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| The Record's Tower of Babel. |
God knows my language can get stale, when, for example, I used the word "lame" three times in the same post recently before rereading it and revising it. But some writers latch onto a word and don't let go for years and years, and it crops up all the time in their work.
The Record of Woodland Park today provides a perfect example in Columnist Mike Kelly, who has an unusual affection for the word "thump."
Kelly long ago stopped writing creatively and now merely pushes around words, as he does in this Opinion front column: "The thump of bombs and the pop of bullets will likely continue as part of Iraq's tumultuous soundtrack."
I did a Google search and from my own editing of his columns and stories over the years, I recall Kelly has used the word thump time and again, and not just to describe bombs.
He's used the "thump of jackhammers" at least twice. (Jackhammers don't thump, do they?) And there was the "thump" of rhetoric, drums and shoes.
Kelly is one of those reporters who has been around so long, no one -- not the editors, not the publisher -- pays any attention to what he writes, just as long as he files his three columns a week.
Others who fall into that category include Road Warrior John Cichowski, Staff Writer John Brennan and Editorial Page Editor Alfred P. Doblin -- all of whom are glorified, overpaid space fillers.
They get away with this because some writers become the editors' favorites whether they have talent or not, while others never get off the shit list. Who loses here? The reader does, big time.
Burying news
The best story in today's paper is on North Jersey police departments struggling to diversify, but why isn't it on Page 1, in place of the lead story about high school athletics' governing body?
It's probably because Editor Francis "Frank The Castrato" Scandale and head Assignment Editor Deirdre "Mother Hen" Sykes didn't want to give too much prominence to the police story, lest anyone question their own miserable records in diversifying the newsroom or covering minority communities in Bergen County.
For example, Kelly and Cichowski are two of the overwhelmingly white, male columnists at the former Hackensack daily. Scandale, Sykes and Features Director Barbara Jaeger have methodically gotten rid of their black, Hispanic and women columnists.
The Local news section is pretty thin today, with no news of Hackensack, Teaneck, Englewood and many other towns, except for references to them in the police diversity story.
On L-1, Cichowski blabbers on about crossing guards -- about as far away as you can get from his mission, which is to cover commuting.
On L-6, a package on the Labor Day fire in Passaic city 25 years ago omits anything on whether the devastated area was rebuilt.
Paid for gorging
In Better Living, we find a clue to why Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung failed readers by not writing a fine-dining review for this past Friday's paper. She apparently was stuffing her face at three places favored by the so-called real housewives -- who, along with Ung, are another joke played on the Garden State.
Why have the editors commanded so much copy about these trashy housewives and the other young, white trash from "Jersey Shore," compared to "The Sopranos," a series that was superior in every way imaginable?
