More Christie spin, more three-day-old news

Hackensack officials are counting on new luxury apartments, such as these under construction at State and Bergen streets, to bring more customers to Main Street stores and restaurants, a strategy that has already failed in nearby Englewood.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Critics call the closing of Fort Lee access lanes to the George Washington Bridge political revenge exacted by Governor Christie's Port Authority appointees.

But Christie chooses to characterize the closures as "mistakes," and he pressured two flunkies, David Wildstein and Bill Baroni, to resign, as reported on Page 1 of The Record today.

Democrats in the state Legislature just spun their wheels when Christie rubber stamped exorbitant toll hikes on the Hudson River crossings, but they've matched his spin with exaggeration and hype of their own on the impact of the Fort Lee incident in early September (A-1 and A-9).

Now, Christie's every action involving the Port Authority or inaction on lowering college tuition for illegal immigrants is being interpreted by The Record in terms of how they will affect his presidential ambitions in 2016 (A-6 and Friday's A-3).

Striptease

Why is a new terminal for business jets at Newark Liberty International Airport news (A-8), and when will The Record address the impact of airplane noise on the quality of life in North Jersey?

An unintentional double entendre in a headline on the first Business page suggests people are stripping at shopping centers owned by Simon Property Group Inc. (A-8).

Minimizing death

On the Local front today, Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza catches up to three-day-old news -- a wealthy 73-year-old woman apparently was run down and killed on Wednesday during an errand on a narrow section of Grand Avenue in Englewood (L-1).

However, Sforza gave better play to the no-injury collision of a train and tractor-trailer carrying jars of stuffed olives, probably because of the wreckage photo taken by Tariq "Crash" Zehawi.

Even with two full days to gather information, the story about Myrna Sherman tells readers little about what happened to the matriarch of the Sherman tobacco family, and doesn't even discuss Grand Avenue's reputation for speeding drivers or previous pedestrian deaths.

The story also plays into the stereotype of Korean-Americans as bad drivers, reporting only that Sung Park, 22, of Ramsey was charged with reckless driving.

Did driver see woman?

"Sherman was either getting out of or into her parked car on Grand Avenue when she was hit by a Honda Odyssey [minivan] near Sheffield Avenue," today's story says, adding that the woman was going to the dry cleaners at 5 p.m.

Today, I called the dry cleaners, the Laundress at Grand and Sheffield avenues, and the owner said Sherman had parked on Grand Avenue in front of the store, and the minivan had turned the corner and struck the woman.

He said it was dark, and he doesn't believe the driver saw the woman. The portion of Grand Avenue where the accident occurred is narrow and carries two-way traffic.

Hackensack mess

Also on the Local front today, Staff Writer Hannan Adely continues to report on the new Hackensack City Council trying to come to terms with the mess left behind by officials allied with the Zisas, who ruled the city so ineptly for decades (L-1).

Today, she reports Hackensack University Medical Center has paid the city $176,000 for school crossing guards that were never billed, just as the city failed to bill the Board of Education $1 million for a police officer assigned to the high school for seven years.

Still, Sforza struggled to fill the section with Bergen County news, and had to resort to using four Paterson stories as filler (L-2, L-3 and L-5).

Friday's paper

Editor Marty Gottlieb wasted readers' time with Columnist Mike Kelly's Page 1 account from Newtown, Conn., on the anniversary of the massacre.

In his first paragraph, the tired columnist describes the removal of the same pile of teddy bears, ribbons, cardboard hearts, candles and cards that he described so lamely in his column a year ago.

Readers stopped there and just stared dumbly at Kelly's dated column photo and shit-eating grin. What a phony (Friday's A-1).

A couple of photos of Newtown would have sufficed to cover the anniversary.

Remember, Kelly is the same moron who repeatedly compared the Teaneck gunman who committed suicide at Westfield Garden State Plaza on Nov. 4 to the maniacs who killed so many at Columbine high and in the Newtown elementary school.

Also on Friday (A-21), Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin's silly rhymed couplets on the Port Authority-Fort Lee brouhaha ticked off many readers, including Jeff of Hackensack:

"Doblin's opinion pieces are usually the lowest of the low in terms of how he must continually mix and interconnect irrelevant metaphors, mottos, symbols, etc., in order to justify his somewhat senseless opinions about various matters.

