great Eric Ripert is here tonight. Eric sure knows how to cook meat, but the only thing he knows how to butcher is the English language. Eric, you’ve been here for 25 years, buy a fucking Rosetta Stone."  — Willie Geist

"Anthony Bourdain, of course, has huge talent, and he’s the first to tell you that. If his ego got any bigger, it would look like Paula Deen’s thighs." — Willie Geist

I guess Geist hasn't seen Sykes' thighs.

In the e-mail to readers who subscribe to Second Helpings, Ung called Bourdain "our favorite Leonia native" and Geist "our favorite Ridgewood native." 

So what are the thousand of other accomplished Leonia and Ridgewood natives, chopped liver? What a moron.

Second look

On top of that, Ung's Friday review of a Korean place said Gilmok in Closter "would be a tough restaurant for anyone without some knowledge of the cuisine." 

Let's see, Gilmok serves beef, seafood, vegetables, noodles and tofu in both spicy and non-spicy dishes, and customers use metal chopsticks or forks and spoons to lift the food into their mouths.

In fact, all of the vegetables and tofu make Korean food one of the healthiest around, though a sugar-addict like Ung doesn't appreciate or bother to promote that. 

A fun time for all

Why couldn't Ung explain that Korean barbecue is a fun meal, if you don't care about consuming low-quality beef, and that shrimp can be substituted for non-meat eaters?

Korean beef or shrimp are grilled on the table and wrapped in red-leaf lettuce, along with red-pepper paste, garlic, hot pepper, rice, kimchi and anything else you can fit into the package.

Then, you amaze your friends or family with the size of  the lettuce-wrapped package you can fit into your mouth, chew and swallow, washed down by beer or soju.

What's so "tough" about that?

Traveling music

For the second week in a row, Travel Editor Jill Schensul has a consumer-oriented piece, this one for readers who use travel companies (T-1). Bravo.

Off his rocker

At the bottom of the Opinion front, readers are told Columnist Mike Kelly is off. 

What's new? He's been "way off" for years.

More momentous local news

Is a successful graduate scheduled to speak at the Dwight Morrow High School commencement? A story in The Record today only addresses the private high school in Englewood.

The Record's editors continue to bombard voters in Hackensack, Teaneck, Fair Lawn and other towns with daily coverage of a Democratic primary election in which those residents have no say.

Editor Marty Gottlieb leads Page 1 today with another rehash of the positions held by the opponents, Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. of Paterson and Steve Rothman, formerly of Fair Lawn.

The Record has endorsed Pascrell. 

Rothman, who moved to Englewood, is the political pussy who ran from a fight with rabidly conservative Rep. Scott Garret after redistricting threw Fair Lawn into the 5th District (A-1).

More politics

And if the A-1 story isn't enough, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy minion, Dan Sforza, lead the Local news section today with a story describing the candidates' "frantic pace" before Tuesday's primary.  

Substituting politics for local news is nothing new at The Record, where the editors ignore how those stories and columns turn off the vast majority of readers.

Gottlieb, Sykes and Sforza -- and their counterparts at other media outlets -- believe that if they portray every election as a horse race, whether true or not, readers will be riveted.

Treating locals like yokels

But that's exactly the opposite of what happens, and local news coverage suffers as a result.

Look at the other local news on L-1 today:

The page is dominated by a photo-text package on a "remarkable rescue" of a Hackensack man who fell asleep and drove his car into water that didn't even cover the roof of his clunker.

Too lazy to leave the office, Road Warrior John Cichowski manufactures another entire column from a single reader's e-mail and a few telephone interviews.

But Cichowski can't find a town in Bergen, Passaic or Morris counties that charges a "municipal response fee" -- the issue he is so incensed about.

Private school rules

In Englewood news, an L-1 story describes a graduate of the private Dwight-Englewood School who "had role in bid Laden search," according to the headline.

Publisher Stephen A. Borg also attended Dwight-Englewood.

This story drives home the message that no graduate of Dwight Morrow High School, the troubled public school in Englewood, ever hit the big time or at least that Sykes and Sforza didn't bother to find out if a successful graduate will be speaking at this year's commencement.

In other momentous Hackensack news, a section of Anderson Street collapsed, but no one was injured. Although there is room to say where this occurred on Anderson Street, the photo caption is missing that information (L-6).

Dining-out dunce

On the Better Living front today, Staff Writer Elisa Ung claims the biggest lesson she has learned from reviewing more than 200 local restaurants for The Record is to "go on a Friday or a Saturday."

That's it?

What about the elephant in the dining room -- the pathetically low wages paid to servers and a tipping system that pits customers against the wait staff, not restaurant owners, who cut corners on food quality and use untrained staff?

