Christie chose life over uncontrolled gorging

An example of how a band is used to restrict the intake of food. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don't you love how The Record virtually ignored an obese Governor Christie's out-of-control eating since he took office in January 2010, and now is asking him to "defend" and "explain" his weight-loss surgery?

What does it take for morons like political columnist Charles Stile to understand Christie chose life over a certain early death, if he kept up his uncontrolled gorging (A-1).

It's telling that the New York Post, not any New Jersey media, broke the story about Christie's "secret" lap-band surgery.

Diet and disease 

Stile and a couple of the editors at the Woodland Park daily, Deirdre Sykes and Tim Nostrand, should spend some time on a hospital cardiac ward and ask doctors about the relationship between diet and disease.

The Record's last food editor, Susan Leigh Sherrill, promoted recipes using butter, cream, bacon and other unhealthy food every chance she got.

Just look at the Mother's Day recipe on the Better Living cover today (BL-1 and BL-2), calling for 2 cups of heavy cream, 1 cup of sweetened whipped cream
and 10 tablespoons plus a half-cup of butter.

Talk about killing your mother with kindness.

Oppose his policies

The GOP bully's conservative policies are still deplorable, but the media, including The Record's Sykes, Nostrand and Editor Marty Gottlieb, should cheer Christie's decision, not ask him to defend it.

And Christie isn't out of danger, if he continues eating a diet heavy in red meat and pizza, even though he'll be consuming smaller quantities.

Hackensack deserves better than this

Prospect Avenue and Golf Place in Hackensack as the sun set on Wednesday. High-rise residents are engaged in a bitter fight with a wealthy developer who wants to build a 19-story, long-term, acute-care hospital nearby -- in a residential neighborhood outside the city's hospital zone.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Friday, The Record ran a poorly edited brief on Hackensack's proposed budget, and buried it inside Local (L-6) -- in contrast to a full-blown story on Teaneck's spending plan on the front of the local-news section two days earlier.

And even though the May 14 Hackensack City Council election is the most important in decades, the Woodland Park daily has written a grand total of only three stories so far, and has denied equal time to a former staffer, independent candidate Victor E. Sasson, editor of Eye on The Record.

Hackensack deserves better than this -- unless head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, want to preserve City Hall's patronage system and control of the city by cronies of the Zisa family.

Today's paper

Residents of Hackensack and other communities assaulted by noise from private jets at Teterboro Airport are disappointed to see the airport's control tower spared from closing as a result of federal budget cuts (A-1 and A-5).

A correction on A-2 notes Production Editor Liz Houlton and her snoring copy editors missed the misspelling of a word used in the North Jersey Spelling Bee.

A photo with the story leading Local shows a suspect's heavily damaged car at Englewood police headquarters, but the caption states the vehicle "blocked an entrance to an elementary school after he allegedly went on  a drunken-driving rampage" (L-1).

Legalized theft

Friday is sentencing day at the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack -- one of the busiest in the state -- but readers are being asked to believe the sentencing of a woman for stealing money from a Hackensack lawyer was the only thing worthy of a story today (L-1).

On the other hand, given the $6 million in legal fees Hackensack has had to shell out in cases involving its disgraced former police chief, Ken "I Am The Law" Zisa, this is a rare instance where a lawyer isn't doing the stealing.

City Attorney Joseph C. Zisa Jr. -- the ex-chief's cousin -- and the City Council recently pushed through an additional $500,000 to pay for legal bills racked up by two police officers who were acquitted of criminal charges in one of those cases.

During the afternoon rush hour on Friday, commuters on the Garden State Parkway encountered delays of up to 30 minutes on the northbound roadway, above. The Record's transportation coverage continues to ignore overburdened roads and packed buses and trains.

$10.95 for bread?

The Record has put readers on a starvation diet with another half-page restaurant review from Julia Sexton, the critic for Westchester Magazine (BL-18 on Friday).

Does Sexton live in North Jersey? Is she a pal of Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill? Why is she writing restaurant reviews in the absence of Staff Writer Elisa Ung?

And why bother with Diwani, a mediocre Indian restaurant in Ridgewood that charges $10.95 for a bread sampler?

Follow me on Twitter/@vsasson

   

Mac Borg's pal is back in the news

Xanadu (American Dream) as seen from the roof of the Meadowlands Sheraton. The indoor ski slope is on the left. (Wikipedia)

Editor Marty Gottlieb chokes readers today with another endless account of the on-again, off-again American Dream mega retail and entertainment project in the Meadowlands (Page 1).

Buried deep in the text on the continuation page are a few paragraphs about the role of real estate mogul Jon F. Hanson, who co-owns a business jet with North Jersey Media Group Chairman Malcolm A. "Mac" Borg (A-8),

Of course, the relationship isn't mentioned.