"He believes that he is also a brilliant humorist and editorialist, who is able to seemingly combine the humorous with the serious in forging his supposedly classic opinions, which are unfortunately frequently way off the mark.

"However, his 'opinion' piece today about the Port Authority fiasco with the reduction of three dedicated tolls lanes to one for Fort Lee's entrance to the GWB has to be one his sickest, if not the sickest attempts at his frightful Goblin, I mean Doblin humor, which is mixed with Shitty, I mean Gritty, opinions to his dominions in the form of a frightful, I mean spiteful, attempt at a humorous, poetic, opinion fleece, I mean piece."

Hackensack news

Downtown Hackensack got some good news with a story about the purchase of a three-story building for a Korean cultural center (Friday's L-2).

Young Cho, board chairman of the non-profit Dongwha Cultural Foundation, is quoted as saying the new center will be three times the size of the current one in Englewood.

On Friday's L-3, a story reporting that the family of a pilot killed near Teterboro Airport "will receive $7.5 million" is inaccurate since about a third of the settlement amount will go to the plaintiffs' lawyer or lawyers.

At Bibi'z in Westwood, Resturant Reviewer Elisa Ung and her guest were served overcooked mahi-mahi and chicken kebab, but she still gave it a good-to-excellent rating (Friday's BL-22).

Columnist re-used anecdotes, quotes from a year ago

Work continues on the NJ Transit train station on Anderson Street in Hackensack, above and below. When completed, the station will have the first waiting room for city commuters in many years.

How much did NJ Transit save by using a smaller sign that required the abbreviation of Anderson Street? Now, commuters freeze their you-know-whats off while waiting in bus shelters, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

A seemingly innocent Record column with advice about getting a Black Friday parking space at the mall hid a multitude of journalistic sins.

Chief among them is that Staff Writer John Cichowski lifted the people, quotes and advice in Friday's L-1 column from a year-old Road Warrior piece on the same subject.

Hello again, Amy

The veteran reporter took several short cuts to avoid actually leaving the office and interviewing shoppers for their experiences and advice.

On Friday, he reported the experience of  "Amy Strauss and her cousin," whose car was blocked by two drivers competing for her space -- just as he did in his 2012 column.

Even the quote from Strauss was lifted word-for-word from the year-old column.

On Friday's continuation page, he cited a study on which car colors are most attractive to thieves -- in the Netherlands, not mall-rich Paramus.

All of the flaws in Friday's column are revealed on the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers in The Record.

Stale Road Warrior column given new life

A concerned reader's e-mail listing the errors, distortions and other problems has been sent to everyone from Vice President/General Counsel Jennifer A. Borg to Editor Marty Gottlieb to Cichowksi's assignment editor to the addled reporter himself.

Another recipient of the e-mail is Production Editor Liz Houlton, the six-figure copy and news desk supervisor whose job it is to fact-check Cichowski's columns. 

Today's paper

The only items on today's front page of any real interest to readers is a brief reporting truckers hit with big toll hikes on the GWB and other crossings "may no longer be willing to take runs through the New York metro area" (A-1 and L-1).

I can't wait. Good riddance to all those lead-footed truckers who seem intent on rolling over your car, if you dare drive only 5 mph or 10 mph over the limit on Route 80 and other highways.

Other stories on Page 1 -- on the Affordable Health Care Web site, the decades-old protest by religious crackpots at an Englewood abortion clinic, and Governor Christie's laughable tax-cut plan -- are the kind of manufactured controversies the media specializes in.

Check out the correction of Thursday's A-1 screw-up the editors missed (A-2). LOL.

More bad journalism

Cichowski is back on the Local front today with his second column on road projects, which somehow escaped his attention until last week (L-1).

In contrast to the millions of words The Record's editors commission on shopping malls and big retailers, a story on Small Business Saturday was written by a single reporter interviewing shoppers in one downtown, Englewood (L-3).

Sorry, Charlie, the wealthy Borg publishing family tells downtown merchants in Hackensack, Teaneck and other towns, if you don't advertise with us, you can go to hell when it comes time for news coverage.

Another Kelly turd

What would Sunday be without another column from the desperate Mike Kelly?

Today's Opinion front piece is Kelly's third attempt to link poor Richard Shoop of Teaneck to the mass shooting that killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Conn. (O-1).

