Hollywood, editors ignore today's racist backlash

Compare this comfortable bench for Coach USA commuters at the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, above, to the spring-loaded implements of torture NJ Transit provides in another part of the terminal, below.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor


Picking up The Record's report today on new movies about racial issues in the 1950s and 1960s, readers must be wondering what the editors and Staff Writer Jim Beckerman are smoking (A-1 and BL-1).

They completely ignore the continuing racist backlash to the 2008 election of President Obama and implementation of his Affordable Care Act, which is still under attack by Tea Party crackpots like Steve Lonegan, former pipsqueak mayor of Bogota (A-1 on Friday).

"It's as if America in 2013 was just beginning to address, rather than finally laying to rest, the racial issues that tore the country apart 60 years ago," Beckerman says, ignoring the present in a desperate search for an angle.

What about all of the voter-suppression proposals in North Carolina and other states with a large number of minorities? Don't they count as "racial issues."

News biz films?

Hollywood directors are famous for period pieces that twist the past even as they expose decades-old injustices.

Many readers are wondering when Hollywood is going to make movies about newspapers:

Their greedy publishers, big and small; and their editors and reporters, who will sensationalize and distort anything for a story, such as today's silly promotion of three new films (BL-1).

More screw-ups

Judging by 3 detailed corrections on A-2 today, Production Editor Liz Houlton and her snoring  copy editors are unable to perform their main job: keeping errors out of the paper.

Of course, all of the errors -- published and unpublished -- were missed by head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her crack staff, including Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza.

Errors are bad enough, but what about omissions, such as the lack of information on the cause of a one-car accident that killed Erin Quinn, 18, a Wayne woman who was driving to college on Thursday (L-6), according to a death notice on L-5 today.

Forced busing

I'll let NJ Transit investigate a black customer's complaint "that he was racially profiled," but I have to question Alonza Robertson's judgment in taking a bus from Rockland County to Paramus to shop at a Nike outlet on a Sunday, when just everybody else knows all stores are closed (L-1).

For many years, The Record ignored NJ Transit's systematic discrimination against minorities, forcing them to ride decrepit, decades-old local buses, while the agency regularly replaced rolling stock on Manhattans runs. 

In Englewood, racial injustice is everywhere

When I saw this man standing with a sandwich board on Route 18 and Tices Lane in East Brunswick last Friday, I wondered about just how bad the state economy is under Governor Christie, who is seeking a second term.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Anyone familiar with Englewood's segregated schools or its two-sides-of-the-tracks shopping district must be doing a double take after reading the lead paragraph of today's Page 1 centerpiece:

"Gerald Marion has spent his career fighting fires, not racial injustice," The Record reports under a big photo of Englewood's African-American fire chief.

You can't be black and live in Englewood, and not fight racial injustice. The city was founded in 1899, but Marion is only its second black fire chief.

Marion is calling on Englewood to boycott businesses in Florida as a protest over that state's "stand-your-ground law," which the judge in the George Zimmerman trial included in her jury instructions.

Jury system

But the verdict clearing Zimmerman in the slaying of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, should inspire more than a boycott of Florida businesses or attempts to strike down "stand-your-ground" laws.

Like the O.J. Simpson trial many years ago, the verdict calls into question the viability of the entire jury system.

Judging from some of the stupid comments from the women who found Zimmerman not guilty, maybe a minimum I.Q. should be required for jury service.

Copy desk I.Q.

And judging from the awful headlines over the Marion story and another A-1 story, no minimum I.Q. is necessary to work on The Record's copy and news desks or to hold the six-figure job of production editor.

The main headline -- "Chief calls out city" -- gives readers absolutely no clue the story is related to the Florida trial and not-guilty verdict.

The headline fails miserably, because all the clues are below the fold.

Another bad head

The other big headline on Page 1 -- "Lying for a free lunch?" -- is equally confusing, because the alleged liars did so to get lunch not for themselves, but for their children in school.

They can't think much of their kids, if the free lunches are anything like the tasteless food served at Hackensack High School (A-1 and A-5).

John J. Fahy

After reading about the stellar legal career of John J. Fahy of Rutherford, readers are wondering what The Record's editors and reporters missed to explain why he killed himself with a single shot to the head on Wednesday (A-1 and A-8).

And the fatal shooting wasn't "along" Route 17. It was on a sidewalk next to or near the road.

Utility poles

Head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes runs another story about the 65-foot PSE&G utility poles that were installed in Ridgewood (L-1).

That's three days in a row.

Of course, readers know that Sykes has a special place in her heart for utility poles, judging from all of the photos she has used, documenting damage to them from out-of-control cars and trucks, in place of legitimate news.