As the state's economy tanks under the regressive tax policies of Governor Christie, the GOP bulldog hasn't let go of the project's potential as a "job machine for the men and woman of New Jersey."

One-man P.R. machine

The story is by Staff Writer John Brennan, who for years hoped to bury what was once known as Xanadu.

After Christie got involved, Brennan became a one-man public-relations machine. 

The project has or is expected to receive hundreds of millions in state tax breaks. 

Today, Brennan buries the news on the continuation page, boring readers with paragraph after paragraph of background.

Muskrat love

At the bottom of A-1 today, a nostalgic piece on trapping in the Meadowlands could have been packaged with the wildly promotional American Dream story.

All of those dead muskrats are a turnoff, but did you notice how Production Editor Liz Houlton screwed up the captions for the two A-1 photos and a third photo on A-6. 

Captions appear to be under the wrong photos, and no one caught the error, typical for Houlton's copy desk. 

Another Polish joke

Road Warrior John Cichowski couldn't find any commuting issue to write about today, so he looks forward a year to the closing of some lanes of the Pulaski Skyway, a major route to the Holland Tunnel that has been under reconstruction forever it seems (Local front).

I recall the night I was working on the news copy desk in Hackensack when the word came down that then-Editor Francis "Frank" Scandale didn't want the words "Pulaski Skyway" to appear on the front page in connection with a story on crumbling infrastructure.

Scandale argued "no one ever heard of" the Pulaski Skyway, which links Jersey City and Newark, and no one from Bergen County used it. Case closed.

Cichowski claims the bridge has been "terrorizing motorists" since it opened in 1932, but that's typical of his lame attempts to make his boring, irrelevant  columns come to life. 

Food rambles

In Better Living, Restaurant Reivewer Elisa Ung devotes her entire Sunday column, The Corner Table, to promote the new owner and chef of the Saddle River Inn (BL-1).

This past Tuesday, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill erred in reporting that NYC Restaurant Week 2013 "actually lasts for two weeks."

According to the Web site, www.nycgo.com, restaurants are serving $25 lunches and $38 dinners from Jan. 14 through Feb. 8 --  more than three weeks.

Christie smothers Sandy

On the Opinion front, Professor Brigid Harrison praises Christie's political skills, but that seems to be contradicted big time by how he flopped at getting Congress to approve the $60-billion Superstorm Sandy recovery package (A-1 and A-4). 

Breathe deep 
 
A story on the Real Estate front today reports a building called The M at Englewood South is giving tenants the option to put half of their monthly rents toward a down payment on purchasing the units (R-1).

The piece never explains why anyone wants to live next to Route 4, with all of its traffic noise and polluted air.

Sounds like a great place to raise children and grow old.

Editors print more Christie B.S.

Ex-CIA Director David Petraeus. Is there a medal for adultery? (Wikipedia)

Who said Editor Marty Gottlieb of The Record can't turn on a dime and respond to breaking news?

Look at the twin coverage of Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane David on Page 1 today.

But does Gen. David Petraeus' affair really deserve to be on the front page of a North Jersey daily paper five days in a row?

Hey, Marty. You're not at The Times anymore. 

Pay more attention to how your local editors -- Deirdre Sykes and Dan Sforza -- are failing miserably every day in their mission to deliver news from Hackensack and many other communities.

Property tax news 
 
Poor Governor Christie. His preposterous statement on property taxes got pushed below the fold today.

Christie said towns can exceed the state's 2 percent annual property tax cap to pay for the cost of cleaning up after Sandy, "meaning some residents in storm-ravaged municipalities could face higher taxes" (A-1).

Could face higher taxes? Haven't property taxes gone up every year Christie has been in office -- with no Hurricane Sandy to blame?

With The Record doing his public relations, Christie can fire his many spokespeople and his spin doctor. 

Curling up with a good study

On the Local front, Road Warrior John Cichowski tries to keep readers entertained with his take on a study that found women drivers are in the majority now (L-1).

Big deal.  

The roads won't be any safer because of a hard core of male drivers I see on the turnpike and parkway who race each other, cut each other off, tailgate and weave in and out of slower traffic.

However, Sykes and Sforza are keeping up with utility pole news, as a photo on L-3 demonstrates.

Heat but no light

In Better Living, a story on home generators fails to explore the impact of the noise they make on neighbors who don't have lights or heat, and now can't sleep (BL-1).

Nor does The Record discuss whether a standby generator that automatically kicks in when the power goes out and runs on natural gas would add to the value of your home.

Pork and beans

For the second week in a row, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill promotes a cookbook recipe featuring pork filled with harmful animal antibiotics and growth hormones (BL-1).
 