I have never seen a word about that in any of Ung's Sunday columns, The Corner Table, including this one (BL-1).

Fish tales

She passes along incorrect information from Anthony Bourdain that fish markets are "closed on Saturday and Sunday," and urges readers not to eat sushi early in the week.

But didn't she get bad sushi on her weekday and weekend visits to Bushido Bar and Restaurant in Cliffside Park, the place she panned in her review just two days ago?

"This is based on nothing scientific," she says of the advice against eating raw fish early in the week, "only the many times off the job when I have been very sorry that I tried to eat raw fish on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday -- generally when other diners aren't around and that fish has been, ur, ripening."

Ripening? Like fruit on a counter? 

I guess Ung missed articles in The New York Times and elsewhere reporting that all raw fish served in the United States must be frozen first to kill parasites.

"Sushi Fresh from the Deep -- the Deep Freeze" is the headline on a piece in The Times, which published it in 2004.

And I guess she hasn't noticed seafood is kept in refrigerated cases at sushi bars. 

So, any "ripening" occurs only if the restaurant mishandles the fish, doesn't store it properly or serves low-quality stuff.

Flashback

I got a kick out of the words "moron," "boring" and "fat crooked ass" in the first paragraph of today's Better Living cover story (BL-1).

They were among the words used by the newsroom staff to describe Sykes, Sforza and many other editors when I was at The Record.

Hackensack news blackout returns

The Record's restaurant reviewer complains the cured salami she found in a dish of grilled mushrooms at a new place in Ridgefield Park "could have been more obvious."

Long-suffering Hackensack residents can be forgiven for thinking a Navy SEALs team that landed on Friday was intended to take out The Record's apathetic assignment desk.

City readers, who were hit by more than six weeks of intense coverage of Zisaville, will now have to endure police-blotter and gee-whiz items until next week's court hearing for suspended Police Chief Ken Zisa, a convicted felon.

Mountain fortress

In their Woodland Park redoubt, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes; her deputy, Dan Sforza; and their clueless minions think so little of the newspaper's former home, the SEALs' visit to Paramus appeared on the Local front (L-1), while a photo of the helicopter at Hackensack High School was relegated to L-6.

Stories about municipal finances in Bogota and Cresskill appear in Local today, but Hackensack readers remain in the dark about the city's budget and tax rate.

There is so little town news Sykes and Sforza needed a big photo of a minor Ridgewood accident with "unknown injuries" and unidentified "parties" to fill out L-3.

Roof collapse

The big Hackensack news today -- besides the appearance of the SEALS -- is the partial collapse of a vacant building's roof (L-2).

North Jersey readers get a good pucking from Editor Marty Gottlieb, who thinks a sports columnist's drivel about hockey is Page 1 news.

The major front-page stories today are trend pieces about the homeless using hospital emergency rooms for shelter and food, and proposed pension-like payments to volunteer firefighters and rescue workers.

Go with the pros

Why hasn't the paper ever reported that many residents of Hackensack and other communities feel secure in knowing their  firefighters and rescue workers are professionals?

Thank God I don't have to live in a town where my life is entrusted to the care of well-intentioned volunteers -- one of the worst features of North Jersey's home-rule governments, despite high property taxes. 


Jersey swamp

An elaborate Jersey joke appears today in Better Living, where the cover story reports the opening of the state's  "own version of Jurassic Park" (BL-1).

One 90-foot dinosaur is visible from the Empire State Building, reinforcing New Yorkers' impression the Garden State is nothing more than a swamp.

Bad for your health

On Friday, Better Living carried a restaurant review that damned with faint praise an ambitious new place in Ridgefield Park.

Even though she gave 2 and a half stars to MK Valencia (Good to Excellent), Staff Writer Elisa Ung apparently was so underwhelmed by what she ate, only one food photo appears with the review -- and that's an artery clogging dessert (BL-18-19).

Given all the obesity, diabetes and heart disease among her readers, what's the point of Ung wasting money on four desserts? 

Vegetarian alert

And she wasn't even able to recommend a seafood dish, preferring to promote mystery steak and pork chops (cover photo).

When she discovered soppressata "buried" under a dish of grilled mushrooms, she complained the cured dry salami "could have been more obvious."

Like how? Shoved whole down her gaping maw?

Pussy chef

Also in Friday's Better Living tab, an item about Chef Anthony Bourdain corrects a post by Food Editor Susan Sherrill on the Second Helpings blog, which erred in reporting he grew up in Englewood.

Bourdain grew up in Leonia, but the pussy went to private school in Englewood (BL-22), as did Publisher Stephen A. Borg.