Shoop, you'll recall, is the 20-year-old pizzeria worker who took advantage of the pathetic lack of security at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus on Nov. 4, and committed suicide.

Before he shot himself in the head, he fired randomly, but wasn't aiming at shoppers.

Don't make Kelly's column the last thing you read in today's Sunday edition.

If you do, you won't be able to get the column photo and Kelly's shit-eating grin out of your mind.

New year should bring new columnists

When it isn't bogged down in traffic, the New Jersey Turnpike is a playpen for high-speed tailgaters who cut in and out of traffic and terrorize other drivers.

Eye on The Record and tens of thousands of readers are hoping that in 2013 Editor Marty Gottlieb finds fresh voices for The Record's news columns, now written by Staff Writers Mike Kelly and John Cichowski (A-1 and L-1 today).

And while he is at it, why doesn't he give one of the women in the newsroom a news column?

Kelly was on leave recovering from heart surgery when Superstorm Sandy hit on Oct. 29 and when 20 first graders and six adults were murdered in Newtown, Conn., 17 days ago.

Made-up mystery

So, what was the point of his Dec. 25 column last week on the "mystery" surrounding the identity of an elderly woman rescued from flood waters in Little Ferry?

Even his reporting in that Page 1 column was flawed.

He wrote she was rescued from "knee-high" water, but the Oct. 31 photo reproduced on A-1 clearly shows a lower level of water.  

And what can he possibly add today on the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut? 

Kelly, whose started his column more than 20 years ago, has written persuasively about the need to control guns. Why didn't he do so again today?

Text, photos clash

And the editors continue to fail in coordinating the photos used with the text of news stories or columns, as the discrepancy in the water level in Kelly's Dec. 25 piece demonstrates.

On today's front page, Kelly laments about "teddy bears at the makeshift memorial" in Newtown "buried up to their noses in slushy snow," but the photo just above the text shows nothing of the kind (A-1).

Yank his license

Cichowski, also known as the "Road Warrior," long ago gave up doing the legwork of a good reporter, who spends most of his or her time out of the office on the beat.

In the more than 9 years he's written the Road Warrior column, he has totally perverted its mission to report on the commuting problems of drivers and mass-transit users.

In recent years, he sees everything through the unreliable eyes of readers, none of whom are trained observers, who send him countless e-mails complaining of this injustice or that confusing driving regulation.

Get a lawyer, Dave

Today, his column is based on a complaint from "Dave," the father of a 20-year-old driver who got a ticket for failing to keep right on the New Jersey Turnpike.

The woman didn't move over for a cruiser driven by a state trooper, "who stayed less than a dozen feet from her bumper." 

Can anyone believe the explanation from "Dave" for why the woman didn't change lanes or anything else from a man who claims "entrapment," even though the trooper drove behind her for 3 miles? 

Sounds like she deserved a ticket. Get a lawyer, Dave.

'Highway terrorist'

Still, the column is supposed to be about "a tailgater," whom Cichowski rightly calls a "highway terrorist" in the very first paragraph.

Is a state trooper a "highway terrorist"? 

Of course, Cichowski could have compared tickets given to taligaters this year and in years past, and written a compelling argument for more enforcement. 

But that would be too much work. He might actually have to leave the office, get on the turnpike and observe tailgaters. That's legwork, which Cichowski abhors. 

Laugh track

And for the new year, Gottlieb should demote Bill Ervolino from humor columnist to food writer. 

He excels at food writing and is a flop as a humorist, as his piece on today's Better Living front clearly shows (BL-1).   

Editors give finger to commuters

New Jersey commuters lining up for rush-hour buses in Manhattan.

The Record's car-centric editors and transportation reporters have never done a good job covering mass transit, and they're not going to start now.

The Woodland Park daily has published more stories about NJ Transit since Superstorm Sandy than in the previous decade, but all of them have been focused on who screwed up to expose the system to more than $400 million in damage (A-1 today).

Where are the stories on why Governor Christie and the Port Authority have refused to expand a bus and rail network that reached capacity years ago?

F.U. to commuters

On today's Local front, the great road sage John Cichowski has parlayed his laziness into another column based entirely on e-mailed complaints from drivers, many of whom have gotten their names in print before (L-1).

Here is another silly Road Warrior Top 10 list from a weary columnist who loves to give the finger to commuters who use mass transit.