  

Does our obese governor hate underfed kids?

The Port Authority is raising tolls on the George Washington Bridge and other Hudson River crossings by an additional 75 cents in December. Now, the peak toll for cars and SUVs is $12 or $9.50 for drivers with E-ZPass. 

Readers have to work hard today to find out why New Jersey is in a shameful 48th place in the national school breakfast program for poor children.

Governor Christie, who looks like he eats several breakfasts every day, doesn't appear in the story that dominates Page 1.

Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf is said to have encouraged schools to try "breakfast after the bell," but it's advocates for children who are driving any gains (A-6).

The story hints that Christie's well-known disdain for federal funds may be the root cause:

"If New Jersey -- which has long had one of the lowest participation rates in the country -- reached just 60 percent of eligible children, it would reap $22.6 million in additional federal funding, according to the Food Research and Action Center" (A-1).

Recall how Christie blamed his last education czar for blowing $400 million in federal Race to The Top money or how he spurned billions more in federal transportation funds when he killed the Hudson River rail tunnels.

Breakfast whipped cream

Of course, today's long story doesn't mention that Christie eliminated all $3 million in state funding for the subsidized school breakfast program, according to The Star-Ledger (April 21, 2010).

The newspaper reported on Sept. 27, 2012, that Christie isn't denying himself: whipped cream is served in the breakfast buffet at Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion.

Obscure Kelly

Did anyone bother reading Columnist Mike Kelly's long-winded recounting of a political scandal that has faded into obscurity, which is where many of us wish he would go (A-1)?

For yet another day, Editor Marty Gottlieb squanders precious front-page space on an inane column about the Yankees.

No trace of Cichowski

On A-12 today, The Associated Press reports no trace of Jimmy Hoffa was found in soil samples from a back yard in suburban Detroit.

In a related matter, no traces of Road Warrior John Cichowski were found at his home or office, suggesting his column is being ghost-written by drivers who send him one complaining e-mail after another (Local front).

Law & Order news

Three of the five elements on L-1 today are court or police stories in another great local-news effort from head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza.

In the L-1 courtroom photo, why does it look like defense attorney Robert Galantucci is taking a nap during another lawyer's opening statement in the trial of two Hackensack cops?  

Blast from the past

Sforza's byline appears on A-3 today on a story about "challenges and goals" at the beleaguered Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

But the clueless Sforza, a former failed transportation reporter for the paper, doesn't mention a word about the agency's poor mass-transit record.

Sforza is the second editor who has covered a story recently. Tim Nostrand was the first. But when the stories are full of holes, why bother?

Dissing Hackensack

In other Hackensack "news," optometrist Paul Berman, who works in the city, was honored at the White House for a program that has helped 100,000 athletes see better (L-1).

On L-2, the Woodland Park daily catches up to the weekly Hackensack Chronicle on a proposal to hire a police director instead of a police chief to replace the disgraced Ken Zisa.

Heart problems

In Better Living, Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill's cookbook recipe of the week is for Cornish pasties -- bar food (BL-1).

The recipe calls for 12 ounces of antibiotic-filled beef and a full stick of butter, which you might as well freeze and ram into your heart like a stake. 

Also on the Better Living cover, "Jersey Shore" may be ending, but that's no guarantee the editors will stop publishing drivel about the bimbos and bimbas who give New Jersey a bad name.

Debate stories deaden Page 1

The Record's food editor shops at Whole Foods Market, but doesn't pass along advice to buy beef without harmful antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts.

Three of the four stories on the front page of The Record today are rehashes of new and old debates -- on gay marriage, foreign policy and a silly football game.

And the off-lead story on President Obama and Mitt Romney is not even a real debate.

The so-called confrontation was fabricated by McClatchy Newspapers, where bored reporters and editors look for any way to liven coverage of the deadly dull presidential campaign.

Marty Gottlieb, the Times veteran who took over The Record's newsroom at the end of January, sure knows how to cruise into retirement.

Today, Page 1 of the Woodland Park daily has what editors call a "good mix" of stories, but the result is a page so dull, readers' eyelids grow heavy and they start flipping pages, looking for news they can use.

Phony caption

For amusement -- at the expense of the paper's inept copy desk under Production Editor Liz Houlton -- check out the photo with the story on Catholics and gay marriage at the top of Page 1.

Three students are shown with their mouths closed as they stare into the distance, but the caption says they "are discussing Archbishop John J. Myers' statement."

More lazy reporting

On the front of Local today, it's too bad slow-moving Staff Writer John Cichowski confines himself to writing the Road Warrior column from the comfort of his home or office.

Today's laughable effort focuses on a Camden County woman and photo licenses that he must have rewritten from an earlier wire-service story (L-1).

