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.

Improved local news? Fuggedaboutit!

Ex-President Bill Clinton in 2007. At the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night, Clinton rightly blamed the GOP for the mess we're in. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Readers searching for local news found a new section in The Record today -- edited by Alan Finder, a 28-year veteran of The New York Times.

Editor Marty Gottlieb -- himself a Times veteran -- has decided after little more than seven months in the job that what the Woodland Park daily needs most is a new weekly feature section with a puzzling name: Signature.

Gottlieb apparently is not about to tussle with head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes, a 300-pounder who has threatened to sit on him if he tries to improve the Local news section she runs so ineptly.

What does the new section's name mean to you? 

"Defining life in North Jersey" are the words appearing under Signature on the cover of the  section, called "Section SIG."

Two times zero

Gee. What North Jersey readers really need is not a couple of former Times editors trying to define residents' lives, but more -- much more -- reporting on what kind of job the officials of their towns are doing.

In North Jersey -- dominated by parochial home-rule governments -- readers want a lot more information about efforts to eliminate all the waste and duplication supported by some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

Instead, Gottlieb and Finder have given us a feel-good section that largely duplicate columns and news stories that have already appeared in the paper.

Kelly and Ervolino

On the cover, Columnist Mike Kelly shows how a journalist can turn the tragedy of 9/11 into a career -- with his umpteenth tear-jerking column on the destruction of the Twin Towers.

On SIG-2, Bill Ervolino -- the unfunniest man in journalism -- wallows in nostalgia with a Then & Now column -- this on the Paramus Drive-In Theater, now a parking lot. Wow.

Another sugar high

On SIG-4, Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung wrote a special column on a German bakery in Ridgewood, sure to be lapped up by all the diabetics and weight watchers in her audience.

In the first paragraph, Ung recalls her two months in Germany, stuffing her face with baked goods, and afternoon coffee and cake. Inspirational.

Local are yokels

Readers hungry for local news find little solace today.

In Local's 6 pages, readers find an astounding 16 Law & Order stories from Sykes and Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza.

Only two stories in the section can be called municipal news -- both from Passaic County. 

A third story is about a new after-school choir in Englewood.

The choir members, children 9 to 14, are expected to praise the Lord for their overwhelmingly minority schools and all of the minority employees laid off by the largely white school board.

In Business, a new hotel expected to be ready for fans attending the 2014 Super Bowl in the Meadowlands will have extra-large toilets to accommodate those notorious over-eaters and drinkers.

On today's front page, Gottlieb gave more space to the inept Giants than to former President Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention.

Now, it's readers who are throwing up over Gottlieb's predictable Page 1 treatment of sports.