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, are taking a holiday from local municipal news.

Boring readers 

On Page 1 today, Editor Liz Houlton's copy editors couldn't come up with anything more imaginative than "RETRACING KEY STEP TO THE REVOLUTION" for the annual photo showing the reenactment of Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware.

When readers turn to the story on A-3, they learn weather and high water prevented the river crossing.

How about this for an A-1 photo overline?

"GLOBAL WARMING STOPS WASHINGTON" 

Or:

"WEATHER STOPS WASHINGTON"      

More, not fewer guns


The National Rifle Association will probably recommend we arm firefighters after a madman set fire to his house, then murdered two of the volunteers who responded with the same kind of military-style rifle used in Newtown, Conn., to kill 20 first graders and six adults (A-1).

The NRA will do anything to stimulate gun sales.

Cruz betrays Paterson gun victims

Great Falls in Paterson. © 2004 Matthew Trump (Wikipedia)

Paterson's gun violence is well-known, so why did the Giants' Victor Cruz  -- a Silk City native -- traipse up to the bloodshed capital of Connecticut with the media in tow, and why did The Record's Art Stapleton hang on his every word (A-1 and S-1)?

Did I miss the story about Cruz lending a sympathetic ear to victims of drive-by shootings and other Paterson killings, which have claimed the lives of innocent children, off-duty police officers and others?

Does anybody care what the National Rifle Association will say today about 2o children who were shot numerous times in a Newtown, Conn., school, and did anyone bother reading more than a few paragraphs of the long, speculative story on Page 1 today? 

Fender benders

With Sandy, Newtown and so many other compelling stories to cover, why did Editor Marty Gottlieb run a gee-whiz,  A-1 photo of a non-fatal car accident -- a staple of the desperate Local section editors?

This is yet another instance of an older driver mistaking the gas pedal for the brake pedal -- a serious issue that calls for retraining of senior citizens, not a photo op to make light of their confusion.

Greedy Old Party

Gottlieb leads the paper today with a money grab by greedy Republicans, who continue to fight for tax breaks for the nation's wealthy while slashing by more than half the $60.4 billion requested for Sandy relief efforts by Governors Christie and Cuomo (A-1).

In a deft editing move, Gottlieb made this a partisan issue by mentioning the outrage from "New Jersey's two Democratic senators" in the first paragraph, but not telling readers until the continuation page that loud-mouth Christie had no comment about his fellow GOP morons (A-8).

Jets trump Koreans
 
Given all the attention The Record has paid to North Jersey's growing Korean-American community, you'd think Gottlieb would have run the election of South Korea's first female president on the front page (A-15).

Instead, readers are staring dumbly at another silly sports column by Tara Sullivan (A-1). 

More copy desk screw-ups

Production Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk had fun with the caption on the A-15 photo of Park Geun-hye, South Korea's president elect.

She is seen accepting a bouquet of flowers, but the caption says she is shown "during her victory speech Wednesday in Seoul."

Maybe the microphone was concealed in the flowers.

Houlton's mischievous copy editors really fractured a headline about Newtown, Conn., on Wednesday's A-8. Is this English? Is there a word, line missing?

Community

very visibly

in mourning

 

On Wednesday's L-3, a photo caption about the removal of a tree dropped the word "down." It said "homeowners got permission to cut the 125-year-old tree." 

Corrections or clarifications have been running on A-2 in recent days, including today, but none of the Road Warrior column's numerous errors have been corrected.

Murder and mayhem 

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, needed 8 Law & Order stories to fill fewer than 4 pages of local news today.

Two obituaries of prominent local women, including 101-year-old Nina DiLorio (L-3), are a much-needed break from the monotony of court, police and crime stories. 

Half the story   

In the Signature section today, a cover story on the heyday of Hackensack's Main Street omits any mention of The Record, which had its main office on the street for decades before building a larger headquarters nearby on River Street.

Nor does the story discuss how North Jersey Media Group's wholesale abandonment of Hackensack in 2009 accelerated the street's decline.

Spinning out of control

Whether writing about two wheels or four, the Road Warrior continues to play loose and fast with the facts.

Here is another in a long series of e-mails from a concerned reader to management, appealing for accuracy from Staff Writer John Cichowski:

"Once again, the Road Warrior mistakenly reports misleading and false statements and then further confuses or misleads readers by misinterpreting and misstating the facts. 