The so-called commuting columnist has been at it for 9 years, yet he's written little about the lack of speeding enforcement on roads and highways, and the other side of that story, the lack of basic road-safety training for drivers and pedestrians.

Ignoring basic safety

Monday's Page 1 told the sad story of Matthew Killen, 25, an aspiring surgeon from Wood-Ridge, whose life was cut short Sept. 7 on a Tennesse highway, where he was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer.

The account sounded familiar -- Gabrielle Reuveni, 20, of Paramus was killed in July by a pickup truck in the Poconos, where she was jogging on the side of the road.

Sadly, both victims failed to observe basic safety rules: 


Killen apparently didn't look in his car mirrors to see if a truck or car was approaching before he stepped out of his vehicle onto a dark roadway, and Reuveni might still be alive if she was jogging toward traffic.

There have been other fatalities like these in recent years, but Cichowski and head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes can't be bothered to report on basic road safety.

Where's the good beef?

On the Better Living front, don't miss Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill's recipe of the week -- a dish from a Japanese farm-food cookbook (BL-1).

On BL-2, you'll find the recipe and "Susan's tips," based on a shopping trip for ingredients to Whole Foods Market.

But Sherrill doesn't tell you the whole story. For some reason, she doesn't recommend using beef shoulder that was raised without harmful antibiotics and growth hormones.

In fact, naturally raised beef shoulder steaks were on sale recently for $5.99 a pound at Whole Foods in Paramus.

Editors distort positive change in Hackensack

The Record continues to use "chaos" to describe positive change in Hackensack, and ignores city news by printing endless reports on the saga of ex-Police Chief Ken Zisa.

Hackensack readers hit a rare daily double today -- a Page 1 story plus a column on the latest developments in the legal saga of former Police Chief Ken Zisa.

The headline on the news story is straightforward, but Columnist Mike Kelly claims the developments turn the city into "Chaosville" from "Zisaville" -- echoing his earlier columns on "chaos" in Hackensack.

Now, according to the headline over Kelly's column, there is a "double dose of chaos" for city police.

Kelly the hack

Kelly's second paragraph on the front page contains another poorly written sentence from the veteran columnist, who appears to get no editing help from his assignment editor or anyone else:

"That he [Judge Joseph S. Conte] signaled in various rulings over the course of the trial, which ended nearly four months ago, that he had no problems with the evidence did not seem to matter."

High school-level writing on the front page of the Woodland Park daily. What's next?

So, what does Kelly the hack mean by a "double dose of chaos"?

Zisa stands convicted of official misconduct and insurance fraud, meaning he faces five or more years in prison without parole and loss of his pension, even though Judge Conte threw out guilty verdicts on three other counts.

Positive development

And interim Police Chief Tomas Padilla -- whom Kelly labels "a controversial Zisa pal and political force in his own right" -- announced he is retiring at the end of the year (L-1).

Hackensack residents find those developments to be positive overall. 

There is no "chaos" in Hackensack or its Police Department, where rank-and-file police officers get high marks from the vast majority of residents. 

Where were the editors?

And readers have to wonder what Kelly and the paper's editors and reporters were doing to remain clueless during all of the years the Zisa brothers were a corrosive influence in the Police Department.

Since the end of the Ken Zisa trial in May, Kelly and Hackensack reporter Stephanie Akin have carefully avoided drawing attention to the huge conflict of Zisa's cousin, Joseph Zisa, serving as city attorney and recusing himself from all of the lawsuits against the former chief.

Indeed, coverage of Hackensack in Local has declined drastically under head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, and only got worse when The Record abandoned the city for Rockaway, Woodland Park and other towns.

Unearthing altered lives

The cover story in the new Signature section discusses an historic cemetery and three of the dead whose lives were "cut short" -- as pieced together by Staff Writer Jay Levin, the master of local obituaries (SIG-1). 

As good as this story is, I was disappointed Levin didn't use the Sept. 3 death of actor Michael Clarke Duncan at 54 as a launching pad for a discussion on the apparently higher health risks faced by African-American men.

Discovering soft tacos

On SIG-4, a story by Food Editor Susan Leigh Sherrill carries a clunky headline, likely a special effort from Editor Liz Houlton's copy desk: 

"Plate and soul of Mexico."

And the report on a downtown Paterson taqueria is missing a couple of elements: 

Does Antojitos Poblano serve any tacos for people who don't eat meat or want to avoid its mystery poultry and pork, and is the sanitation there any better than at other taco joints in Paterson and Passaic city? 

The photo package on SIG-6 demonstrates the talent of another staff photographer -- something readers have forgotten under the onslaught of minor accident and fire photos used as filler in Local (L-1).

Sykes and Sforza are really scraping the bottom of the local news barrel today.