In Christie's New Jersey, even a racehorse restores pride

For drivers, it's a rough ride on River Street in Hackensack and scores of other streets in North Jersey that have been patched after extensive utility work or simply neglected, sometimes for a decade or more. Still, we pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The front page of The Record today gives you some idea of how depressed New Jerseyans are in the fifth year of Governor Christie's reign.

When a woman gushes over winning $16 and a racehorse is said to restore pride in the Garden State, you definitely know we are mired in deep doo-doo (A-1).

Staff Writer Christopher Maag reinforces the point in his sixth paragraph, noting "the sitting governor" was "booed loudly" by his constituents "as he stood in the winner's circle."

So, the record crowd at Monmouth Park in Oceanport booed Christie, the horse's ass, and cheered the racehorse, Triple Crown winner American Pharoah.

Climate change

Another story on Page 1 today describe how Christie sides with industry, not the environment, when it comes to making public information on potentially dangerous oil trains passing through Bergen County (A-1).

And thanks to Christie, New Jersey likely will be one of the Republican-led states that oppose President Obama's initiative to cut greenhouse gases and fight climate change (A-1).

As the media have done with every issue since the president took office, climate change is politicized and presented in terms of Democrats v. Republicans, and not what's good for the country and the environment.

However, the sub-headline on the Obama story goes too far:

Power plants
and states to
fight Obama

Of course, as the first paragraph of The Associated Press story clearly states, opposition is expected from "Republican-led states," not all states (A-1).

Muslim pride

Also today, The Record continues its campaign to humanize Muslim-Americans with a story on Abrar Shahin, "the fashionable hijab-wearing Muslim teenager" from Clifton "who has become a global sensation" (A-1).

Local news?

On the Local front, a story on a final link in the Secaucus Greenway includes a Meadowlands map with few labels, so readers have to scour the story for clues on where they can find the start of the public footpath (L-1).

The story leading the Local section never explains why the four Di Cosmo brothers are selling "their local watering hole," The Front Porch, after 34 years (L-1).

Here's a lot more news you can't use

George Washington Bridge at night.

When Governor Christie grants an audience to The Record's unnamed editorial board, the editors fall all over themselves to save a slice of the front page for every juicy morsel from the Republican pit bull.

As you can see from today's front page, there is no "news" here -- just more divisive partisan rhetoric blaming the Democrats for everything that has gone wrong since Christie took office, including a state economy that can't get out of low gear.

What a dismal front page, and you won't find much else in an edition that seems designed to put you back to sleep. 

Instead of humoring Christie's chest thumping on Page 1, Editor Marty Gottlieb should have given better play to the governor saying he's disappointed in the Jets and Giants trying to stop the expansion of American Dream Meadowlands (A-6). 

Celebrity pest

It's too bad actor Andy Griffith died, but do we have to endure Bill Ervolino's fascination with the "television legend" (A-1)?

I'd much rather read about an interesting local resident, such as the 93-year-old man I met the other day in the Stop & Shop in Teaneck who still goes to the office.

Sports betting at Monmouth Park in the fall? Who cares, except gambling addicts who get high on the smell of horse shit (A-1)?

Pass the toilet paper

On the Local front, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes approved a Road Warrior column on "those little pieces of paper police hand out," instead of helping ease the commute of tens of thousands of readers (L-1).

Anyone who tries to read John Cichowski today will need their own little pieces of paper, the ones you use in the toilet.

Where's the local angle?

On the first Business page, a story about low lobster prices in Maine should appeal to the handful of readers who have a second home there, such as Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill (L-7 and L-8).

The rest of us would like to know whether those low prices will be seen in North Jersey, too.

That's news we could really use.