The Road Warrior's Dec. 19 column is the 24^th article with problems, starting with his 9/12 column, about which I've notified The Record's management & Road Warrior without indication of any preventive actions to address these problems and very few published corrections.

As per his Dec. 19 column, the Road Warrior continues to be plagued by an inability to correctly state and comprehend facts from published studies that should be the easiest type of reporting based on well-presented statements and facts in these studies, including the Tri-State Transportation Campaign's recent report on the most dangerous roads for bicyclists in northern NJ counties.

A highlight of misleading and false statements & facts are noted below.

The Record or Road Warrior should make appropriate corrections and ensure better coverage of this topic.

1.  Misleading statement - Tri-State Transportation Campaign, which produced a report ... titled "Most Dangerous Roads for Bicyclists in Northern New Jersey Counties"

CORRECT FACTS - Their report was titled "New Analysis Identifies Most Dangerous Roads for Bicyclists in Northern New Jersey Counties."  The mistakes start with the report's title and continue to get worse.

2.  Misleading false statement and fact - "it chronicled nearly 20,000 collisions over a 10-year period."

CORRECT FACTS - The report chronicled these collisions over an 11-year period from 2001 thru 2011.

3. Misleading false statements - "The report focused on roads that make travel easy for cars, but awful for bikes. Typically, it said, these arterial roads are wide with two or more travel lanes in each direction, travel speeds of at least 40 mph, and little to no bike or pedestrian infrastructure, such as bike lanes or crosswalks."

CORRECT FACTS - The report clearly stated it focused on the dangerous design of ALL types of roads that puts bicyclists in harm’s way.  The report never suggested it focused on arterial roads. The report had one statement that indicated that many of the most dangerous places for bicyclists are arterial roads based on the data.

4.  Misleading false statements and facts - "Among the most dangerous roads for crashes [from 2009 to 2011] were .... Route 505 in Passaic County — mostly Main Avenue in Passaic and Clifton— with 43.  Route 505 in Bergen... was the scene of 43 crashes."

CORRECT FACTS - Among the most dangerous roads for crashes were Route 601 in Passaic County — from Paterson thru Passaic on Main St./Ave. — with 33. 

Route 505 in Bergen was the scene of 40 crashes.

5.  Misleading false statement - "The Tri-State report called for exclusive bike lanes and sharrows — well-marked lanes that bicycles and cars can share — as well as suggestions for better training for both cyclists and drivers."

CORRECT FACTS - The Tri-State report did NOT call for exclusive bike lanes and sharrows and did NOT suggest better training for both cyclists and drivers.  The Tri-State report quoted various municipal officials on the multiple ways various municipalities are addressing bicycle safety, some of which include bike lanes, sharrows, and public safety education about bicycling.  The report NEVER mentioned anything about training.

The Tri-State report DID CALL for "NJDOT, county and municipal governments to prioritize bicycle safety projects in capital budgets and encourages counties and municipalities across the state to adopt Complete Streets policies with clear goals (and funds) for implementation."

6.  Misleading false statement and facts -  "[report] noted that federal transportation funding for the nation fell 30 percent this year"

CORRECT FACTS - The report noted that federal transportation funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects for the nation fell 30 percent for the fiscal 2013 year.

7.  Misleading false statement and fact -  "in NJ, funding for bicycle-lane improvements dropped from 3% of the capital budget [for transportation] to 2.3%"

CORRECT FACTS - The report indicated that NJ funding for all pedestrian and all bicycle projects dropped from 3% of the capital budget to 2.3%.

8.  Misleading statement and fact - "Three counties and 40 towns have agreed to adopt these criteria [for NJ Complete Streets policy]"

CORRECT FACTS - Report indicated more than 40 towns agreed to adopt these criteria.

9. Misleading statement - "But who in our car-centric society wants to be especially reasonable about an idea that would remake our road system to accommodate two-wheelers?"

[Editor's notes: Cichowski completely fails to mention how many of Manhattan's avenues have been remade to accommodate the bicycles of commuters, messengers and food-delivery workers.]

CORRECT FACTS - Road Warrior appears clueless when asking this question, particularly when there is clear information about the groundswell of support and efforts coming from the NJ public, public organizations, state government, counties, and municipalities to remake many of our roads to accommodate two-wheelers. The support and efforts may be slower than some would like, but that is the way most things get done.

