 |
| Image via Wikipedia Well-known people of Irish descent. |
By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR
HACKENSACK -- Leave it to Columnist Mike Kelley to play the race card in commenting on the award of nearly $2.3 million in damages to the family of a Ramapough Mountain Indian who was shot dead by a white park ranger in 2006.
Kelly resorts to all of the stereotypes about Native Americans and their supposed problems with alcohol in his hate-filled, blame-the-victim column in The Record's Local section today (L-3).
How this man calls himself a journalist is beyond me. Look at his phony smile in the column photo and tell me he doesn't look like the typical person of Irish descent who likes to take a nip now and then.
Kelly calls the mixed-race victim, Emil Mann, "rowdy" and "tipsy," and says "booze" may have "blurred his judgment and helped get him killed."
Honest Indian
The columnist completely ignores statements at the civil trial that Park Police Officer Chad Walder "made up the story about the scuffle [with Mann] and ambush to justify the shooting."
This isn't the first time Kelly has sided with law enforcement in the shooting of an unarmed suspect. He wrote a 1995 book about the fatal shooting of black teenager Philip Pannell by a white Teaneck police officer in 1990.
Witnesses said Pannell, 16, was shot in the back.
For many years, The Record barred the word "Indian" and its style book mandated the use of "Native American." However, under Production Editor Liz Houlton, who now supervises the news copy desk, anything goes.
Outside of Kelly's outrageous attack on the reputation of a dead man, there isn't much in the Woodland Park daily today.
Jock-strap news
Interim Editor Doug Clancy squanders more space on Page 1 of the Bergen Edition to report on the latest developments in the Wayne Hills High School football scandal -- a story that belongs in the Passaic-Morris Edition.
Staff Writer Colleen Diskin goes to nursing homes and assisted living centers in writing about the longer life expectancy of men -- making it sound as if all old people are just waiting to die (A-1 and A-12).
Diskin is another pampered member of the big butt sisterhood nurtured by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes. (See previous post, The newsroom's big butt sisterhood.)
Press corps pussies
Leave it to Michael Fremer of Wyckoff to do what the entire Washington press corps (including staffer Herb Jackson) has failed to do in the raging debate over taxing the wealthy -- a battle that has paralyzed Congress.
In a letter to the editor on A-22 today, Fremer puts the debate in perspective:
"All we've gotten from the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy are deficits, greater income disparity and the weakest job creation in the post-World War II era. In fact, President Obama's so-called failed stimulus resulted in greater job creation in three years (almost 2 million jobs saved or created) than did Bush's tax cuts in eight."
Locals are yokels
In Sykes' Local section, Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin was sent to cover a hearing in Franklin Lakes Municipal Court (L-1), meaning there is no Hackensack news in the section for yet another day.
In more senior citizen news, a 67-year-old driver rear-ended another car in North Arlington (L-2), and a 75-year-old woman was run down by a car in Ridgewood (L-3).
Sykes has asked Diskin to find out which nursing home or assisted living center these two end up in, assuming they survive, and to interview them for her next story on old people.