NJ DOT has a Complete Streets policy that also promotes the safety of pedestrians and bicyclists in construction and maintenance of new and retrofit road projects that have federal or state funds.  NJ DOT also promotes and provides training for county and municipal officials to implement these policies in their local work.

Three NJ counties and over 40 municipalities, incl. many of the largest cities, have implemented this policy.  I would not be surprised if many of the guidelines from this policy have also been utilized by other NJ counties and towns.

The Road Warrior should know that NJ is far from being a car-centric society based on all of the public and private transportation alternative options that are available, particularly in comparison to other states.

[Editor's note: If the Road Warrior ever left the office, he'd discovered a well-developed mass-transit system that is a victim of its own success, and how traffic-choked highways and Hudson River crossings have reached the point of no return.]

Family that shoots together dies together

National Rifle Association officials have been strangely silent since the shooting in Newtown, Conn. (Wikipedia)

All day Monday, WNYC-FM and other public radio stations reported Nancy Lanza and her son, Adam, went target shooting together, using a high-powered, semiautomatic rifle and other weapons she had purchased legally.

Until last Friday, that is, when Adam used Nancy as a human target, shooting her four times in the head while she was in bed in her pajamas, before driving her car to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

There, he killed 20 children -- all 7 years old or under -- 6 adults and himself.

I've been poring over The Record's coverage Sunday, Monday and today, and can't find any mention of the Lanzas' weird choice of target shooting as a family activity. 

What's wrong with bowling or going to the movies, especially when all the hunting and gathering we have to do is in supermarkets and warehouse stores?

Holes in coverage

There is a lot missing in The Record's coverage, and the strain of Editor Marty Gottlieb sending reporters to Connecticut to write long A-1 stories has reduced local municipal news to a trickle.

Among the unanswered questions:

A single public safety officer at the Connecticut elementary school -- armed and wearing a bulletproof vest -- would have prevented the tragedy.

But maybe Newtown -- like many small towns in New Jersey -- is trying to cut costs and keep property taxes down. 

Why do only schools in the Bronx, Paterson and other urban neighborhoods have cops guarding schools and metal detectors at their doors?  

Paper misreads reaction 

How did The Record's Page 1 story on Sunday misread the strong reaction of politicians, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, President Obama and many in Congress, as well as the prospects for tighter controls on guns? 

(That story did report that New Jersey members of Congress sold out for as little as $1,000 in National Rifle Association blood money.)

Aren't all the people who say they have a right to own a gun and defend themselves condemning the job police are doing to control crime?

Local news drought

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, were so desperate for local news today they needed a photo of a no-injury auto accident to fill L-3. 

On Monday's L-3, Sykes and Sforza killed two birds with one stone in their mission of running a photo of every minor accident and every utility pole downing in North Jersey -- a car that crashed into a pole in Fair Lawn.

Christie's P.R. guy

Also on Monday, Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin's column amounted to an elaborate excuse for Governor Christie's obesity -- and his failure to lead the fight against overeating in children (A-11).

Of course, Doblin doesn't mention the health crisis or how first lady Michelle Obama started a White House garden as part of her war against childhood obesity.

Nor that New Jersey's participation in the national school breakfast program for poor children is too low to qualify for millions in federal subsidies.

Or that two obese editors in the Woodland Park newsroom, Sykes and Tim Nostrand, have effectively stopped any comprehensive coverage of the epidemic. 

Doblin gives a bad name to pussies by mounting one excuse after another for the GOP bully's inability to lose weight.

Editor's bias is clear

And his clear bias in favor of the governor raises questions about the overwhelmingly pro-Christie editorials he writes or edits. 

We may not "elect governors or presidents because they are fittness role models," as Dobin wrote, but we expect them to be proactive in fighting childhood obesity.

And I wish Doblin didn't write this silly sentence:

"In 2012, when it comes to eating, America is messed up big."

That's true for Christie, who likely is a binge eater and who is married to a woman who is so busy making money, she can't plan healthy, nutritious meals for the state's fat first family.

Yes, as Doblin says, the Christies have money. They can hire a personal chef, even someone to food shop for them. 

Stop with the excuses. 

Today and Monday, The Record printed corrections on A-2, but none of them addressed the many recent errors in the Road Warrior column, including an inaccurate headline.